Moving Cost Statistics (2026): How Much Does It Cost to Move?

The cost of a move comes down to three things: how much you own, how far it goes, and how much of the work you pay someone else to do. No federal agency tracks the price of household moves, so the dollar figures on this page come from company data, labelled as such: HireAHelper, a marketplace for moving labor that publishes cost tables built from completed jobs, and Move.org, which publishes median quotes it collected.

In HireAHelper's 2026 data, a full-service local move of a three-bedroom apartment or two-bedroom house had a median price of about $1,480. The same home moved 1,200 miles cost about $6,260 with full-service movers, about $3,250 with a moving container and hired loaders, and about $2,130 with a rented truck and hired loaders. Its stated range runs from a couple of hundred dollars for a small local move to well over $10,000 for a large cross-country one.

Local moves (HireAHelper defines them as under 50 miles) are usually billed by the hour, so the size of the home drives the price. Full service ranged from $879 for a one-bedroom or small two-bedroom apartment to $2,300 for a five-bedroom house in the 2026 data.

Doing part of the work yourself cuts the bill by more than half on most home sizes. A rented truck plus hired loading and unloading help ranged from about $403 to $774, and a moving container with loaders from about $766 to $1,405. HireAHelper puts a do-it-yourself local truck rental alone at $400 to $780.

Over 1,200 miles the gap between options widens. Full-service movers charged from about $5,078 for a small apartment to $7,975 for a five-bedroom house, while a rented truck with hired loaders ran from about $1,397 to $3,454 (see the chart and table below).

For a three-bedroom apartment or two-bedroom house the saving from driving the truck yourself was more than $4,000 on a 1,200-mile move. A container sits between the two, at about $3,251 for the same home, because the company drives the container and you or hired helpers do the loading.

Move.org, a moving information site, publishes median quotes it gathered in 2024 for a three-bedroom home. They rise steadily with distance: $3,036 under 400 miles, $6,320 for 400 to 800 miles, $9,340 for 800 to 1,200 miles and $18,400 beyond 2,000 miles. Across all home sizes and distances, it puts full-service professional moves at roughly $1,200 to $29,000 (Move.org).

These quotes run higher than HireAHelper's figures for a similar home and distance. The two datasets measure different things: Move.org collected quotes from movers, while HireAHelper reports prices on jobs booked through its platform. Both are company data, and neither is a national survey of what households paid.

HireAHelper also prices specific city pairs for a 1,500 square foot home. Short hops such as Dallas to Fort Worth or Baltimore to Washington, D.C., cost about $1,490 with full-service movers. Mid-range routes such as Atlanta to Miami or Phoenix to Denver cost about $4,070 to $4,720.

Coast-to-coast moves cost the most. Full service from New York City to Los Angeles came to about $10,474 and from Boston to Seattle about $11,348, against about $3,894 and $4,228 for the same routes with a rented truck and hired loaders.

Movers on HireAHelper's platform charged $80 to $120 an hour for a two-person labor-only crew in 2026 and $120 to $160 for a two-person local full-service crew. Each additional mover adds about $40 an hour: a four-person full-service crew ran $200 to $240 an hour (HireAHelper).

Hired labor is a modest part of a do-it-yourself move. HireAHelper lists the labor add-on at about $296 for a one-bedroom apartment and about $599 for a five-bedroom house, on top of the truck or container.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks moving prices through the CPI item for moving, storage and freight expense. The index stood at 192.0 in September 2026 (December 1997 = 100), meaning these services cost about 92% more than in late 1997.

Most of the recent change came in two swings. The index rose from 172.6 in the first half of 2020 to 205.0 in the second half of 2022, then eased. In the year to September 2026 it fell 7.1%, while the all-items CPI rose 3.7% (BLS CPI, Table 2). Moving makes up a small part of the CPI basket, with a relative importance of 0.075%.

Because most households do not move in a given year, average annual spending on moving is small. The 2025 Consumer Expenditure Survey put spending on moving, storage and freight at $68.86 per consumer unit, about 0.1% of total spending, and about 2% of households reported this kind of spending in a given quarter (BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey, 2025).

For the households that do move, the cost is concentrated in a single bill, which is why the per-move figures above run into the thousands. Rent deposits and the first month's rent, which often fall due at the same time, are covered on the renter statistics page.

In 2023, 25.6 million people aged one and over lived somewhere different from a year earlier, 7.8% of the population, according to the Census Bureau's historical geographic mobility tables. Every other year in the series, which starts in 1948, was higher. The 2023 tables are the latest the Bureau has published from this survey.

The decline has been long. About one in five Americans moved each year in the 1950s and 1960s, and the rate was still 16.1% in 2000, when 43.4 million people moved. It fell to 12.5% in 2010, 9.8% in 2019 and 8.4% in 2021, with a small rise to 8.7% in 2022 before the 2023 low.

Most moves are short. Of the 25.6 million movers in 2023, 54.1% stayed in the same county, 23.4% moved to another county in the same state and 17.5% moved to a different state. About 5% came from abroad (Census Table A-1).

In absolute terms 4.5 million people moved between states in 2023, 1.4% of the population. Long moves have held up better than local ones: the share of movers who changed states was 17.5% in 2023, up from 13.3% in 2013, while the number of people moving within their county fell from 23.2 million to 13.9 million.

Housing is the most common reason. In 2023, 41.3% of movers gave a housing-related reason, led by wanting a newer, better or larger home (13.8%) and wanting cheaper housing (9.4%). Family reasons accounted for 22.7% and job reasons for 21.0%, including 12.5% who moved for a new job or job transfer (Census Table A-5).

Over the decade the mix shifted toward work and cost. The share moving for a new job or transfer rose from 9.0% in 2013 to 12.5% in 2023, and the share seeking cheaper housing from 8.3% to 9.4%. Foreclosure or eviction was given by 0.7% of movers in 2023, and retirement by 1.3%.

Renters move far more often. In 2023 about 16.2% of people living in rented homes had moved in the past year, against about 4.1% of people in owner-occupied homes, by calculation from Census Table A-4. Renters were about 64% of all movers even though they were about 31% of the population.

That makes moving costs a recurring expense for many renting households and an occasional one for most owners. Owners who sell also face agent commissions and seller costs, covered on the cost to sell a house page, and buyers face closing costs. Renting trends are on the renter statistics page.

United Van Lines, a moving company, tracks the direction of the household moves its network handles. In its 2025 National Movers Study, Oregon had the highest share of inbound moves (65%), followed by West Virginia (62%) and South Carolina (61%). New Jersey had the highest outbound share (62%), followed by New York and California (58% each).

Among its customers, 29% said they moved to be closer to family, 26% for a new job or company transfer and 14% for retirement. These are company figures covering only moves booked through its network. Regional differences in living costs are covered on the cost of living statistics page.

Movers that carry household goods across state lines are regulated by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration under 49 CFR Part 375. A mover must give a written estimate on every shipment. On a non-binding estimate, the most it can require at delivery is 110% of the estimate; anything above that is billed no sooner than 30 days after delivery.

Basic released value protection pays no more than 60 cents per pound, per article, so a 10-pound item worth $1,000 is covered for $6. Full value protection applies unless the shipper waives it in writing. Shippers have 9 months from delivery to file a claim, and the mover has 30 days to acknowledge it and 120 days to resolve it. For claims of $10,000 or less, the mover must agree to arbitration if the shipper asks.

For most people, no. The 2017 tax law suspended the moving expense deduction for civilians starting in 2018, and it did not come back in 2026. The IRS limits it to members of the Armed Forces on active duty who move under a military order for a permanent change of station, and, for moves in 2026 or later, employees and new appointees of the intelligence community (IRS Topic 455). Eligible costs include moving household goods, storage, and travel and lodging on the way, but not meals.

Employer help is taxed too. IRS Publication 15-B (2026) says Public Law 119-21 "permanently eliminates the exclusion for qualified moving expense reimbursements" from income, so relocation payments are taxable wages for employees outside the military and intelligence community exceptions (IRS Publication 15-B). Military members who drive use the IRS mileage rate for moves: 20.5 cents a mile in the first half of 2026 and 23.5 cents in the second.

A move is one of the larger irregular bills a household pays: about $1,480 for a typical local full-service move and several thousand dollars for a long-distance one, often in the same month as a deposit or closing costs. The figures above show where most of the cost sits, in full-service labor and distance.

For people who keep savings for a move in a brokerage account, Walnut, an AI investing app, can read a connected account to show how that money is doing. The figures on this page describe what moves cost; they are not a recommendation.