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Open data: US city costs for remote workers
Everything behind this site, in two files, free to reuse with attribution. 14 cities, read October 2026.
The dataset covers 14 US cities with 84 fields each: HUD rents by bedroom, Census rents and home values, Zillow indexes, Airbnb nightly prices where a clean source exists, EPA walkability, PeopleForBikes scores, car ownership and commute shares, transit fares, advertised internet speeds and prices, NOAA monthly weather, EPA air-quality days, FEMA hazard ratings, BLS unemployment, OpenStreetMap place counts and Open Brewery DB counts, plus a second file listing all 479 breweries.
Fields
One row per city. Money is US dollars per month unless the field says otherwise. Dates are ISO (YYYY-MM-DD). Empty means not collected.
| Field | Meaning | Source |
|---|---|---|
| slug, city, state, state_name, lat, lon | Identity and downtown coordinates | Nomading USA |
| population | City population | Census ACS |
| rent_studio_hud, rent_1br_hud, rent_2br_hud, rent_3br_hud, hud_fiscal_year, hud_zips | Small Area Fair Market Rents near downtown, utilities included: median of the listed ZIP codes | HUD |
| rent_1br_metro_hud, hud_area, core_asking_rent_zillow | Metro-wide HUD 1-bedroom rent; Zillow asking-rent index for the downtown ZIPs | HUD, Zillow |
| rent_1br_census, home_value_census | Median paid by current tenants; owner-reported home value, inside the city | Census ACS |
| zillow_rent_index, zillow_home_value, zillow_month | Observed Rent Index and Home Value Index | Zillow Research |
| airbnb_night, airbnb_kind, airbnb_listings, airbnb_snapshot, airbnb_source | Entire-home nightly price (median or average), listing count, snapshot date, source URL | Inside Airbnb or labelled source |
| walk_2mi, walk_5mi | Walkability index 1 to 20, population-weighted within 2 and 5 miles of downtown | EPA |
| bike_score, bike_low_stress_miles | Network score 0 to 100 and low-stress miles | PeopleForBikes |
| no_car_pct, commute_drive_pct, commute_transit_pct, commute_walk_pct, commute_bike_pct, commute_home_pct | Households with no vehicle; how residents get to work | Census ACS |
| transit_agency, transit_fare, transit_day_pass, transit_source | Single ride and day pass, read by hand | Agency page |
| internet_max_mbps, internet_max_provider, internet_max_coverage_pct, internet_from_price, internet_source | Fastest advertised plan and cheapest advertised price | FCC via broadbandmap.com |
| weather_station, jan_high, jan_low, jul_high, jul_low, rain_in_year | 30-year normals, 1991 to 2020 | NOAA |
| air_year, air_good_days, air_moderate_days, air_unhealthy_days, air_median_aqi | Air Quality Index day counts for the county | EPA |
| hazard_* | FEMA National Risk Index rating for each hazard, county level | FEMA |
| unemployment_pct, unemployment_month | County rate, not seasonally adjusted | BLS |
| cafes_2mi, coworking_2mi, libraries_2mi | Counts within 2 miles of downtown; undercounts | OpenStreetMap |
| breweries, breweries_per_100k, breweries_read | Open breweries inside the city and the date read | Open Brewery DB |
| indie_scene, indie_summary | yes = dedicated indie hacker meetup found; some = general startup scene | Web search, dated |
| data_read | Date the automated figures for the row were pulled | Nomading USA |
How to cite
Nomading USA, "US city data for remote workers", October 2026, nomadingusa.com/data/. Licensed CC BY 4.0. Underlying government sources are public domain; Inside Airbnb is CC BY 4.0; Open Brewery DB is MIT; Zillow, PeopleForBikes and AirROI figures are quoted with attribution.
Questions people ask
Can I use this data on my own site or in a report?
Yes. The dataset is published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. Credit "Nomading USA (nomadingusa.com)" and link to this page or the city page, and keep the month of the data visible so readers know its age.
How current is the data?
The files are rebuilt whenever a source is re-read; this release reads from October 2026. Each city row carries the date its automated figures were pulled, and each hand-checked figure keeps the page it was read from.
Why is a value blank?
A blank means not collected yet. Nothing is estimated to fill a gap, with one labelled exception: the room-rent estimate on city pages, which is half the HUD 2-bedroom rent and is not in the download.