Where to live in Romania
We track 6 cities in Romania: Braşov, Bucharest, Cluj-Napoca, Constanţa, Iaşi and Timişoara. Average temperatures run from 9°C to 13°C. We estimate a couple needs €2,440 to €2,642 a month to live centrally. Romania sits in our low to medium tax tier. For citizens from outside the EU, EEA and Switzerland, long-term residency is comparatively open.
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- Tax tier
- Low to medium
- Moderate personal income tax
- Languages
- Romanian
- Some English
- Safety
- 70/100
- country-level
- Healthcare
- 55/100
- country-level
- Internet
- ~230 Mbps
- median fixed broadband
The 6 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
Romania 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 the EU, EEA and Switzerland. Realistic long-term routes are the digital nomad visa for remote workers, employer-sponsored work permits and the EU Blue Card for skilled hires, and self-employment or commercial-activity permits; there is no operational golden visa or dedicated passive-income visa.
Citizens of the EU, EEA and Switzerland have freedom-of-movement or simplified residency rights here.
The cheapest self-funded routes we track for Romania:
- Income: about $6,156 a month (Romania digital nomad visa (D/AD): requires monthly income of 3x Romania's average gross salary = RON 27,816/mo (3 x RON 9,272, INS Feb 2026 average); converted at 1 RON = USD 0.2213 (Jun 2026); as of June 2026)
For short visits, 93 of 198 passports can enter visa-free and 105 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).