Is Reno cheaper than Las Vegas?

Take-home leftover: $2,286/mo in Reno vs $2,549 in Las Vegas after tax and rent ($263 less). That is the site's default one-adult, one-bedroom household — a local paycheck scaled to each metro, Nevada wage tax (none), and asking rent for one bedroom. Change the job or the bedrooms and the gap moves. The numbers below are that same default, not a national average and not a quote.

• Leftover in Las Vegas: $2,549 a month after tax and rent.
• Leftover in Reno: $2,286 a month after tax and rent.
• One-bedroom asking rent in the model: $1,267 in Las Vegas versus $1,556 in Reno.

Open the Las Vegas → Reno move page for IRS households that already made the trip, or the leftover comparison for the line-by-line take-home. The reverse is Reno → Las Vegas ($263 more leftover a month on the same household).

Both cities sit in Nevada. There is no state income tax to pick up or put down. A cost-of-living index that ranks Reno against Las Vegas is mostly ranking rent, groceries and a metro-wide average household. Leftover still has work to do: local pay for the same job is not identical, asking rent at your bedroom count is not the ACS median, and the rest of the month (getting around, utilities, healthcare) is scaled to each metro's non-housing prices.

If you only compare Zillow screenshots you can pick the cheaper lease and still keep less money, because the paycheck that lease sits under is different. That is the whole point of leftover versus a COL index.

The default household is a filter, not your life. On the move page, set:

• Remote or local pay. Remote holds a Las Vegas salary constant in Reno. Local scales it. For a job that exists in both markets, run both.
• Bedrooms. A couple that needs two bedrooms is not buying the one-bedroom gap. Reno and Las Vegas do not move in lockstep when the unit gets larger.
• The IRS flow. The move page lists tax-return households that already went Las Vegas → Reno when the pair is large enough to publish. That is evidence people make the trip, not a recommendation that you should.

Then open Reno's paycheck page and Las Vegas for housing, costs and mover ranges. The metro checklist is the order to do that in.