Where to live in Brunei
We track 3 cities in Brunei: Bandar Seri Begawan, Kuala Belait and Tutong. Average temperatures run from 26°C to 27°C. We estimate a couple needs €2,471 to €2,692 a month to live centrally. Brunei sits in our zero or very low tax tier. For foreigners, long-term residency is hard to obtain.
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- Tax tier
- Zero or very low
- Little to no personal income tax
- Languages
- Malay, English
- Some English
- Safety
- 85/100
- country-level
- Healthcare
- 72/100
- country-level
- Internet
- ~90 Mbps
- median fixed broadband
The 3 cities we track
| City | Size | Setting | Avg temp | Rain a year | Est. cost a month |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bandar Seri Begawan | smaller | coastal | 27°C | 3,619 mm | €2,692 |
| Kuala Belait | smaller | coastal | 26°C | 2,970 mm | €2,524 |
| Tutong | smaller | coastal | 27°C | 3,329 mm | €2,471 |
Source: City size from GeoNames, temperature from the Open-Meteo archive (2019 to 2023 averages), rainfall from TerraClimate (1991 to 2020 normals), coast distance from Natural Earth. Cost is our model estimate for a couple living centrally.
Taxes
Brunei sits in our zero or very low tax tier: little to no personal income tax. The tier applies to every city here, and couples who cap tax below it will not see these cities in their results.
Source: OurNextCity tax tiers, assigned by hand from each country's top marginal personal income tax rate and overall tax reputation, with no fixed rate cut-offs. Coarse by design; not tax advice.
Residency and visas
Hard to obtain. Long-term presence is essentially employer-sponsored (work permit tied to a job) or via the new discretionary five-year Long-Term Pass for those with family ties, qualifying business investment, or scarce professional expertise; there is no investor, retirement, or means-tested self-funded route, and permanent residency requires roughly 15 years of continuous residence (10 if married to a citizen) at official discretion.
For short visits, 56 of 198 passports can enter visa-free, 7 can get an e-visa or visa on arrival and 135 need a visa in advance.
Source: OurNextCity residency dataset, hand-reviewed approximations researched against published immigration rules. Not legal advice: check the official source before you apply. Short-stay entry from the passport-index dataset (ilyankou, MIT).