Where to live in Iran
We track 6 cities in Iran: Isfahan, Karaj, Mashhad, Shiraz, Tabriz and Tehran. Average temperatures run from 13°C to 19°C. We estimate a couple needs €2,290 to €2,423 a month to live centrally. Iran sits in our low to medium tax tier. For foreigners, long-term residency is hard to obtain.
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- Tax tier
- Low to medium
- Moderate personal income tax
- Languages
- Persian
- Limited English
- Safety
- 58/100
- country-level
- Healthcare
- 60/100
- country-level
- Internet
- ~30 Mbps
- median fixed broadband
The 6 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
Iran 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. Long-term residency comes mainly through an investment/deposit permit, employer-sponsored work, or family ties; there is no passive-income, retirement, or points-based skilled route.
The cheapest self-funded routes we track for Iran:
- Investment: about $90k (Iran 5-year residence-by-investment permit, minimum USD 90,000 (cut from USD 250,000 in April 2022); thresholds are quoted directly in USD by the source, so no FX conversion applies.; as of June 2026)
For short visits, 44 of 198 passports can enter visa-free, 144 can get an e-visa or visa on arrival and 10 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).