Where to live in the Cayman Islands
We track one city in the Cayman Islands: George Town. It averages 28°C over the year. We estimate a couple needs €3,892 a month to live centrally. The Cayman Islands sits in our zero or very low tax tier. For foreigners, long-term residency is possible, with conditions.
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- Tax tier
- Zero or very low
- Little to no personal income tax
- Languages
- English
- English everywhere
- Safety
- 80/100
- country-level
- Healthcare
- 78/100
- country-level
- Internet
- ~150 Mbps
- median fixed broadband
The city we track
| City | Size | Setting | Avg temp | Rain a year | Est. cost a month |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| George Town | smaller | coastal | 28°C | 1,477 mm | €3,892 |
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
The Cayman Islands 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
Possible, with conditions. Self-funded residence comes via 'persons of independent means' certificates, either a 25-year renewable residency certificate (proof of independent income plus a local property investment) or a lifetime certificate of permanent residence based on a developed-real-estate purchase with naturalization possible after five years; there is no income-only or points-based route, and other residence is tied to employer-sponsored work permits.
The cheapest self-funded routes we track for the Cayman Islands:
- Income: about $12k a month (Residency Certificate for Persons of Independent Means (Grand Cayman), CI$120,000/yr income (USD ~12,000/mo at the fixed CI$1=USD1.20 peg); this route also requires a co-investment of CI$1,000,000 locally (min CI$500,000 in developed real estate), and the Sister Islands variant is CI$75,000/yr; as of June 2026)
- Investment: about $2.4M (Certificate of Permanent Residence for Persons of Independent Means, CI$2,000,000 in developed real estate (USD ~2.4M at the fixed CI$1=USD1.20 peg), a capital-only lifetime permanent-residence grant; as of June 2026)
Source: OurNextCity residency dataset, hand-reviewed approximations researched against published immigration rules, figures as of June 2026. Not legal advice: check the official source before you apply. Short-stay entry from the passport-index dataset (ilyankou, MIT).