Moving to Denmark from Australia

Our residency index: 50/100, possible, with conditions. It is our own rating of how realistic long-term residency in Denmark is for Australian citizens, based on the routes Denmark publishes. Long-term residency runs through employer-sponsored skilled-work routes (Pay Limit Scheme, Positive List, Fast-track, EU Blue Card) or the Start-up Denmark entrepreneur scheme; there is no golden visa and no passive-income or sufficient-means route for non-EU nationals.

Our dataset has no self-funded income or savings threshold for Denmark. Check the official requirements before you apply.

For short visits, Australian passport holders can visit visa-free for up to 90 days, according to the passport-index dataset. Short-stay entry covers visits; living there takes a residence permit.

Ranked by our match model for a typical couple who both hold Australian passports, using the preset answers of our best places to live list. Your own answers would change the order. We pick the cities, up to five, by how often English Wikipedia readers looked them up over the past year.

1. 1

   1. Odense

   75% match

   Est. cost

   €3,982/mo

   Avg temp

   10°C

   Safety index

   75/100

2. 2

   2. Århus

   74% match

   Est. cost

   €4,064/mo

   Avg temp

   9°C

   Safety index

   75/100

3. 3

   3. Copenhagen

   73% match

   Est. cost

   €4,318/mo

   Avg temp

   10°C

   Safety index

   75/100

Our estimate for a couple living centrally runs from €3,982 a month in Odense to €4,318 in Copenhagen. For comparison, we estimate €4,094 a month in Melbourne. Use these figures to compare places rather than to set a budget.

Denmark is in our high tax tier (high personal income tax); Australia is in our high tax tier (high personal income tax). Tiers describe each country's own income tax. They do not cover tax you may still owe in Australia after you leave, or the treaty between the two countries, so check both with a tax adviser before you move.

• Best places to live in Scandinavia and the Nordics
• Best cities for remote workers with fast internet
• Best cities in Europe where English is widely spoken
• Safest cities to live in Europe
• Best coastal cities to live in Europe
• Safest cities to live abroad

• Moving to Denmark from the US
• Moving to Denmark from the UK
• Moving to Denmark from Canada
• Moving to Denmark from Ireland
• Moving to Denmark from New Zealand

Every country and origin we cover

Every figure here comes from the datasets behind our city and country pages:

• Short-stay entry: the passport-index dataset (ilyankou, MIT license), which records the entry rule for short visits on each passport.
• Residency index, routes and thresholds: the OurNextCity residency dataset, hand-reviewed against published immigration rules, figures as of June 2026. It is a summary, not legal advice.
• City ranking: our match model, the one behind the quiz, run with a typical couple's preset answers and both partners holding Australian passports. It ranks up to five of the country's best-known cities: of the cities in our quiz (100,000 people or more, capitals and a few towns movers seek out, such as Faro), the five most read about on English Wikipedia over the past year. It folds suburbs into their main city and leaves out countries with a residency index under 40 and areas under a US State Department Level 4 advisory, as our best-cities lists do.
• Costs: our cost model, a country-level cost-of-living index scaled for city size, from our city dataset (last rebuilt June 2026).
• Tax tiers: three coarse bands we assign by hand from each country's top marginal personal income tax rate and overall tax reputation.