If you are comparing Mumbai with Pune, or Lucknow with Bengaluru, you will find dozens of pages that quote a single figure for "the cost of living" in each city. India does not publish one. There is no official city-level cost-of-living index, and a number printed to the nearest rupee for a whole city is an estimate, whoever prints it. This page sets out what the Government of India does publish, what it can and cannot tell you, and how to build a budget for your own city from your own rent quote.
Quick answer: The nearest official data is the Household Consumption Expenditure Survey 2023-24 (MoSPI): urban households spent ₹6,996 per person per month on average. By state it runs from ₹4,927 (Chhattisgarh) to ₹13,927 (Sikkim), with Chandigarh at ₹13,425. It compares places; it is not a budget. For a budget, start from a real rent quote.
What the survey measures
The Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) runs the Household Consumption Expenditure Survey. The 2023-24 round collected data between August 2023 and July 2024 from 2,61,953 households across India, 1,07,596 of them urban. Its headline measure is MPCE, monthly per capita consumption expenditure: everything a household spends in a month, divided by the number of people in it. The estimates here are the ones MoSPI publishes without adding imputed values for free items received through welfare schemes.
Three limits matter for anyone using it to pick a city:
It is a state figure, not a city figure. The published table has one urban number per state or union territory. A state's urban average blends its largest city with its smaller towns, so the figure for the largest city can differ a good deal from the state number. Noida, for example, sits inside Uttar Pradesh's figure, although it is part of the Delhi region.
It is spending, not prices. It records what households chose to spend, which depends on income as well as on prices. A higher figure means people spend more per head, not necessarily that the same flat costs more.
It averages every household. Owners, tenants, families and people living alone are all in the same average, so it is not what one person renting a flat would need.
Urban spending by state, and where the cities sit
| State / UT | Urban MPCE (₹ per person per month) | Against urban India (₹6,996) | Cities in it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chandigarh (UT) | ₹13,425 | +92% | Chandigarh |
| Goa | ₹9,726 | +39% | Goa |
| Telangana | ₹8,978 | +28% | Hyderabad |
| Delhi | ₹8,534 | +22% | Delhi |
| Haryana | ₹8,428 | +20% | Gurgaon |
| Tamil Nadu | ₹8,165 | +17% | Chennai, Coimbatore |
| Karnataka | ₹8,076 | +15% | Bengaluru |
| Kerala | ₹7,783 | +11% | Kochi |
| Maharashtra | ₹7,363 | +5% | Mumbai, Pune, Nagpur, Nashik |
| Punjab | ₹7,359 | +5% | Amritsar, Ludhiana |
| Andhra Pradesh | ₹7,182 | +3% | Visakhapatnam |
| Gujarat | ₹7,175 | +3% | Ahmedabad, Surat, Vadodara, Rajkot |
| Rajasthan | ₹6,574 | −6% | Jaipur |
| West Bengal | ₹5,775 | −17% | Kolkata |
| Madhya Pradesh | ₹5,538 | −21% | Indore, Bhopal |
| Uttar Pradesh | ₹5,395 | −23% | Lucknow, Kanpur, Agra, Varanasi, Noida |
| Bihar | ₹5,080 | −27% | Patna |
| All-India, urban | ₹6,996 | level |
Source: MoSPI, HCES 2023-24 factsheet, Statement 7 (urban column, without imputation). Only the states containing the cities this site used to cover are shown; the factsheet lists every state and union territory. The "Against" column is our arithmetic on those two published figures.
What this does tell you: spending per person in Chandigarh, Goa, Telangana and Delhi is well above the urban average, and in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and West Bengal it is well below. What it does not tell you is the rent for a one-bedroom flat in any of them.
Where an average urban rupee goes
| Item group | ₹ per person per month | Share of spending |
|---|---|---|
| Food (including purchased cooked meals) | ₹2,776 | 39.68% |
| Rent (house, garage and hotel accommodation) | ₹460 | 6.58% |
| Conveyance | ₹592 | 8.46% |
| Fuel and light | ₹391 | 5.59% |
| Education | ₹418 | 5.97% |
| Medical | ₹409 | 5.85% |
| Consumer services excluding conveyance | ₹400 | 5.72% |
| Miscellaneous goods and entertainment | ₹484 | 6.92% |
| Clothing, bedding and footwear | ₹396 | 5.66% |
| Durable goods | ₹481 | 6.87% |
| Pan, tobacco and intoxicants | ₹166 | 2.37% |
| Taxes and cesses | ₹23 | 0.33% |
| All items | ₹6,996 | 100.00% |
Source: MoSPI, HCES 2023-24 factsheet, Statement 4 (urban India, without imputation). The rows add to the published total of ₹6,996.
Look at the rent line before copying it into a budget. Rent averages ₹460 a month, 6.58% of spending, because the average includes every urban household, including those that own their home or pay no rent. A tenant's rent will usually be well above that average. Food, at 39.68% of the average budget, is the more useful guide, and it is a line you control.
Build your own city budget
1. Get a real rent quote. Rent is the one line that varies most between cities and between localities within one, and no national statistic replaces a quote for the flat you would take. Rent comes from listings and brokers, not from a survey, so use two or three current ones.
2. Add what you actually spend on food, transport and utilities. If you are moving, use your current bills as a starting point and adjust for the commute. Track one full month once you arrive and replace every guess with a real number.
3. Set the ceiling from the rent. A common planning rule is to keep rent near 30% of take-home pay. It is a rule of thumb, not a law, but it turns a quote into a salary target:
| Monthly rent | Take-home that keeps rent near 30% |
|---|---|
| ₹10,000 | ₹33,500 |
| ₹15,000 | ₹50,000 |
| ₹20,000 | ₹66,500 |
| ₹30,000 | ₹1,00,000 |
| ₹45,000 | ₹1,50,000 |
4. Check the whole plan against 50/30/20. The same arithmetic on all essentials works the other way. As an illustration only, not a figure for any city: if rent is ₹20,000, food ₹8,000, transport ₹3,000 and utilities ₹2,500, essentials come to ₹33,500. For essentials to stay near half of take-home, you would need about ₹67,000 a month, leaving ₹20,100 for wants and ₹13,400 for savings. Put your own four numbers in and the answer changes with them.
Where to get real prices
Rents come from current listings and from brokers in the locality you are considering; ask for the deposit and the maintenance charge too, because both change the monthly cost. For how house prices (not rents) are moving, the Reserve Bank of India publishes a quarterly House Price Index for a set of large cities on its website. For your own spending, there is no substitute for a month of tracked expenses.
Where these figures come from. All figures on this page were read from the official documents on 17 October 2026: the MoSPI HCES 2023-24 factsheet (Statements 4 and 7) and the Press Information Bureau's release of 27 December 2024. The arithmetic in the tables is ours and is shown. See how we check these numbers.
Frequently asked questions
Is there an official cost-of-living figure for my city?
No. The Government of India publishes consumption spending by state, not a cost-of-living index by city. The most useful official figure is MoSPI's urban spending per person for each state (₹6,996 a month for urban India in 2023-24), which compares states but is not a budget for one person.
Which states have the highest and lowest urban spending?
Among the states, urban MPCE is highest in Sikkim (₹13,927) and lowest in Chhattisgarh (₹4,927). Chandigarh, a union territory, is at ₹13,425. Among the states containing the cities listed above, it is highest in Goa (₹9,726) and lowest in Bihar (₹5,080).
How much of a household budget goes on rent?
Across all urban households, rent averages 6.58% of spending, about ₹460 a month per person. That average includes the many households that own their home. A tenant's share is far higher, so work from your own rent quote, not from this average.
How much salary do I need to live in a particular city?
Work it out from the rent quote: dividing monthly rent by 0.30 gives the take-home at which rent stays near 30%, and doubling your total essentials gives the take-home at which they stay near half. Both are rules of thumb, shown with numbers above.
Plan it with your own numbers in the free cost of living calculator and the 50/30/20 budget calculator, and set the result as caps in Expense Tracker: Income Manager.
Expense Tracker: Income Manager keeps budgets, EMIs, SIP goals and daily spending on your phone. No account, no ads, no cloud sync.
