Where to live in Kazakhstan
We track 4 cities in Kazakhstan: Aktobe, Almaty, Astana and Shymkent. Average temperatures run from 5°C to 14°C. We estimate a couple needs €2,240 to €2,380 a month to live centrally. For foreigners, long-term residency is possible, with conditions.
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).
- Safety
- 60/100
- country-level estimate
- Healthcare
- 60/100
- country-level estimate
- Democracy
- 4.0/10
- 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 Kazakhstan. Figures for safety, healthcare, cost of living and political stability in Kazakhstan 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 Kazakhstan, so the quiz scores those factors conservatively and this page leaves them out.
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, from the World Bank price level.
Residency and visas
Possible, with conditions. Long-term residence is realistic through an employer or in-demand-profession work permit, a remote-work nomad visa, a 10-year digital-nomad residency for IT talent, an investor golden visa that grants immediate permanent residence, or an ordinary permanent residence permit backed by a bank-balance solvency proof.
The cheapest self-funded routes we track for Kazakhstan:
- Income: about $3,000 a month (Kazakhstan Neo Nomad Visa (B12-1) remote-work route, USD 3,000/mo foreign-source income; 1-year visa, renewable; as of June 2026)
- Investment: about $12k (Permanent residence permit proof-of-solvency bank balance, 1320 MCI = KZT 5,709,000 (2026 MCI KZT 4,325), converted at ~490.4 KZT/USD; cheaper than the USD 300,000 investor golden visa; as of June 2026)
For short visits, 81 of 198 passports can enter visa-free, 99 can get an e-visa or visa on arrival and 18 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).