To preserve the same standard of living you have today in Denver on $75,000, you would need $68,555 in Austin. That is a -8.6% composite shift; the line-item breakdown below shows where the gap actually concentrates. Source: C2ER ACCRA, BLS CPI weights.
Salary-equivalence math is the same across every cost-of-living comparison: scale by index ratio. For Denver (128) to Austin (117) that ratio is 0.914. The table below applies it to the three anchor incomes most relocators use as decision points.
| Denver salary | Equivalent in Austin | Difference |
|---|---|---|
| $50,000 | $45,703 | -$4,297 |
| $75,000 | $68,555 | -$6,445 |
| $150,000 | $137,109 | -$12,891 |
Aggregated indexes are useful for headline comparisons but rarely match an individual household's experience. The five-category breakdown for Denver and Austin below makes the underlying drivers visible so you can map them against your own line-item budget mix.
| Category | Denver | Austin | Delta |
|---|---|---|---|
| Housing Rent + median home price | 166 | 138 | -16.9% |
| Groceries Supermarket basket | 102 | 95 | -6.9% |
| Transportation Fuel, transit, parking | 105 | 102 | -2.9% |
| Healthcare Doctor visits, prescriptions | 104 | 98 | -5.8% |
| Utilities Electric, gas, internet | 96 | 104 | +8.3% |
| Composite | 128 | 117 | -8.6% |
Denver, CO and Austin, TX sit within roughly 15% of each other on the composite cost-of-living index — close enough that the move is best framed as a lateral, not an upgrade or downgrade. The headline gap is about -9%, but the more interesting story is the category mix: housing alone runs -17% different between the two cities, which is usually larger than the composite gap because non-housing categories compress around the U.S. average.
For a household whose budget is housing-dominated, this lateral on the composite can still mean a notable change in monthly cash flow. For a household with paid-off housing or a fixed-rate mortgage that does not change with the move, the relevant gap is on the variable categories — groceries, utilities, transportation — where the differences are real but smaller. Either way, treat the move as a sideways step in pure cost terms and let lifestyle, career, and tax factors break the tie.
Income tax is a separate axis from the cost-of-living index, and Colorado and Texas can disagree on it sharply. 4.40% versus 0.00% on the top-marginal or flat state rate translates to $3,300 versus $0 on a $75,000 salary, a $3,300 delta that stacks with the consumer-price story.
The take-home pay calculator gives you the after-tax delta at your real salary and filing status. Federal tax is invariant under the move; the state rate is the only piece that flips. See the take-home pay calculator or the state-by-state take-home pay article for the precise after-tax number.
No — Austin comes in about 9% cheaper on the composite (117 vs 128 for Denver). Housing carries most of the gap, with smaller contributions from grocery, transport, and utility sub-indexes.
Approximately $68,555. The math: $75,000 times the index ratio 0.91 (which is 117/128) equals the salary in Austin that preserves your real-terms spending power. State tax sits on top — handled separately in the sidebar above.
Housing carries the gap. Denver indexes at 166 on housing; Austin indexes at 138. The other categories — groceries (102 vs 95), transportation (105 vs 102), utilities (96 vs 104) — move smaller distances. Housing variance is what makes metros feel meaningfully different on cost.
Not directly. Consumer-price indexes like C2ER ACCRA exclude state and federal income tax. To get the full picture for Colorado versus Texas, combine the equivalent-salary number above with the state-tax delta in the sidebar; both effects compound when you cross state lines.