Where to live in El Salvador
We track 3 cities in El Salvador: San Miguel, San Salvador and Santa Ana. Average temperatures run from 24°C to 28°C. We estimate a couple needs €2,391 to €2,537 a month to live centrally. For foreigners, long-term residency is comparatively open.
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- Safety
- 55/100
- country-level estimate
- Healthcare
- 58/100
- country-level estimate
- Democracy
- 4.4/10
- estimated
Estimated from World Bank indicators and calibrated to the scales of our reference tables: safety from the country-level homicide rate per 100,000 people (VC.IHR.PSRC.P5, 2022) and Worldwide Governance Indicators Political Stability and Absence of Violence estimate (GOV_WGI_PV.EST, 2025), healthcare from the life expectancy at birth (SP.DYN.LE00.IN, 2024) and current health spending per person in US dollars (SH.XPD.CHEX.PC.CD, 2023), cost of living from the price level of GDP relative to the United States, from GDP per person in US dollars and at purchasing power parity (NY.GDP.PCAP.CD/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD, 2025) and democracy score from the Worldwide Governance Indicators Voice and Accountability estimate (GOV_WGI_VA.EST, 2025). Source: The World Bank (World Development Indicators, Worldwide Governance Indicators), CC BY 4.0.
Limited data for El Salvador. Figures for safety, healthcare, cost of living and political stability in El Salvador are country-level estimates from World Bank indicators, each named with its year. We have no tax, English, social openness or internet speed figures for El Salvador, so the quiz scores those factors conservatively and this page leaves them out.
The 3 cities we track
| City | Size | Setting | Avg temp | Rain a year | Est. cost a month |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| San Miguel | mid-sized | coastal | 28°C | 1,768 mm | €2,424 |
| San Salvador | mid-sized | coastal | 24°C | 1,926 mm | €2,537 |
| Santa Ana | smaller | near the coast | 25°C | 1,678 mm | €2,391 |
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, from the World Bank price level.
Residency and visas
Comparatively open. El Salvador offers accessible self-funded routes: a rentista passive-income visa, a pensionado retiree visa, and a low-threshold investor/business-formation track, all leading to permanent residency after three years.
The cheapest self-funded routes we track for El Salvador:
- Income: about $1,460 a month (Rentista (F8) passive-income visa, USD 1,460/mo (four times the national minimum wage); the pensionado retiree route is lower at USD 1,095/mo; as of June 2026)
- Investment: about $10k (Inversionista business-formation/shareholder track, minimum USD 10,000 equity in a registered Salvadoran company (vs the ~USD 1.46M traditional ONI investor visa); as of June 2026)
For short visits, 89 of 198 passports can enter visa-free and 109 can get an e-visa or visa on arrival.
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).