Moving from San Jose to Austin: 2026 Cost & Time

San Jose to Austin is a defining tech-migration lane with reliable weekly volume. At 1,700+ miles you're in a low per-mile tier, so inventory size and packing choices, not distance, drive your final number.

Cost by home size

What affects your San Jose → Austin cost

• Over long distances like San Jose to Austin (1,720 mi), the per-mile rate steps down, and inventory size becomes the dominant cost driver.
• A mid-month, mid-week date typically beats an end-of-month weekend on this lane, especially in the May–September peak.
• Your exact inventory is what shifts a range into a firm quote, which is why we show a range and the mover confirms it after a walkthrough.

Where the money goes on this move

Any quote for this move is two things added together: the crew hours to load your home and unload it again, and the transport in between. On a 1,720-mile lane those halves are nowhere near equal, and the bigger one is where your decisions actually land. For a 2-bedroom household, transport is about 76% of the pre-adjustment total here, and 73% at five bedrooms.

Because the mileage bands step down, the effective rate depends entirely on how far you are going. For this distance a 2-bedroom load averages about $1.91 a mile, and a five-bedroom load pays the same rate on a bigger truck — which is why transport is 73% of that bill rather than 76%. This route's final mile falls in the over 1,500 mi band.

Crew rates at each end of this move

Loading happens in one labor market and unloading in another. Below are the rates each of those markets carries, which are the numbers you would pay outright if either end of this were a local job.

San Jose is the more expensive labor market of the two, at $227 an hour for a 3-mover crew against $182 in Austin — a $45 an hour gap that would matter a great deal if this were a local move at that end, and matters much less on a tariff-priced interstate job.

Access is where the estimate and the invoice most often part company, and the two ends of this move present different problems. San Jose: Valley apartment complexes are large and gated, with assigned loading zones and long carries from the truck to the unit, and downtown towers require reserved freight elevators and filed certificates of insurance.

Austin: Downtown and Rainey Street towers run on reserved freight elevators and narrow loading bays, while the older bungalows in Travis Heights and Hyde Park sit on pier-and-beam foundations with porch steps, tight doorways, and no driveway, so long carries are routine.

What changes this number

Below is what each optional decision costs on this specific corridor. Percentages hide the size of these; dollars do not.

Peak season and an end-of-month date compound, so a late-July pickup carries both and lands roughly $989 over the off-peak baseline. It is the largest figure on this page you can change for free.

How this lane prices against its neighbours

The neighbouring lanes, priced on the same basis. A destination two hundred miles further away is often the cheaper move, and only a cost-ranked list shows you that.

Estimates, not quotes: every figure is computed from one published model at $62 per mover per hour plus tiered mileage, and none is attributed to a named company. See the method.