The Price of a Night Out

In some U.S. cities, a night out costs over twice as much as a night in, and in some locations, up to three times as much! A study from Rove Lab gathered data and compared doing the same date-night activity at home versus out across the 50 most populous U.S. cities.

Rove Lab compared the cost of two fixed dates. A night out included dinner for two at a restaurant, four beers at a pub, two five-mile taxi rides, and two movie tickets. A night in included ingredients for a home-cooked steak dinner, four store-bought beers, and a $5.99 stream rental. They used local prices from LivingCost.org and calculated a “premium for going out” in each city, which represents how much more a night out costs than a night in.

Click below to zoom.

Oakland, California tops the list as the most expensive location for a date night. Dinner, drinks, a movie, and a taxi will cost $226.84 there compared to the $67.96 you’d spend on a night in. That’s a 234% premium for going out. Long Beach and Los Angeles were followed behind with premiums over 220%. Virginia Beach and Atlanta round out the top 5, and Jacksonville, Dallas, El Paso, Boston, and Las Vegas complete the top 10.

Some of the results are a little surprising. You might expect New York City to breach the top ten, and it does have the second-most expensive night out at $220.60, but it ranks only 13th because staying in is expensive there as well, so it has a lower premium. San Francisco and San Jose dropped in ranking for the same reason. At the other end of the list, Fort Worth offers the most affordable night out at a 112% premium.

Another ranking in the study might be even more revealing. Research shows U.S. couples have about 18 dates per year, so Rove Lab calculated what share of each city’s median household income goes to these dates. Detroit residents take the hardest hit. 18 nights out cost about $2,684, or 6.84% of a median income, compared with 2.77% for 18 nights in. Miami, Philadelphia, and New York City also rank highly on this metric.

San Jose is at the opposite end of the spectrum. It has one of the most expensive nights out, but high median incomes mean 18 dates take up only 2.61% of a typical household’s earnings. Local prices and incomes vary dramatically, so a city that looks expensive by one metric can look affordable based on another.

The team’s article included two full tables of data. The first lists all 50 cities with item-by-item prices, totals, the dollar difference, and the premium percentage. The second table shows each city’s median income compared to nights out vs. nights in. A summary of findings includes tips for making the most of an affordable night at home. This data might make couples think twice about how they spend their date nights and whether or not they want to adjust their budgets.