Where to live in Mauritius
We track 2 cities in Mauritius: Bel Air Rivière Sèche and Port Louis. Average temperatures run from 23°C to 25°C. We estimate a couple needs €2,298 to €2,599 a month to live centrally. Mauritius sits in our low to medium tax tier. For foreigners, long-term residency is comparatively open.
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- Tax tier
- Low to medium
- Moderate personal income tax
- Languages
- English, French, Creole
- Some English
- Safety
- 70/100
- country-level
- Healthcare
- 68/100
- country-level
- Internet
- ~90 Mbps
- median fixed broadband
The 2 cities we track
| City | Size | Setting | Avg temp | Rain a year | Est. cost a month |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bel Air Rivière Sèche | smaller | coastal | 23°C | 1,621 mm | €2,298 |
| Port Louis | mid-sized | coastal | 25°C | 1,470 mm | €2,599 |
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
Mauritius 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
Comparatively open. Mauritius actively courts foreign residents through several genuinely attainable routes: a low-threshold investor occupation permit, self-employed and professional occupation permits, a passive-income retirement permit for over-50s, and a property-purchase residence route.
The cheapest self-funded routes we track for Mauritius:
- Income: about $2,000 a month (Mauritius Retired Non-Citizen residence permit (age 50+), USD 2,000/mo (USD 24,000/yr) transferred to a local bank; as of June 2026)
- Investment: about $50k (Mauritius Investor Occupation Permit, lowest pathway USD 50,000 into a new Mauritius-based business; as of June 2026)
For short visits, 113 of 198 passports can enter visa-free, 69 can get an e-visa or visa on arrival and 16 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).