Where to live in Vanuatu
We track one city in Vanuatu: Port-Vila. It averages 25°C over the year. We estimate a couple needs €3,394 a month to live centrally. For foreigners, long-term residency is comparatively open.
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- Safety
- 77/100
- country-level estimate
- Healthcare
- 52/100
- country-level estimate
- Democracy
- 7.0/10
- estimated
Estimated from World Bank indicators and calibrated to the scales of our reference tables: safety from the country-level homicide rate per 100,000 people (VC.IHR.PSRC.P5, 2020) and Worldwide Governance Indicators Political Stability and Absence of Violence estimate (GOV_WGI_PV.EST, 2025), healthcare from the life expectancy at birth (SP.DYN.LE00.IN, 2024) and current health spending per person in US dollars (SH.XPD.CHEX.PC.CD, 2023), cost of living from the price level of GDP relative to the United States, from GDP per person in US dollars and at purchasing power parity (NY.GDP.PCAP.CD/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD, 2025) and democracy score from the Worldwide Governance Indicators Voice and Accountability estimate (GOV_WGI_VA.EST, 2025). Source: The World Bank (World Development Indicators, Worldwide Governance Indicators), CC BY 4.0.
Limited data for Vanuatu. Figures for safety, healthcare, cost of living and political stability in Vanuatu are country-level estimates from World Bank indicators, each named with its year. We have no tax, English, social openness or internet speed figures for Vanuatu, so the quiz scores those factors conservatively and this page leaves them out.
The city we track
| City | Size | Setting | Avg temp | Rain a year | Est. cost a month |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Port-Vila | smaller | coastal | 25°C | 2,401 mm | €3,394 |
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, from the World Bank price level.
Residency and visas
Comparatively open. Vanuatu offers an easily renewable self-funded resident visa for anyone with sufficient passive income, plus an investor/land-owner residence route, with no nationality restrictions.
The cheapest self-funded routes we track for Vanuatu:
- Income: about $2,115 a month (Self-Funded Resident Visa, certified VT 250,000/mo passive income (single applicant; VUV 0.008462/USD); as of June 2026)
- Investment: about $50k (Foreign Investor residence visa via VIPA investor certificate, USD 50,000 business investment; as of June 2026)
For short visits, 119 of 198 passports can enter visa-free and 79 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).