US Salary & Cost of Living API (Free Tier)

The Kultranz API turns the data engine behind this site into clean JSON endpoints. Every number traces back to a real government source - no estimates, no scraping, no guesswork. It’s the same data that powers the calculators you’ve been using here, exposed for developers.

Get a free API key on RapidAPI → - 100 requests/day, no credit card.

What a call returns

A live response from GET /cost-of-living - two metros, their BEA price parities, and the salary you would need in the second city to hold purchasing power constant:

{
  "data": {
    "from": {
      "city": "Austin, TX",
      "rpp": 98.1
    },
    "to": {
      "city": "San Francisco, CA",
      "rpp": 115.6
    },
    "equivalent_salary": 117838.94,
    "gap_pct": 17.84
  },
  "meta": {
    "source": "BLS OEWS + BEA RPP + U.S. Census ACS + IRS (via kultranz.com)",
    "vintage": "2026",
    "year": 2026
  }
}

Every response carries the same meta envelope naming the source agencies and the data vintage, so a downstream product can display provenance without hard-coding it.

What you get

Base URL

https://api.kultranz.com

All requests must go through RapidAPI, which injects the X-RapidAPI-Host and X-RapidAPI-Key headers on every call. Grab a free key on RapidAPI to start testing - the free tier gives 100 requests/day, no credit card.

Examples

Substitute YOUR_RAPIDAPI_KEY with your own key from RapidAPI.

Take-home pay

curl "https://kultranz.p.rapidapi.com/paycheck?salary=120000&state=CA&filingStatus=single" \
  -H "X-RapidAPI-Key: YOUR_RAPIDAPI_KEY" \
  -H "X-RapidAPI-Host: kultranz.p.rapidapi.com"

Cost of living

curl "https://kultranz.p.rapidapi.com/cost-of-living?fromCity=Austin,%20TX&toCity=San%20Francisco,%20CA&salary=100000" \
  -H "X-RapidAPI-Key: YOUR_RAPIDAPI_KEY" \
  -H "X-RapidAPI-Host: kultranz.p.rapidapi.com"

Salary data

curl "https://kultranz.p.rapidapi.com/salaries?job=nurse&city=Chicago" \
  -H "X-RapidAPI-Key: YOUR_RAPIDAPI_KEY" \
  -H "X-RapidAPI-Host: kultranz.p.rapidapi.com"

Response format

Every response uses a uniform envelope:

{
  "data": { },
  "meta": {
    "source": "BLS OEWS + BEA RPP + U.S. Census ACS + IRS (via kultranz.com)",
    "vintage": "2026",
    "year": 2026
  }
}

Errors return { "error": { "code": "...", "message": "..." } } with the appropriate HTTP status.

Pricing

Subscribe on RapidAPI → Billing, API keys, and rate-limiting are managed by RapidAPI - we never see your payment details.

Commercial & bulk licensing

Building a product on this data? Beyond the metered API, we license the full dataset directly for commercial use - no per-call limits, bulk exports, white-label rights, and a data-refresh SLA. It’s built for teams that need sourced, methodology-transparent US salary, cost-of-living, and take-home-pay data without maintaining the government-data pipeline themselves.

Common uses

• Relocation & moving services - cost-of-living comparisons and “equivalent salary” for clients.
• HR & compensation tools - BLS wage percentiles by job x metro for benchmarking.
• Real-estate & rental platforms - affordability-by-income and price-to-salary ratios.
• Fintech, budgeting apps & job boards - take-home pay and salary context, embedded in your UX.

Exactly what you get, per row

The salary x metro dataset carries 16 fields per record, all traceable to a named federal release:

Beyond the flat file, the licensed API adds the computed layer - take-home pay against 2026 federal brackets, FICA thresholds and all 50 state regimes, plus RPP salary equivalence between any two metros. That calculation engine, not the raw government data, is what takes months to build and maintain:

{
  "gross": 120000,
  "pretax": 10000,
  "taxable_income": 93900,
  "federal_tax": 15370,
  "social_security": 7440,
  "medicare": 1740,
  "state_tax": 6153.42,
  "total_tax": 30703.42,
  "net": 79296.58,
  "effective_rate": 25.59
}

Refresh cadence

Current vintage: 2026. Method, formulas and exact release versions are public on the methodology page - worth reading before you commit, because it is the part most vendors will not show you.

What licensing includes

• Bulk JSON/CSV exports of the full salary x metro, cost-of-living, and tax datasets.
• Commercial-use rights and optional white-labeling (your brand, no attribution).
• Annual refresh as BLS / BEA / Census / IRS publish new vintages.
• Custom endpoints or fields on request.

Pricing is a flat monthly license scaled to your usage and rights - typically far simpler than per-call metering for a production product. Email contact@kultranz.com with your use case for a quote and a free evaluation dataset.

Data sources & vintage

• Wages: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) - 20 occupations x 50 metros, with 10th/25th/median/75th/90th percentiles.
• Cost of living: BEA Regional Price Parities (RPP), US average = 100.
• Housing & income: U.S. Census American Community Survey (ACS) 5-year estimates.
• Tax brackets: IRS 2026 - federal standard deduction, brackets, FICA Social Security wage base ($184,500), Medicare + additional Medicare.

Full details on our methodology page.

Try it

The same calculators on this site call these endpoints under the hood. Run the paycheck calculator, the cost-of-living tool, or browse salaries by job to see the data in action - then grab a RapidAPI key when you’re ready to build with it.