Where to live in Israel
We track 4 cities in Israel: Haifa, Jerusalem, Nazareth and Tel Aviv. Average temperatures run from 18°C to 21°C. We estimate a couple needs €3,536 to €4,008 a month to live centrally. Israel sits in our high tax tier. For foreigners, long-term residency is hard to obtain.
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
- High
- High personal income tax
- Languages
- Hebrew, Arabic
- Some English
- Safety
- 60/100
- country-level
- Healthcare
- 72/100
- country-level
- Internet
- ~130 Mbps
- median fixed broadband
The 4 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
Israel sits in our high tax tier: high 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 is realistic mainly via employer-sponsored work visas, family reunification, or Jewish-ancestry Aliyah; there is no general investor or passive-income route open to all nationalities.
For short visits, 101 of 198 passports can enter visa-free and 97 need a visa in advance.
Source: OurNextCity residency dataset, hand-reviewed approximations researched against published immigration rules. Not legal advice: check the official source before you apply. Short-stay entry from the passport-index dataset (ilyankou, MIT).