How Best Life Fit Me works
Choosing where to live is one of the biggest decisions you'll make, yet most "best places" lists rank cities on someone else's priorities. Best Life Fit Me starts from yours: you tell it how you want to live, and it scores over 1,000 US places against that, using public data rather than opinions.
Three steps
- Pick a side on 27 this-or-that questions, such as big city or small town, renting or owning, career first or work to live, and say how much each one matters.
- Say what you need nearby: healthcare, schools, safety, sunshine, a big airport, parks for the dog, and your housing budget for a 3-bedroom home.
- See where you fit: your ranked places on a map, the ways of life that suit you, and a chart showing how each place delivers on what matters to you.
How places are scored
Each place has about 40 measured features, such as population, winter temperatures, home values or violent crime per resident. These are combined into 23 aspects, like climate, getting around or healthcare, using published weights.
- Relative aspects compare places with each other, which suits questions like "big city or small town?". Each feature is ranked from lowest to highest across all places.
- Absolute aspects use real-world thresholds where those matter more than rank. Safety is measured against the US crime rate, affordability against the US median household income ($78,538), climate against actual temperatures, and airports by distance.
Your match with a place is a weighted average of how well it fits each of your answers and needs. Each answer's weight is how strongly you lean (a bit or strongly) times how much it matters (flexible, important or must-have). Places that break a must-have are marked down and flagged. All of this runs in your browser.
Where the data comes from
| Topic | Source |
|---|---|
| Population, commuting, housing type, families, education, income | US Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2019–2023 |
| Home values | Zillow Home Value Index, 3-bedroom homes |
| Rents | HUD Fair Market Rents, 3-bedroom (including utilities) |
| Overall cost of living | BEA Regional Price Parities 2024 |
| State income and sales taxes | US Census Bureau, Annual Survey of State Government Tax Collections FY2025 (per resident) |
| Property tax rates | US Census Bureau, American Community Survey (taxes paid vs home value) |
| Crime | FBI, Crime in the United States 2019 |
| Natural hazards: expected deaths, injuries and building damage from 18 hazards | FEMA National Risk Index v1.20 (December 2025), by census tract |
| Federally declared disasters since 2000 | OpenFEMA Disaster Declarations Summaries |
| City boundaries and census tracts | US Census Bureau, TIGERweb and 2023 Gazetteer |
| Winter and summer temperatures, snow, rainy days | NOAA U.S. Climate Normals 1991–2020 |
| Sunshine and cloud cover | NASA POWER climatology |
| Hospitals and star ratings | CMS (Medicare) Hospital General Information |
| Colleges and research universities | NCES IPEDS 2023 |
| Museums, zoos, aquariums, science centres | IMLS Museum Data Files |
| Parks, playgrounds, dog parks | © OpenStreetMap contributors |
| Airports | OurAirports |
| Mountains, coastlines and lakes | Copernicus DEM, Natural Earth |
Limitations
- Crime figures are per resident, so tourist and commuter hubs read higher than locals experience. Some cities didn't report to the FBI's 2019 table and are counted as average.
- Natural disaster risk uses FEMA's long-run expectations, not forecasts. Disaster counts are for the whole county, and avalanche deaths, which mostly affect visitors, are left out.
- "Education" reflects adult degrees and nearby universities, not school quality.
- The job market is estimated from the population within commuting range, not live job listings.
- Prices change. Home values and rents are recent averages for a whole city, and individual neighbourhoods vary widely.
Best Life Fit Me is a starting point for research, not financial, legal or relocation advice. Visit a place, talk to people who live there, and check current prices before deciding.
Contact
Questions, corrections or data suggestions: support@bestlifefitme.com. See also our privacy policy.
Ready to find where you fit?
27 quick questions, about three minutes, nothing leaves your browser.