Where to live in India

We track 62 cities in India, including Mumbai, Delhi and Hyderabad. Average temperatures run from 11°C to 29°C. We estimate a couple needs €1,738 to €2,000 a month to live centrally. India sits in our low to medium tax tier. For foreigners, long-term residency is hard to obtain.

See which cities in India rank best for you

12 questions, about 4 minutes, no account needed. Taking the quiz is free, and so is seeing your #1 city. Full results for both of you are a one-time US$12 (€12 in Europe).

Tax tier: Low to medium; Moderate personal income tax
Languages: Hindi, English; Some English
Safety: 55/100; country-level
Healthcare: 55/100; country-level
Internet: ~70 Mbps; median fixed broadband

The 62 cities we track

City	Size	Setting	Avg temp	Rain a year	Est. cost a month
Agra	large	inland	25°C	825 mm	€1,871
Ahmedabad	major	near the coast	27°C	1,048 mm	€1,953
Amritsar	large	inland	23°C	582 mm	€1,860
Aurangabad	large	inland	26°C	833 mm	€1,861
Bengaluru	major	inland	23°C	913 mm	€1,969
Bhopal	large	inland	25°C	1,172 mm	€1,884
Bhubaneswar	mid-sized	coastal	27°C	1,752 mm	€1,845
Chandigarh	large	inland	23°C	974 mm	€1,850
Chennai	large	coastal	28°C	1,337 mm	€1,936
Coimbatore	large	near the coast	26°C	997 mm	€1,893
Dārjiling	smaller	inland	12°C	2,986 mm	€1,738
Dehradun	mid-sized	inland	21°C	1,803 mm	€1,816
Delhi	major	inland	24°C	732 mm	€1,995
Dhanbad	large	inland	25°C	1,239 mm	€1,862
Faridabad	large	inland	24°C	721 mm	€1,871
Guwahati	mid-sized	inland	24°C	1,738 mm	€1,850
Gwalior	large	inland	25°C	900 mm	€1,855
Hubballi	mid-sized	near the coast	25°C	895 mm	€1,849
Hyderabad	major	inland	26°C	886 mm	€1,958
Indore	large	inland	25°C	1,060 mm	€1,890
Jabalpur	large	inland	25°C	1,246 mm	€1,856
Jaipur	large	inland	25°C	605 mm	€1,913
Jamshedpur	large	inland	26°C	1,363 mm	€1,868
Jodhpur	large	inland	26°C	474 mm	€1,855
Kalyān	large	coastal	27°C	3,299 mm	€1,902
Kanpur	large	inland	25°C	893 mm	€1,909
Kochi	mid-sized	coastal	27°C	3,446 mm	€1,827
Kolkata	major	near the coast	26°C	1,736 mm	€1,947
Kota	large	inland	26°C	793 mm	€1,852
Kozhikode	mid-sized	coastal	27°C	3,325 mm	€1,819
Lucknow	large	inland	25°C	988 mm	€1,901
Ludhiana	large	inland	23°C	637 mm	€1,878
Madurai	large	near the coast	29°C	1,062 mm	€1,873
Meerut	large	inland	24°C	903 mm	€1,863
Mumbai	major	coastal	27°C	2,476 mm	€2,000
Mysuru	mid-sized	near the coast	24°C	782 mm	€1,847
Nagpur	large	inland	27°C	1,186 mm	€1,900
Nashik	large	near the coast	24°C	1,320 mm	€1,874
Ooty	smaller	near the coast	15°C	1,392 mm	€1,772
Patna	large	inland	25°C	1,067 mm	€1,880
Prayagraj	large	inland	26°C	940 mm	€1,856
Puducherry	mid-sized	coastal	28°C	1,385 mm	€1,829
Pune	major	near the coast	25°C	950 mm	€1,949
Raipur	large	inland	26°C	1,308 mm	€1,853
Rājkot	large	near the coast	27°C	854 mm	€1,870
Ranchi	large	inland	23°C	1,465 mm	€1,858
Salem	mid-sized	inland	27°C	1,050 mm	€1,847
Shimla	smaller	inland	12°C	1,427 mm	€1,756
Sholapur	large	inland	28°C	764 mm	€1,852
Srinagar	large	inland	11°C	712 mm	€1,862
Surat	large	coastal	27°C	1,489 mm	€1,935
Thiruvananthapuram	mid-sized	coastal	26°C	1,906 mm	€1,839
Tiruchirappalli	large	near the coast	29°C	921 mm	€1,853
Tirunelveli	large	near the coast	28°C	975 mm	€1,872
Tiruppur	mid-sized	near the coast	27°C	690 mm	€1,850
Tiruvannamalai	smaller	near the coast	28°C	1,205 mm	€1,746
Udaipur	mid-sized	inland	24°C	762 mm	€1,808
Vadodara	large	near the coast	27°C	1,058 mm	€1,885
Varanasi	large	inland	26°C	1,072 mm	€1,860
Vijayawada	large	near the coast	28°C	1,012 mm	€1,859
Virār	large	coastal	27°C	2,251 mm	€1,863
Visakhapatnam	large	coastal	27°C	1,213 mm	€1,855

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

India 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

Hard to obtain. India has no retirement or passive-income visa; realistic long-term routes are a sponsor-tied employment visa for skilled professionals or the high-bar Permanent Residency Status scheme for major investors, while X visas and OCI serve only those with Indian family or origin.

The cheapest self-funded routes we track for India:

Investment: about $1.1M (India Permanent Residency Status (PRS) for foreign investors, cheapest option INR 10 crore brought in within 18 months and also requires employing 20 resident Indians; INR 100,000,000 at ~95.2 INR/USD (June 2026); as of June 2026)

For short visits, 3 of 198 passports can enter visa-free, 160 can get an e-visa or visa on arrival and 35 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).

Moving here from

What our data says for a couple who both hold one of these passports: entry, residency, taxes, costs and the cities that rank first.

Compare cities in India

Browse other countries

See every city and country we compare