Rating the Best Places to Retire Lists
There’s an avalanche of lists, each with its own winners and criteria — here’s how to make sense of them
If you're thinking about relocating in retirement, you might be tempted to check out one of the many Best Places to Retire in America lists. If so, buckle up.

There are now at least 16 such lists, from names you know, like U.S. News and Forbes, to ones you might not, like Niche and Seniorly, and personal finance sites like Bankrate, The Motley Fool and WalletHub. A new list seems to come out monthly, with top spots that may surprise or puzzle you.
"I'm sure we all look at each other's lists and say, 'How did they put that place on it?'" said William Barrett, architect of Forbes' Best Places to Retire lists.
Some lists compare cities; others look at states. In the latest lists, No. 1 cities range from Sun City, Florida, to Lincoln, Nebraska, to Washington, D.C., and states as different as Delaware, Florida and Alaska. (As the creator of Money's Best Places to Live in America list in the 1980s, I'll accept a little blame for the current listomania.)
Why Best-Retirement Lists Proliferate
Choosing where to live in retirement is one of the biggest and costliest decisions for that next chapter and moving for retirement is growing more popular.
A 2024 survey from the HireAHelper moving company found a 44% increase in Americans moving to retire in 2023 vs. 2022 and that 25% of those moving for retirement crossed state lines. "Florida was the top destination for retirees moving out of state," said Miranda Marquit, a HireAHelper spokesperson.
"Arming yourself with a Best Places to Retire ranking can help empower you to make a more informed decision."
After scrutinizing the Best Places to Retire lists and talking to people who construct a few of them, two things are clear: The first is that each list uses its own criteria — sometimes weird criteria — which might not match your priorities. The second is that even the "best" places aren't best for everything. For instance, Naples, Florida, ranked No. 1 by U.S. News but scored only 3.6 out of 10 for health care.
"Arming yourself with a Best Places to Retire ranking can help empower you to make a more informed decision," said Alex Gailey, the lead data reporter for BankRate's Best States to Retire feature. "And I think it's ultimately a very personal decision."
Susannah Snider, managing editor, Money at U.S. News, said, "Where you retire is going to be determined not just by what you might see on a rankings list, but maybe by where your family is, what you envision your retirement looking like and what you want to prioritize with your free time."
How Retirement Destinations Are Judged
Climate change and natural disaster risks have been taking a more prominent role in many Best Places to Retire lists. The recent Los Angeles fires and the hurricanes and floods in Asheville, North Carolina, and parts of Florida demonstrate why. HireAHelper's retiree migration survey found that moves prompted by natural disasters rose by 45% last year.
An analysis of the offerings from 10 outlets follows, but first four "don'ts" about using Best Places to Retire lists:
Don't get overly excited about a winning place until you study the methodology that went into its ranking. Ask yourself: "Did they just pull this list out of thin air?" said Marquit. If a Best Places rater doesn't disclose how the list was compiled, ignore the results.
Don't move to a new area for retirement without first spending time living there for at least a few weeks. "There's nothing that can replicate the experience of physically being in a city," said Snider. "Even within a city, there are all sorts of neighborhoods with different vibes, access to transportation, dining, health care — all of it."
Don't overrate the distinction between one place's rank and another on a list's Top 10. "The differences between the Top 10 usually aren't that large," said Jack Caporal, research director at The Motley Fool, which ranks the best states for retirement.
Don't forget that Best States to Retire lists include cities and towns that can be markedly different in many ways. This is especially true for the crime rate. "New York City crime data is going to look really different than if you live in upstate New York," said Gailey. "Once you have a sense of what state crime data looks like, it may empower you to take a more granular look at what crime looks like in a specific city or town you're interested in."
Next Avenue's List of Lists
On to the lists:
U.S. News: "2025 Best Places to Retire"
Its Top 5: Naples, Florida; Virginia Beach, Virginia.; New York City; Sarasota, Florida; Boise, Idaho, and Raleigh, North Carolina.
Methodology: U.S. News analyzes data for the 150 biggest U.S. cities and weights the results in six categories based on priorities expressed in its survey of 3,500 Americans aged 45 and older.
The 2025 weightings: happiness (27%; this index includes crime rates, air quality, well-being and natural hazards risk), affordability (25%), health care quality (15%), taxes (13%), desirability (12%; including weather and amenities of cities the survey respondents said they'd most like to live in) and job market (8%).
You can personalize U.S. News' data to reflect your priorities about population size, housing costs and commute time to get your own best places ranking.
Fun Fact: Naples, a western Florida beach city of roughly 122,000 with a median home price of $577,795 and median age of 53, is also U.S. News' 2024-2025 Best Place to Live in America.
Its Top 5: Forbes published two Best Places to Retire lists last year and the 25 winners in each are not ranked. They're listed alphabetically — from Athens, Georgia, to Yuma, Arizona, on the Best Places to Retire list and from Annapolis, Maryland, to Washington, D.C., on the Best Places to Enjoy Your Retirement list.

"Our view is anybody on our list is a tie for first place," said Barrett.
Methodology: Both lists whittle down 800 places with populations over 10,000; Forbes doesn't give weightings to its data.
The Forbes Best Places to Retire list focuses on "high quality retirement living at an affordable price" and more than one-third of them are in college towns. The Best Places to Enjoy Your Retirement list also factors in activities (including things like walkability and bikeability) and doesn't penalize expensive cities.
"What's important to one person may not be important to the next."
Both lists measure doctors per capita, air quality, crime rates, taxes, climate change and natural hazard risk. "Weather is not a big factor for us," said Barrett.
Which Forbes list should you use? "I think that depends on where the person's head is," said Barrett. "What's important to one person may not be important to the next."
Fun Fact: Two places are in both Forbes lists — Iowa City, Iowa, and Pittsfield, Massachusetts.
BankRate: "Best and Worst States to Retire in 2024"
Its Top 5: Delaware, West Virginia, Georgia, South Carolina and Missouri. "The Top 5 places are financially friendlier for retirees," said Gailey.
Why not retiree-haven Florida? "Home prices have skyrocketed across Florida," Gailey noted. "There have been more natural disasters and homeowners insurance has been on the rise."
"I think Florida would've been a no-brainer 10 or 15 years ago when it was a much more affordable place to live," she added.
Methodology: BankRate analyzes dozens of data points and then ranks all 50 states based on their scores in five broad categories: affordability (40% weighting), overall well-being (25%; this category includes racial and ethnic diversity), cost and quality of health care (20%), weather (10%) and crime (5%). BankRate shows how every state did in each category and why.
BankRate does not look at the job market in each state. "That's something I want to consider in the future," Gailey said.
Fun Fact: Delaware ranks No. 2 out of 50 states for well-being, while West Virginia scores best for affordability (but worst for cost and quality of health care).
Motley Fool: "The Best and Worst States to Retire to in 2025"
Its Top 5: Florida, Nebraska, Maryland, Minnesota and Wisconsin.
Methodology: The Motley Fool asks 1,500 people aged 55 and older what they prioritize when considering a place to retire and then ranks the states on respondents' top factors in seven categories. Quality of life, housing cost, crime and health care quality and costs received higher weightings than taxes, overall cost of living and weather.
The Motley Fool survey, however, was conducted in 2021, so the views of people aged 55 and older may have changed since then. "If we were to run it again, we'd probably want to ask a little bit more about things like climate change and climate resilience," Caporal said.
Fun Fact: None of the overall Top 5 states are also among Top 5 in more than one of The Motley Fool's subcategories.
Realtor.com: "America's Top 10 Retirement Towns for 2024"
Its Top 5: Sun City Center, Florida (a community near Tampa for people aged 55 and older); Green Valley, Arizona (a retirement community south of Tucson); King City, Oregon (a community near Portland for people aged 55 and older); The Villages, Florida (a planned retirement community) and Manchester, New Jersey (home to three large retirement communities).
Methodology: As the winners of the National Association of Realtors' list suggest, this is a ranking of places where older residents tend to live.
Realtor.com researchers first gather median list prices for homes in all U.S. cities and the median age for residents. In the Top 5, the median age ranges from 65 in Manchester to 74 in Green Valley.
"Retirees like to . . . know that they're going somewhere where they will have people of a similar age who they can spend time with."
"We took the median age data to make sure that we weren't going to be recommending places that had a median age of 24 to people who were in their late 60s and 70s," said Charlie Lankston, executive editor of Realtor.com. "Retirees like to . . . know that they're going somewhere where they will have people of a similar age who they can spend time with."
The analysts also give higher scores for places with more Realtor.com listings that include keywords indicating "retiree-friendly" communities and look for locales near, but not in, urban centers. "Living in a densely packed city is not something retirees want, typically speaking," said Lankston.
The Realtor.com ranking does not look at typical Best Places factors such as crime, weather or taxes. Nor does it compare places based on amenities and leisure activities. Measuring those factors, Lankston said, is "less data-based and more using our common sense."
Fun Fact: The lowest median home list price in the Top 5 is in Manchester, New Jersey (pop. 46,000). It's $309,900.
WalletHub: "Best and Worst States to Retire" and "Best and Worst Places to Retire"
Its Top 5: The Top 5 states are Florida, Minnesota, Colorado, Wyoming and South Dakota. Four of the Top 5 places are in Florida: Orlando (No. 1), Miami (No. 2), Tampa (No. 4) and Fort Lauderdale (No. 5). Minneapolis is No. 3.
Methodology: Like Forbes, WalletHub published two best lists for retirement last year.
The WalletHub Best and Worst States list compares 46 indicators and lumps them in three categories: affordability (including tax-friendliness), quality of life (including the crime rate, air and water quality, weather, arts and culture, the percentage of the population aged 65 and older, "elder-friendly labor market" and access to public transportation and adult volunteer activities) and health care (which includes local life expectancy).
The Best and Worst Places list reviews 182 cities (including the 150 most populated) with the same metrics and categories as WalletHub's other list and adds an activities category. Activities include the per capita rate of golf courses, museums, theaters, music venues and recreation and senior centers.
Climate change and natural hazard risks are not part of WalletHub's data.
Fun Fact: Both WalletHub lists included data on bingo halls per capita.
Other Best Places to Retire Lists
Some Best Places to Retire lists are a little funkier in the way they're constructed.
Niche.com, known for ranking schools and colleges, published three Best Places to Retire lists in 2024: one for cities, one for places (non-rural towns of 1,000 or more) and one for counties. All its Top 5 places and counties are in Florida, as are three of its Top 5 cities (the other two: Scottsdale, Arizona, and Metairie, Louisiana.).
Seniorly.com, a senior living online marketplace, published its Best and Worst States to Retire in 2025, with criteria that tends to favor places with more older adults who are poor, sick or infirm. Its data points include average monthly Social Security Supplemental Security payments (for people with little or no income or resources), the percentage of Medicare beneficiaries with three or more chronic conditions and Medicaid spending on long-term care. Seniorly's Top 5: Washington, D.C., Montana, Wyoming, Alaska and Pennsylvania.
Acts Retirement Living, a not-for-profit continuing care retirement community operator, has a Best Places to Retire in 2024 list of nine states. Acts doesn't publish its methodology but does recommend readers check out the company's 28 campuses in those states. Top 5: Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Alabama.
Consumeraffairs.com, largely a product-rating service, released a Best and Worst Cities for Retirement in 2024 list skewing toward places with a low cost of living. It's skimpy on methodology details. Top 5: Lincoln, Nebraska; St. Louis; Champaign, Illinois; Des Moines, Iowa: and El Paso, Texas.
