The RetireHere Score is a composite rating, displayed on a 0–100 scale, summarizing community sentiment about a city across seven dimensions: Cost of Living, Healthcare Access, Cultural & Social Scene, Weather Experience, Safety Experience, Downtown Charm & Walkability, and Senior Amenities. It is built from individual reviewer ratings and is designed to remain meaningful at any sample size, including when very few reviews exist for a city.

RetireHere combines publicly available government and industry data with ratings submitted directly by our community of users. Our data covers natural disaster risk, climate, elevation, population, and home values, drawn from established public and industry sources.

Each reviewer rates a city across seven dimensions on a 1–5 scale, or may mark a dimension "No Opinion" if they do not feel qualified to answer it — for example, a short-term visitor may not feel able to speak to healthcare access or senior amenities the way a resident could. A "No Opinion" response is excluded from that dimension's calculation; it is never treated as a neutral or average rating. Each dimension's score is built entirely from the reviewers who answered it, then the seven dimension scores are averaged together to form the composite.

The underlying 1–5 star composite is converted to a 0–100 score using a fixed, published conversion rather than a straight linear scale. A city where every dimension rates as simply "fine" (3 out of 5) lands in the low 60s — a passing, unremarkable score — rather than at 50, which would misrepresent neutral sentiment as a failing grade. Genuinely excellent cities reach the mid-80s to low-90s; genuinely poor cities fall into the 30s or below. A perfect 100 is not attainable by design.

Rather than hiding a dimension until it reaches a minimum number of reviews, every dimension displays a score at any sample size. Each dimension starts from a neutral baseline that real reviews progressively outweigh as more accumulate, so a single review — positive or negative — cannot swing a city to the extreme ends of the scale. Scores become more precise, and more confident, as review volume grows. We display the number of reviews behind every score so users can judge that confidence for themselves.

Safety Experience is treated differently from the other six dimensions. Strong ratings elsewhere cannot fully offset a poor Safety rating in the composite score — a city with excellent amenities but real safety concerns will not be presented as an unqualified high score. This reflects that safety is not simply one preference among many for a retirement destination, but a baseline concern most users weigh above the rest.

RetireHere's underlying data is drawn from multiple public sources, and not every data point is available for every city. Two specific cases are handled as follows:

RetireHere's data is drawn from large public datasets covering more than 32,000 U.S. cities and towns. As with any dataset of this size, occasional gaps or inconsistencies exist. We investigate and correct these where we can, and we would rather disclose our limitations plainly than obscure them.