Georgia vs Texas: Cost of Living, Taxes, Rent and Safety Compared
Weighing a move between Georgia and Texas? Here’s how they compare on the numbers that decide most moves, from the same public data Locustep uses to rank all 50 states.
Shaded cells are the lower-cost, higher-income or lower-risk figure. Indexes: U.S. average = 100.
What it means for your budget
Rent alone: moving from Georgia to Texas changes a typical two-bedroom rent by −$40 a month (−$480 a year); the move the other way flips the sign. Taxes, pay, insurance and the move itself shift too, and how much depends on your income, your household and the city you pick.
That’s exactly what Locustep’s Net-Impact Report works out: your take-home pay after state and local taxes in both places, rent or buy for your budget, insurance and moving costs, and the month the move pays for itself.
Which state fits you better?
On Locustep’s directional scores for jobs, healthcare, schools, outdoor access and infrastructure, the two states are close. The deciding factors are likely to be cost, climate and where you’d actually live.
Where people look in each state
Georgia
Atlanta
$1,762/mo two-bedroom
Atlanta is the economic and cultural capital of the Southeast — a major Black professional and creative centre, huge film industry, and the world's busiest airport. Sprawling and traffic-heavy, hot and humid, with a wide range of costs by neighbourhood.
Savannah
$1,679/mo two-bedroom
Savannah is a small, beautiful, heavily touristed historic port city built around live-oak squares. A strong art-school presence, an excellent food scene, oppressive summer humidity and a job market concentrated in tourism, logistics and the port.
Augusta
$1,329/mo two-bedroom
Augusta is a modest riverside city known mainly for the Masters, with a large medical university and an expanding Army cyber-command presence. Very affordable, quiet, and hot — with a job market increasingly tied to defence technology.
Austin is a fast-growing tech hub with a strong music and food culture, a young professional population and an outdoor streak. It is no longer cheap, traffic is bad and worsening, summers are punishing, and the counterculture reputation now outruns the reality.
Houston
$1,497/mo two-bedroom
Houston is vast, diverse and unzoned — energy, medicine and shipping money, extraordinary food from every immigrant community, and essentially no geographic constraints. Expect heat, humidity, flooding risk and long drives, but also the lowest big-city housing costs in the country.
Dallas
$1,807/mo two-bedroom
Realistically, Dallas is a massive, hyper-commercialised, corporate-driven metropolis where daily life focuses heavily on professional careers, excellent dining and a highly air-conditioned lifestyle. It is less about cowboys and horses and much more about sprawling highways, luxury shopping and major corporate headquarters.
On rent, Texas is cheaper: a typical two-bedroom is $1,488 a month against $1,528 (HUD FY2027). Everyday costs, housing excluded, index at 97.9 in Georgia and 97.5 in Texas (U.S. = 100). Whether you come out ahead also depends on your pay and taxes in each state.
Which has lower taxes, Georgia or Texas?
Texas. A married couple on the U.S. median household income would pay about 6.2% of it in state and local taxes, against 7.7% in Georgia (Locustep estimate). Texas has no tax on wages; Georgia’s top rate is 4.99%.
Is Georgia safer than Texas?
By violent crime, Georgia is lower: 325.7 per 100,000 residents against 389.4 (FBI, 2024). On natural hazards, FEMA puts Georgia at the 25th percentile and Texas at the 40th (lower is safer).
Which has better weather, Georgia or Texas?
It depends what you want. Winter afternoons average 56°F in Atlanta and 58°F in Dallas; summer afternoons 89°F and 94°F (NOAA 1991–2020). Georgia: hot & humid, subtropical. Texas: hot & humid, subtropical.