How much money do you need to move to a Canadian city?

What these pages are designed to answer

Searches such as “how much money do I need to move to Toronto,” “newcomer budget Calgary,” or “how much should I save before moving to Montreal” sound simple but depend on household circumstances. A fixed national number is usually not useful. These calculators instead start with a city-specific housing benchmark and let the reader change the assumptions that matter most.

How the city baselines are built

The underlying dataset uses CMHC’s 2025 average two-bedroom purpose-built rent for each market and a current regular adult monthly transit pass or fare cap from the local transit authority. This produces a transparent housing-and-transit benchmark used consistently across all 19 markets.

What the calculators add

Each moving-budget page adds editable fields for months of housing runway, non-housing monthly costs, transportation, one-time setup costs and emergency cash. The default values are examples rather than recommendations. Someone with employment and temporary housing secured can use a very different scenario from someone arriving without income or accommodation.

Use the city pages with the broader tools

Compare all 19 cities side by side →
Read the 2026 housing-and-transit methodology →
Build a full first-year newcomer budget →
Check supported provincial rental-deposit rules →

These are general planning tools, not formal immigration proof-of-funds calculations or individualized financial advice.