$225,000 in Los Angeles ≈ CA$285,530 in Vancouver
Software engineer pay: Los Angeles vs Vancouver
Equivalence is solved so household net cash matches across both cities, with taxes, housing, childcare, healthcare, food, and travel all included.
What changes: Los Angeles → Vancouver
- ▴ 18 more paid parental-leave weeks (28 vs 10)
- ▴ Universal healthcare in Vancouver (no premium / minimal OOP)
The headline math
| Los Angeles household gross | $225,000 |
| Los Angeles taxes (29.0%) | −$65,353 |
| Los Angeles living costs | −$58,943 |
| Los Angeles net cash | $100,704 |
| ≈ | |
| Vancouver household gross needed | CA$285,530($201,078) |
| Vancouver taxes (30.6%) | −CA$87,458 |
| Vancouver living costs | −CA$55,072 |
| Vancouver net cash | CA$143,000 |
Computed at the city-median tech-worker salary, Los Angeles (a senior software engineer) · effective tax rates: 29.0% vs 30.6%
These numbers use one scenario's assumptions. Plug in your own salary, family size, and lifestyle.
Open the interactive calculator to run your own →No signup. Your salary stays in your browser — we never see it.
Moving from Los Angeles to Vancouver for a software engineer
$225,000 in Los Angeles requires CA$285,530 in Vancouver to match on household net cash. The gap is real, but it is smaller than the nominal numbers suggest once taxes run their course. Progressive brackets compress the after-tax difference faster than a compensation benchmarking site would lead you to believe, because those sites show gross and stop there.
The effective tax rate goes from 29.0% in Los Angeles to 30.6% in Vancouver. That 1.6-point jump is what the equivalence solver is working against when it finds the matching gross salary.
Unvested equity changes this calculation entirely. RSU value is not modeled in the defaults above, but if you are mid-cycle at your current employer, leaving means forfeiting grants you have already been working toward, and that difference can be larger than the annual take-home delta that drove the comparison in the first place. The Advanced section's "RSU / stock annual value" field is where you plug that number in. Equity-heavy comp favors lower-tax cities at vesting; the after-tax discount gets larger the bigger the grant.
On an employer plan the healthy years feel nearly free; it's the bad year that finds the gap. Vancouver is universal, so most of that tail risk goes away. Los Angeles still runs $3,240 a year in premiums and out-of-pocket costs, and none of it shows up on an offer letter.
No kids, employer healthcare, and a single high-bracket income: this is the configuration that makes Los Angeles look best in a head-to-head comparison. It is also the configuration most likely to change. The family scenario page (linked below) models what shifts once childcare and a second earner enter the picture.
Common questions
How much do you need to earn in Vancouver to match a $225,000 salary in Los Angeles?
About CA$285,530. cityparity solves for the Vancouver gross salary whose net cash (after taxes, housing, childcare, healthcare, and the rest) equals what you keep in Los Angeles. It's an equivalence, not a raw conversion.
Is healthcare free in Vancouver?
Vancouver has universal healthcare, so there are no US-style premiums or large deductibles. cityparity counts that as real money you don't spend, which is part of why the equivalent salary is lower than the raw number suggests.
How much vacation and parental leave do you get in Vancouver?
Vancouver has about 26 paid days off a year (vacation plus public holidays) and 50 weeks of parental leave. cityparity surfaces these as deltas rather than dollars, because time off is part of the real comparison.
Run your own numbers in the interactive calculator →