Austin to Seattle on the C2ER ACCRA composite: +29.9% on the headline, +43.5% on housing alone. A $75,000 Austin salary lines up with roughly $97,436 in Seattle after the consumer-price adjustment. State tax stacks on top — sidebar below.
Salary-equivalence math is the same across every cost-of-living comparison: scale by index ratio. For Austin (117) to Seattle (152) that ratio is 1.299. The table below applies it to the three anchor incomes most relocators use as decision points.
| Austin salary | Equivalent in Seattle | Difference |
|---|---|---|
| $50,000 | $64,957 | +$14,957 |
| $75,000 | $97,436 | +$22,436 |
| $150,000 | $194,872 | +$44,872 |
Aggregated indexes are useful for headline comparisons but rarely match an individual household's experience. The five-category breakdown for Austin and Seattle below makes the underlying drivers visible so you can map them against your own line-item budget mix.
| Category | Austin | Seattle | Delta |
|---|---|---|---|
| Housing Rent + median home price | 138 | 198 | +43.5% |
| Groceries Supermarket basket | 95 | 113 | +18.9% |
| Transportation Fuel, transit, parking | 102 | 122 | +19.6% |
| Healthcare Doctor visits, prescriptions | 98 | 118 | +20.4% |
| Utilities Electric, gas, internet | 104 | 110 | +5.8% |
| Composite | 117 | 152 | +29.9% |
For relocators leaving Austin, TX for Seattle, WA, the cost-of-living math is the part that does not lie. Seattle runs about 30% above Austin on the composite C2ER index, which means $75,000 in Austin maps to roughly $97,436 in Seattle just to stay even on real-terms spending power.
State tax sits on top of that as a separate adjustment. Texas and Washington can have very different income tax regimes at the same salary level, and the gap is layered onto the consumer-price gap rather than included in it. The sidebar on this page summarizes the state-tax delta at three anchor salaries so you can stack both effects and see the all-in picture before negotiating an offer.
State income tax is not part of the cost-of-living composite, but it is part of your real take-home math. Texas's effective top rate is 0.00%; Washington's is 0.00%. On a $75,000 salary the two states pull $0 and $0 respectively — a gap of $0 that compounds with the consumer-price difference.
Use the take-home pay calculator to model the after-tax difference at your specific salary and filing status. Federal tax stays constant across the move; only the state piece moves. See the take-home pay calculator or the state-by-state take-home pay article for the precise after-tax number.
Short answer: yes. Seattle runs 30% above Austin on the C2ER ACCRA composite (152 vs 117). Housing is the dominant driver of that gap; non-housing categories contribute smaller pieces in the same direction.
The equivalent salary in Seattle is about $97,436. You get there by multiplying $75,000 by the index ratio (1.30, derived from 152 and 117). This is a consumer-price comparison; layer state tax separately for after-tax parity.
Housing carries the gap. Austin indexes at 138 on housing; Seattle indexes at 198. The other categories — groceries (95 vs 113), transportation (102 vs 122), utilities (104 vs 110) — move smaller distances. Housing variance is what makes metros feel meaningfully different on cost.
State tax is a separate adjustment. The composite cost-of-living index is a pre-tax, consumer-prices-only measure. Texas and Washington state-tax rates differ; the sidebar quantifies that gap at common salary anchors so you can add it to the consumer-price equivalent and get an after-tax number.