Where to live in Saudi Arabia
We track 5 cities in Saudi Arabia: Dammam, Jeddah, Madinah, Makkah and Riyadh. Average temperatures run from 27°C to 30°C. We estimate a couple needs €2,928 to €3,073 a month to live centrally. Saudi Arabia 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
- 80/100
- country-level
- Healthcare
- 65/100
- country-level
- Internet
- ~130 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
Saudi Arabia 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 residency is realistic mainly through the Premium Residency ('Saudi green card') program, either as a one-time flat fee for permanent status or via asset-based investor, real-estate-owner, entrepreneur, and special-talent categories, all without a local sponsor; there is no passive-income or means-tested route, and the ordinary work iqama needs an employer sponsor (SAR pegged at 3.75/USD).
Citizens of the Gulf Cooperation Council states have freedom-of-movement or simplified residency rights here.
It is harder for citizens of Bangladesh, India and Pakistan.
The cheapest self-funded routes we track for Saudi Arabia:
- Investment: about $213k (Saudi Premium Residency unlimited-duration (permanent) product, one-time fee SAR 800,000; a limited-duration alternative runs SAR 100,000/yr and the real-estate-owner route needs SAR 4M in property; as of June 2026)
For short visits, 5 of 198 passports can enter visa-free, 69 can get an e-visa or visa on arrival and 124 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).