How Much Has the Cost of Living Changed Across San Mateo County Cities?

Housing is the anchor expense, and it is also where city lines matter most. Recent reporting by the San Mateo Daily Journal on rising house rental prices across Peninsula communities illustrates these cost pressures in everyday terms. The U.S. Census Bureau’s QuickFacts, based on American Community Survey estimates, reports median gross rent for 2020-2024 at 3,077 dollars for San Mateo, 2,968 dollars for Redwood City, and 2,785 dollars for Burlingame. Foster City is listed at 3,500 dollars or more for the same period, meaning the estimate exceeds the table’s top bracket rather than being shown as a single number. Treat these rent figures as a comparable snapshot across cities, not a precise “today” quote for a specific unit. Even so, the ordering tells a clear story: the baseline cost of renting varies meaningfully even within a single county.

Those rent levels raise a practical question for readers: how much more does one city cost than another? If you want a clean way to express the gap between two city rent figures, use a percentage difference calculator. Turning dollars into a percentage makes the tradeoff easier to grasp when you are weighing a move that changes your commute by minutes but your monthly rent by hundreds. It also helps interpret capped values like Foster City’s bracket, where the exact median is not displayed but the “at least this high” signal still matters.

Groceries and everyday inflation

For groceries and other everyday items, the best official signal is inflation. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) publishes a Consumer Price Index for the San Francisco area. In its latest regional release, the BLS reported that over the year, the food index rose 4.3 percent, while the energy index decreased 0.2 percent. At the national level, the BLS reported that the CPI for all items rose 2.7 percent over the last 12 months through December 2025. The regional mix helps explain a common experience: grocery trips get pricier even when energy is not surging. For many households, that means the pressure is steady and cumulative, not a single dramatic spike.

Fuel and commuting costs

Gasoline is where short-term volatility shows up fastest, and it matters in a county where many trips involve Highway 101, El Camino, or crossings into San Francisco. The U.S. Energy Information Administration tracks weekly retail prices for regular reformulated gasoline in San Francisco. Recent values include 4.292 dollars per gallon on December 1, 2025, 4.015 on December 29, 2025, and 4.210 on February 2, 2026. That early December drop may seem minor at the pump, but expressed as a percentage decrease, it marks a noticeable shift in fuel costs over just a few weeks, enough to affect a monthly commuting budget even when rent stays fixed.

A practical household tracker

If you want a household-level tracker that matches how people actually experience costs, combine the official series with your own small list. Track a few staples you buy every week, or record the total cost to fill the tank for the same commute. Then, compute a single weekly reference number with a mean calculator. A mean is transparent and repeatable, and it helps you compare your own basket over time, even when promotions and brand switches add noise. Used alongside CPI and EIA data, it can help readers distinguish between broad price pressure affecting everyone and personal spending changes driven by choices and routines.

The bottom line

So what has changed, and what is mostly structural? The city-level rent estimates show that housing costs remain materially different across nearby communities, and those gaps are large enough to shape where people can live. The regional CPI shows food prices rising over the year, even as energy prices are relatively calm, suggesting everyday costs can climb even if gasoline is not the main culprit. Meanwhile, gasoline can swing week to week, moving a commuting budget even if rent is fixed for a year. The practical takeaway is to treat the cost of living as three dashboards: rents for location-driven differences, CPI for broad pressure, and fuel for short-run volatility.