What It Actually Costs to Live in Toronto

There is no single cost of living in Toronto, and any site that gives you one number is guessing. What can be stated exactly is what each component costs and when it was measured. In CMHC's October 2025 survey the average two-bedroom purpose-built rental apartment in the GTA rented for $2,034, while a new tenant signing a fresh lease paid $2,547. Property tax on an average Toronto home is $5,311 a year, and fixed municipal and utility bills on that house come to about $752.07 a month before anyone eats or travels. Below is every figure with its reporting period, and the arithmetic wherever a number is derived rather than published.

Rent: three different numbers, three different meanings

Which rent figure is right depends on which survey you mean, and the three that matter in Toronto measure different things.

CMHC's Rental Market Survey counts purpose-built rental apartments: buildings put up to be rented. Its 2025 Rental Market Report, published on December 11, 2025 from an October 2025 survey, puts the average two-bedroom rent across the Greater Toronto Area at $2,034, up 3.5 per cent, with a vacancy rate of 3.0 per cent, the first time it has reached three per cent since the pandemic.

That average is what sitting tenants pay, long-tenured ones included. The number that matters if you are looking now is the turnover rent: the rent charged on a new lease after a unit changes hands. CMHC puts that at $2,547 for a Toronto two-bedroom in October 2025, down 2.5 per cent on the year, with turnover itself rising from a record-low 6.4 per cent to 8.5 per cent. The cost of being new to a building is the difference: $2,547 − $2,034 = $513 a month.

Rented condominium apartments are a separate survey and a separate market. CMHC puts the GTA's average two-bedroom condominium rent at $2,904 with a vacancy rate of 1.0 per cent. TRREB's 2026 Q1 Rental Market Report, released on May 21, 2026, covers condominium apartments actually leased through its MLS system between January and March 2026 (the closest published proxy for what a new tenant pays today) and breaks down by size: $1,821 for a bachelor, $2,246 for a one-bedroom, $2,939 for a two-bedroom and $3,757 for a three-bedroom. All four were lower than a year earlier.

What rent control does and does not cover

Ontario's rent increase guideline is 2.1 per cent for 2026 and 1.9 per cent for 2027, and is capped at 2.5 per cent. It does not apply to new buildings, additions to existing buildings, or most new basement apartments occupied for the first time for residential purposes after November 15, 2018. The same list also excludes "rental units upon turnover of a tenancy (the landlord and new tenant agree on the rent amount)", and that is the exclusion that explains the turnover figures above: Ontario has vacancy decontrol on every unit, not only post-2018 ones, so a new tenant negotiates a market rent whatever the building's age. What the post-2018 exemption removes is the cap on the sitting tenant's annual increase: in a covered unit that is last year's rent plus 2.1 per cent; in a post-2018 unit it is whatever the market bears.

Owning: the bills that arrive whether or not you use anything

The fixed costs of a Toronto house are set by Council or the Ontario Energy Board and published in advance, so they can be worked out rather than estimated.

Property tax. The 2026 residential rate is 0.767311 per cent, made up of a city rate of 0.605295 per cent, an education rate of 0.153000 per cent set by the Province and a City Building Fund levy of 0.009016 per cent. The City's own worked example runs $692,140 × 0.767311% = $5,311, its own figures rounded. That assessed value is not what your house would sell for: for the 2026 tax year, assessment is still the fully phased-in January 1, 2016 value, because the Province postponed the 2020 assessment update. This year's increase was 2.2 per cent, which the City puts at $91.53 a year, or $7.63 a month, on that same average home.

Water. Toronto meters water and prices it to four decimal places. The 2026 Block 1 rate, which covers everything up to 5,000 cubic metres, is 4.8629 dollars per cubic metre if the bill is paid on or before the due date, and 5.1188 if it is not; the gap between them is an early-payment discount of about five per cent. The City's billing example shows a residential account using 38.50 m3 over the 119 days from January 1 to April 30, 2026: 38.50 × 5.1188 = $197.07, less the 4.9981758 per cent discount of $9.85, = $187.22. Low-volume accounts are billed three times a year, so 3 × $187.22 = $561.66 a year, and $561.66 ÷ 12 = $46.81 a month.

Garbage. Bin fees are annual, by size, and rose 3.75 per cent for 2026: $317.85 for a small bin, $385.86 medium, $524.06 large and $607.86 extra-large. Every single-family home also pays $23.23 a year for oversized and metal item collection whether it uses the service or not. A medium-bin household therefore pays $385.86 + $23.23 = $409.09 a year, or $409.09 ÷ 12 = $34.09 a month.

Natural gas. Toronto sits in Enbridge's EGD rate zone. The Ontario Energy Board's rate order for the quarter from July 1, 2026 sets a typical residential customer's consumption at 2,400 m3 a year and the annual bill at $1,028.62, up $41.24 (4.2 per cent) because last winter ran 10 per cent colder than normal and those costs are being trued up now. Monthly, $1,028.62 ÷ 12 = $85.72. The monthly customer charge alone is $27.69 before any gas is burned, and the federal carbon charge on the bill is currently zero.

Electricity. Toronto Hydro's residential customer charge is $51.18 per 30 days; a suite-metered apartment is billed $41.98. Under summer tiered pricing, in effect May 1 to October 31, 2026, the first 600 kWh a month costs 12.0 cents and everything above it 14.2 cents. Take a household using 750 kWh in a summer month (an illustration, not an average):

Toronto Hydro publishes the rates but not a worked bill, so the order of operations above (rebate off the pre-tax subtotal, HST after) is ours, and the small rate riders are left out; at this usage they net to a credit of about a dollar.

The whole fixed monthly bill, added up

Put those together for an owner-occupied Toronto house on the City's average assessment, heating with gas, with a medium bin and the City's own water example:

No mortgage, no insurance, no condo fee, no food, no transport. This is the floor.

Groceries and transport, measured rather than guessed

Toronto Public Health prices the Ontario Nutritious Food Basket every year. In 2026 the monthly cost for a family of two adults and two children aged 8 and 14 was $1,242. That is a costed basket of healthy food, not a shopping habit: it excludes restaurant meals, convenience foods, diapers, soap and other non-food items.

For comparison, Statistics Canada's Survey of Household Spending (reference year 2023, released May 21, 2025) found the average Canadian household spent $8,659 on food from stores, which is $8,659 ÷ 12 = $721.58 a month, plus $3,351 on restaurants. The two figures are not comparable: the food basket is a fixed four-person family, the survey average is a household of any size. Ontario households spent $81,975 on goods and services in 2023, more than any province but Alberta and British Columbia, and put $29,312 of it into shelter: 35.8 per cent of total consumption, the highest share in the country.

Prices are still moving. In the July 2026 CPI, released August 17, Canada's all-items index rose 3.0 per cent year over year and food from stores 3.1 per cent, the eighteenth straight month grocery inflation outran the headline. Ontario was the only province that did not accelerate, holding at 2.0 per cent on falling natural gas prices and homeowners' replacement cost. Transportation ran at 7.8 per cent nationally, on gasoline.

Transit changed how it is priced on September 1, 2026. A TTC adult fare is $3.30 with PRESTO or a tapped Interac debit or credit card and $3.35 in cash. From September 1, 2026, monthly fare capping replaces the pass: tap the same card all month and after 47 paid trips the rest of your rides are free. The effective monthly ceiling becomes 47 × $3.30 = $155.10, against the $156.00 pass discontinued on August 31: $156.00 − $155.10 = $0.90 cheaper, with nothing paid up front. Adult 12-month passes at $143.00 and post-secondary monthly passes survive. Fair Pass holders pay $2.10 a ride, saving $1.20 a trip. But the pass is means-tested: you must be 20 to 64, live in Toronto, hold a PRESTO card and have income below 75 per cent of the Low-Income Measure After-Tax threshold, and from August 1, 2026 the City reviews and renews eligibility annually.

What these numbers do not include

Every figure above is real; none is the whole answer.

• CMHC's average rent is not an asking rent. It covers occupied purpose-built apartments, sitting tenants included. Use the turnover figure for what a move costs.
• TRREB's numbers are condominium apartments leased through one MLS system. Rented houses, basement apartments and private secondary-market listings are in neither survey.
• Statistics Canada's spending data is 2023 and national or provincial, not Toronto and not 2026. It tells you how households allocate money, not what a Toronto month costs.
• CPI measures change, not level. A 3.0 per cent reading says nothing about what anything costs.
• The property tax example excludes special charges: Business Improvement Area levies, local improvement charges, areaway charges and any City fee unpaid for more than 90 days, all of which land on the tax bill.
• The City's own low-income cost scenarios cover four expenses only: rent, food, child care and transportation. Its open-data record states plainly that phone and internet, household and personal care items, clothing, children's activities and school supplies are not captured, and that the scenarios are refreshed once a year.
• One-time costs sit outside all of it: moving, first and last month's rent, closing costs on a purchase.

The honest range: five Toronto households

These five are the City's 2025 income scenarios: a June 2024 - May 2025 reference period, asking rents as of October 2024 and 2023 tax-year benefits. They are a year older than the $1,242 food basket above, so read them as the shape of the gap rather than today's dollars.

A single cost-of-living figure hides the thing that matters: how far the same prices sit from different incomes. The City publishes exactly that, as monthly shortfalls after rent, food, transportation and, where relevant, child care:

• A family of four on Ontario Works paying current asking rent is short $3,351 a month.
• A pregnant person on ODSP paying asking rent is short $953.
• A single person earning minimum wage paying asking rent is short $697.
• An older person on OAS, GIS and GAINS paying asking rent is short $235.
• A single person on Ontario Works in a subsidised apartment is still short $87.

Ontario's general minimum wage is $17.60 an hour until September 30, 2026, rising to $17.95 on October 1. Toronto's living wage, as calculated by the Ontario Living Wage Network and cited by the City, is $27.20. CMHC's own affordability measure closes the loop: in 2025 the average GTA earner needed 42 per cent of after-tax income to rent a vacant one-bedroom, and two-thirds of a minimum-wage earner's disposable income went to a vacant studio.

How to check any of this yourself

Every number here comes from a page you can open, and each has its own clock. City tax and water rates change with each budget. Electricity prices are reset every November 1, with tiers and time-of-use windows switching on May 1 and November 1; gas supply rates change quarterly. CMHC surveys rents every October and publishes in December, with the bedroom-by-bedroom breakdown in its data tables; TRREB reports quarterly. If a figure carries no date, it is not a figure.