Where to live in Costa Rica
We track 3 cities in Costa Rica: Liberia, Limón and San José. Average temperatures run from 20°C to 27°C. We estimate a couple needs €2,565 to €2,801 a month to live centrally. Costa Rica sits in our low to medium tax tier. For foreigners, long-term residency is comparatively open.
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- Tax tier
- Low to medium
- Moderate personal income tax
- Languages
- Spanish
- Some English
- Safety
- 65/100
- country-level
- Healthcare
- 70/100
- country-level
- Internet
- ~80 Mbps
- median fixed broadband
The 3 cities we track
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
Costa Rica sits in our low to medium tax tier: moderate 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
Comparatively open. Costa Rica offers well-established temporary-residency routes for retirees with a lifetime pension (Pensionado), people of independent means (Rentista), and investors (Inversionista), all leading to permanent residency after three years.
The cheapest self-funded routes we track for Costa Rica:
- Income: about $1,000 a month (Pensionado route, lifetime pension of USD 1,000/mo; the Rentista sufficient-means alternative requires USD 2,500/mo guaranteed for two years (or a USD 60,000 bank deposit); as of June 2026)
- Investment: about $150k (Inversionista route, USD 150,000 minimum qualifying investment (USD 100,000 for approved forestry projects); as of June 2026)
For short visits, 95 of 198 passports can enter visa-free and 103 need a visa in advance.
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).