City comparison · Updated Oct 7, 2026

The Cheapest and Most Expensive Cities for Concerts

Median and lowest starting prices for every city with enough upcoming concerts to compare.

Cities are ranked by the median current starting price across their upcoming concerts, so one unusually cheap or expensive ticket cannot put a city at the top or the bottom. Only cities with at least 25 eligible priced upcoming concerts are compared. This is a snapshot of today’s listings, not a price trend.

Cities with the 10 lowest and highest median starting prices

Ranked by median current starting price. Cities must have at least 25 eligible priced upcoming concerts. Bars start at $0; each list is scaled to its own largest median.

The full rankings

The first 25 cities from each end of the ranking. The median decides the order; the lowest and average starting prices are shown for context. Cities with the same median are listed by their number of concerts, larger sample first.

Cheapest cities

Most expensive cities

Why cities differ

A city’s median is the median of what its concerts start at, so it describes the local supply as much as the local demand. Cities with many small club shows tend to sit at the bottom of the table; cities whose calendar is built around arenas and residencies tend to sit at the top. Read the number as “what an ordinary concert in this city starts at”, not as a cost-of-living index.

Methodology

• Source: the TicketNetwork affiliate product feed — one resale marketplace — imported by ConcertGrid on a schedule; the analysis is ConcertGrid’s own.
• Snapshot: each concert counts at its latest known starting price. This is a cross-section of the current market, recomputed on every feed import, not a historical trend; it does not use the price history. Last updated Oct 7, 2026.
• Starting price: the lowest listed ticket for a concert, in US dollars, before fees and taxes.
• Ranking metric: the median starting price — the median of the current starting prices across a city’s eligible upcoming concerts: half of them start lower, half higher. Ties are broken by the number of concerts, larger first, then alphabetically.
• Lowest starting price: the single lowest current starting price among a city’s eligible concerts. Average starting price: their arithmetic mean. Both are context only and never decide a city’s place.
• Eligibility: upcoming concerts with a starting price above $0, at a venue in a city that has its own ConcertGrid page. Only the feed’s music categories are imported; comedy and other non-music shows are not part of the catalogue.
• Price-quality filtering: to reduce distortion from residual high-end inventory, the comparison leaves out current starting prices that match recurring marketplace ceiling patterns — prices that serve as the top listing on many unrelated concerts across many venues and cities. The patterns are found in the data on every import, not chosen by hand; 203 upcoming concerts currently match. The original source prices remain stored unchanged and are still shown on each concert’s page.
• Minimum sample: a city is ranked only with at least 25 eligible priced upcoming concerts, counted after price-quality filtering; below that, one arena tour or one residency would decide its median. 316 cities qualify, with 38,290 concerts between them.
• Scope: every country in the feed. 290 of the 316 cities are in the United States; the other 26 are in 10 other countries, priced in US dollars like the rest.
• Limitations: resale marketplace prices, not face value. A city just over the minimum can still be shaped by a single venue’s calendar — the number of concerts is shown beside every city for that reason.

For journalists

The figures on this page may be reproduced with attribution to ConcertGrid and a link. The rankings are rebuilt on every feed import, so cite the date you read them. For how the starting prices of the same concerts move over time, see the price trends study.