Where to live in Oman
We track 3 cities in Oman: ‘Ibrī, Muscat and Şalālah. Average temperatures run from 26°C to 29°C. We estimate a couple needs €2,705 to €2,959 a month to live centrally. Oman sits in our zero or very low tax tier. For citizens from outside the Gulf Cooperation Council states, long-term residency is possible, with conditions.
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- Tax tier
- Zero or very low
- Little to no personal income tax
- Languages
- Arabic
- Limited English
- Safety
- 82/100
- country-level
- Healthcare
- 68/100
- country-level
- Internet
- ~90 Mbps
- median fixed broadband
The 3 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
Oman sits in our zero or very low tax tier: little to no 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
Possible, with conditions, for people from outside the Gulf Cooperation Council states. Long-term self-sponsored residency runs through Oman's relaunched Golden (10-year) and Silver (5-year) investor visas via property, company, bond, listed-equity or fixed-deposit investment, plus a retiree route for over-60s with high fixed income; otherwise residency is employer-sponsored.
Citizens of the Gulf Cooperation Council states have freedom-of-movement or simplified residency rights here.
The cheapest self-funded routes we track for Oman:
- Income: about $10k a month (Oman retiree residency permit (age 60+), fixed monthly income of at least OMR 4,000/mo; OMR pegged at 1 OMR = 2.6008 USD; as of June 2026)
- Investment: about $520k (Oman Silver (5-year) visa lowest tier, OMR 200,000 one-time via listed equities, fixed deposit or company registration; OMR pegged at 1 OMR = 2.6008 USD; as of June 2026)
For short visits, 10 of 198 passports can enter visa-free and 188 can get an e-visa or visa on arrival.
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).