Where to live in Peru
We track 5 cities in Peru: Arequipa, Cusco, Iquitos, Lima and Trujillo. Average temperatures run from 12°C to 26°C. We estimate a couple needs €2,118 to €2,347 a month to live centrally. Peru sits in our low to medium tax tier. For citizens from outside Mercosur and its associate states, long-term residency is comparatively open.
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- Tax tier
- Low to medium
- Moderate personal income tax
- Languages
- Spanish
- Limited English
- Safety
- 48/100
- country-level
- Healthcare
- 55/100
- country-level
- Internet
- ~110 Mbps
- median fixed broadband
The 5 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
Peru 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, for people from outside Mercosur and its associate states. Residency is realistic mainly through the Rentista (independent-means/pension) route for those with steady foreign passive income, the Inversionista (investor) route, or employer-sponsored work visas, with citizenship reachable after two years.
Citizens of Mercosur and its associate states have freedom-of-movement or simplified residency rights here.
The cheapest self-funded routes we track for Peru:
- Income: about $1,000 a month (Peru Rentista (independent-means) visa, USD 1,000/mo net permanent foreign-source passive income (plus USD 500/mo per dependent); as of June 2026)
- Investment: about $147k (Peru Inversionista visa, PEN 500,000 one-time capital in a Peruvian company (~USD 146,800 at 1 PEN = 0.2936 USD, Jun 2026); as of June 2026)
For short visits, 103 of 198 passports can enter visa-free and 95 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).