ST. LOUIS – Missourians are often quick to draw comparisons between St. Louis and Kansas City, especially for their sports teams and barbeque vibes. One point of comparison that’s perhaps overlooked is which city provides more bang for your buck.

Of course, living and spending habits vary widely across Missouri’s two titans, so there’s not one answer that fits all. However, new data suggests the value of your money in St. Louis and Kansas City is quite similar, but perhaps invested differently among common expenditures.

Numbeo, an online database that compiles cost-of-living data through crowdsourcing, recently released its 2024 mid-year quality of life index rankings . It also has a feature through which visitors can compare costs among various U.S. cities.

With the City of St. Louis, Missouri stacked up against the City of Kansas City, Missouri, Numbeo shared the following insight based on crowdsourced averages…

• Cost of living (minus rent costs) is around 0.8% higher in St. Louis compared to Kansas City.
• Cost of living (including rent costs) is around 0.2% higher in St. Louis compared to Kansas City.
• Rent costs are around 1.2% lower in St. Louis compared to Kansas City.
• Restaurant prices are around 11.2% higher in St. Louis compared to Kansas City.
• Grocery prices are around 3.7% lower in St. Louis compared to Kansas City.
• Local purchasing power is around 12.4% higher in St. Louis compared to Kansas City.

The purchasing power comparison would seem to suggest that consumers in St. Louis have more financial leverage into goods and services they decide to buy, though other metrics suggest that comes along with higher costs for certain essential expenses to maintain a quality standard of living.

For instance, several grocery items that Numbeo lists for both cities including milk, eggs and bread, are listed as cheaper in St. Louis than in Kansas City.

Data available from the U.S. Bureau Labor of Statistics would seem to support the concept of people having more purchasing power in St. Louis than Kansas City .

The Bureau tracked “Consumer Price Index” scores of both cities through 2017 until it dropped Kansas City from its CPI measurements. At that time, Kansas City had a CPI score nearly 20% larger than St. Louis, suggesting goods and services were rising around that much more in Kansas City than St. Louis for that time period.

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Hypothetically, that would correspond to a 6-cent increase in Kansas City for every 5-cent increase in St. Louis.

Where might the differences in cost of living come from? Numbeo’s numbers suggest that variations in housing prices, utilities, transportation and taxes may contribute to some differences, suggesting St. Louis and Kansas City hold different advantages.

Overall, the data from Numbeo and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics suggest one may see more value with stretching dollars in St. Louis, though both are similar in overall spending patterns.

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