Moving to & from San Francisco, CA

Moving Cost Snapshot for San Francisco, CA

San Francisco is a 873,965-person city in West, and it currently has 50 priced moving routes on PlainMove — 25 outbound corridors leaving San Francisco and 25 inbound corridors heading to it. Using Bureau of Labor Statistics OES 2023 wage data for laborers and material movers (SOC code 53-7061), combined with haversine great-circle distances between city centroids, the average estimated 2-bedroom move originating from San Francisco works out to $2,287. Outbound routes in our index cover an average of 1,065 miles, while inbound routes average 1,065 miles. These figures are modeled estimates — always collect at least three binding quotes from FMCSA-licensed carriers before committing.

The local labor market matters as much as distance. In San Francisco, the modeled base mover hourly rate derived from BLS wage data is $21/hour, and the regional cost-of-living adjustment applied to every route estimate is 120% relative to the national average. That above-average index pushes local moves and the loading/unloading portion of interstate moves upward by roughly the same percentage on labor hours. Because crew sizes scale with home size (2 movers for studios, 3 for a 2-bedroom, 4 for a 4+ bedroom) and because total hours include both driving time and loading/unloading, two routes of identical distance can diverge by hundreds of dollars depending on which endpoint has the higher CPI.

The spread between the cheapest and priciest outbound corridors from San Francisco illustrates this. The lowest modeled 2-bedroom route in our data is San Francisco → San Jose, CA at roughly $597 over 42 miles, while the highest is San Francisco → Chicago, IL at about $3,555 across 1,855 miles. All estimates assume a binding move with a 3-worker crew for a 2-bedroom home, include BLS-based labor plus a $0.50/mile fuel and vehicle component, and do not include optional services such as packing labor, crating, storage-in-transit, shuttle fees, or long-carry surcharges. For carrier-level safety, complaint history, and insurance data, cross-check any mover you consider on the FMCSA SAFER registry before signing.