Frisco is now 18% Indian American, and Irving is the affordable way into the community

The Dallas-Fort Worth area holds one of the largest Indian American communities in the country, and it isn't spread evenly, it's remarkably concentrated. Frisco is now 18.2% Indian American with 38,353 residents, and Irving holds slightly more people at 39,977, or 15.7% of the city.

The rent gap between the two anchors of the community is the useful part. Irving runs $1,611 a month against Frisco's $1,852, and on one-bedrooms the spread widens to $521.

Two centers, two prices

The community splits along a line renters should understand before picking a suburb. East Frisco has become the newer center, anchored by the Karya Siddhi Hanuman Temple, a 34,000-square-foot complex with a 72-foot gopuram that opened in 2015 and ranks among the largest Hindu temples in the Western Hemisphere. An India Bazaar anchors the India Plaza shopping center three blocks away, one of seven locations the chain runs across Plano, Irving, Richardson and Frisco.

Irving is the older anchor, home to the DFW Hindu Temple on North Britain Road, and its Valley Ranch area carries its own dense strip of Indian groceries and restaurants. The practical difference is that Irving's housing stock is older and cheaper, while Frisco's is newer, bigger and priced like it knows it.

Coppell is the quiet outlier at the top of the table. At 18.9% it edges out even Frisco as the most Indian American city in Texas by share, packed into a town of 42,000 that sits between Irving and the airport. Its $2,032 rent reflects a mostly single-family market with strong schools, so it isn't really an apartment renter's town.

What the rent buys in each

A renter choosing Irving over Frisco saves $521 a month on a one-bedroom, which is $6,252 a year, and stays inside the community rather than at its edge. What Frisco offers back is newer construction, the temple corridor and the schools that keep pulling families north, and for a lot of households that's worth the premium.

Plano splits the difference in both senses, since it holds 33,216 Indian American residents and its $1,722 rent hasn't moved in a year. For a first apartment in the metro, Irving and Richardson at $1,657 are where the math works best, and Richardson's rent actually fell 1.8% over the past year, which doesn't happen often in this metro.

One number worth keeping in mind: rents in the two priciest options are moving in opposite directions from the cheap ones. Coppell rose 8.0% and Frisco 6.7%, while Richardson fell and Plano stayed flat, so the expensive end is pulling further away and it doesn't look like stopping.

We took the same approach to the metro's Korean community in the best Dallas suburbs for Korean renters, and the national picture is in the best cities for Indian Americans.

Sources

• US Census Bureau, American Community Survey, table B02015, for Indian American population by city

• KERA News, for the Karya Siddhi Hanuman Temple

• India Bazaar, for store locations

• RentDataNow rent data by bedroom size, anchored to the Zillow Observed Rent Index, June 2026