Yuba City vs Prescott Valley-Prescott

Cost of living comparison based on BEA Regional Price Parities. Prescott Valley-Prescott is 5.7% less expensive than Yuba City.

5.7% less expensive

Prescott Valley-Prescott, AZ is 5.7% less expensive than Yuba City, CA on BEA Regional Price Parities (overall RPP 98.3 vs 104.2). A $100,000 salary in Yuba City buys about the same as $94,265 in Prescott Valley-Prescott; the largest component gap is services.

  • Overall RPP 104.2 (Yuba City) vs 98.3 (Prescott Valley-Prescott)
  • $100k in Yuba City ≈ $94,265 purchasing power in Prescott Valley-Prescott
  • Services drives the gap (-69.3 RPP points)

RPP parity plate

Pair CA:AZ 104.2→98.3

TIER-NEAR · CROSS-STATE · SERVICES-LED · BENCH-CROSS · PP-SHIFT

  • TIER-NEAR Near tier
  • CROSS-STATE CA × AZ
  • SERVICES-LED Services-led gap
  • BENCH-CROSS Benchmark cross
  • PP-SHIFT PP shift

Instrument codes from this pair's BEA Regional Price Parities (overall · goods · services · rents · national benchmark 100 · purchasing-power conversion), not a ranking or recommendation.

What This Comparison Actually Tells You

Prescott Valley-Prescott, AZ is 5.7% less expensive than Yuba City, CA, a meaningful but not extreme shift. The move decision turns on which budget category creates the 6.0-point overall gap.

This route crosses the national benchmark: Yuba City is above 100 while Prescott Valley-Prescott is below it. That makes the move a change of price regime, not merely a rank swap.

Services leads the difference, with Prescott Valley-Prescott 69.3 points lower than Yuba City. Goods, services, and rents all point in the same broad direction, making the headline comparison more transferable across household types.

Comparable population context is incomplete for this pair, so no market-scale explanation is inferred from the price indexes.

For a service-heavy household, test childcare, health, and other locally supplied costs before relying on rent alone. The BEA ratio converts $100,000 in Yuba City to $94,265 in Prescott Valley-Prescott, but it is not a personal spending weight.

How the Price Gap Changed

Yuba City and Prescott Valley-Prescott share 17 published annual releases from 2008 through 2024. Their overall gap widened, moving from 5.2 to 6.0 RPP points. Yuba City remained the higher-index metro in the latest release.

Services changed the most within this pair: its gap moved 53.1 points between the first and latest shared releases (16.2 to 69.3 points). This describes a relative price-index history, not a forecast or a household budget.

Release Year Yuba City RPP Prescott Valley-Prescott RPP Relative Gap
2008 97.8 103.0 5.2 points Prescott Valley-Prescott higher
2012 102.2 96.5 5.7 points Yuba City higher
2016 97.6 98.6 1.0 points Prescott Valley-Prescott higher
2020 102.0 93.2 8.8 points Yuba City higher
2024 104.2 98.3 6.0 points Yuba City higher

Annual BEA Regional Price Parity releases; a higher index means a higher price level relative to the national average of 100. Selected years shown from the full shared series.

Category Breakdown

Visual Comparison

Overall
Yuba City
104.2
Prescott Valley-Prescott
98.3
Goods
Yuba City
105.2
Prescott Valley-Prescott
96.2
Services
Yuba City
160.8
Prescott Valley-Prescott
91.5
Rents
Yuba City
108.3
Prescott Valley-Prescott
98.8

Vertical line = national average (100)

Salary Equivalents

What a salary in Yuba City would need to be in Prescott Valley-Prescott for the same purchasing power:

In Yuba City In Prescott Valley-Prescott Difference
$50,000 $47,132 $-2,868
$75,000 $70,699 $-4,301
$100,000 $94,265 $-5,735
$150,000 $141,397 $-8,603
$ in Yuba City = in Prescott Valley-Prescott

Same BEA Regional Price Parity ratio as the table above (104.2 → 98.3), computed live from your number, nothing is sent anywhere.

Yuba City
104.2
Cost Index
Prescott Valley-Prescott
98.3
Cost Index

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Prescott Valley-Prescott more expensive than Yuba City?

Prescott Valley-Prescott is 5.7% less expensive than Yuba City. The overall cost index is 98.3 vs 104.2 (national average = 100).

What salary in Prescott Valley-Prescott equals $100K in Yuba City?

A $100,000 salary in Yuba City has the same purchasing power as $94,265 in Prescott Valley-Prescott. This is based on the BEA Regional Price Parity indexes.

How do rents compare between Yuba City and Prescott Valley-Prescott?

Rents in Yuba City are indexed at 108.3 while Prescott Valley-Prescott is at 98.8 (national average = 100). Yuba City has higher rents.

Data sourced from official public datasets, Regional Price Parities (2024), index where national average = 100. Retrieved and formatted by PlainCost. See our methodology for details.

Every figure on PlainCost is rendered directly from BEA Regional Price Parity source data, no number is typed in by an editor. See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, our changelog, or report a data error. Data current as of 2026-08-11. Rankings measure the published cost-of-living index only; we don't recommend where to live or rate any metro's quality of life.