This State Sells America's Cheapest Cheese Pizzas

You know how much we love our pizza. That's why we're all over pizza statistics. Expensivity recently published its 2021 pizza index, and it's full of interesting facts to dig through—including which state is home to the nation's cheapest (and most expensive) cheese pizza.

First off: North Dakota is home to the cheapest cheese pizzas in the U.S. Would that influence me to move there? I don't know. I hear the winters are brutal. The average price for a cheese pizza in North Dakota is $6.64 (though the study doesn't indicate what size pie). On the opposite end, the state with the most expensive cheese pizzas on average is Alaska at $9.21 per pizza. I imagine sourcing ingredients out there is pretty pricey.

Next up is the state with the cheapest pepperoni pizza: Utah, clocking in at $6.49 per pie on average. Not too shabby. But pepperoni prices seem to vary widely around the country; the most expensive state for pepperoni pizza is Oklahoma, where a single pie will run you up to $15.56. Some of the other expensive pepperoni states include Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, and Nebraska.

The report also includes a few other fun facts, like which area has the highest density of pizzerias per capita. Of all places, Washington D.C. is the area with the most pizzerias per capita, with 41.5 pizza restaurants per 100,000 people. Gotta love freedom of choice. But move further south, and pizza gets a little harder to find, with only 16.4 pizzerias per 100,000 people in Louisiana. I guess if I were in Louisiana, I'd skip the pizza and go for seafood instead.

Finally, the report includes a nifty tool that lets you search pizza prices by major city. For us in Chicago, a plain pie is $9.39 on average, while a pepperoni is somehow cheaper (huh) at $9.31. Wilmington, North Carolina, and Heyward, California, are tied for the cheapest overall pizza cities, at $6.35. Pizza-curious readers, take a look at the report and see if you can uncover any surprises about your own home state.