Moving to Ecuador from the US
US passport holders can visit Ecuador visa-free for up to 90 days, but living there takes a residence permit. The self-funded residency routes we track start at an income of about $482 a month or an investment of about $48k, and our residency index rates Ecuador 90/100 for US citizens (comparatively open). We estimate €2,567 a month for a couple living centrally in Cuenca and €2,705 in Quito. Ecuador is in our low to medium tax tier. Check the official requirements before you apply.
12 questions, about 4 minutes, no account needed. Taking the quiz is free, and so is seeing your #1 city. Full results for both of you are a one-time US$12 (€12 in Europe).
- Short stays
- Visa-free 90 days
- US passport
- Residency
- 90/100
- Comparatively open, our index
- Tax tier
- Low to medium
- Moderate personal income tax
- Est. cost for two
- From €2,567/mo
- Cuenca, our estimate
Living there long term
Our residency index: 90/100, comparatively open. It is our own rating of how realistic long-term residency in Ecuador is for US citizens, based on the routes Ecuador publishes. Ecuador offers several self-funded residency routes (professional, rentista/pensionado passive-income, and investor), all natively denominated in US dollars since the USD is the national currency so no currency conversion applies, with a fast path to permanent residency (~21 months) and citizenship (3 years).
The cheapest self-funded routes we track:
- Income: about $482 a month (Ecuador Professional visa, USD 482/mo (1x SBU) income from any lawful source, no sponsor required but needs a SENESCYT-registered university degree; the no-degree Rentista/Pensionado passive-income route needs USD 1,446/mo (3x SBU); as of June 2026)
- Investment: about $48k (Ecuador Investor (Inversionista) visa, USD 48,200 (100x SBU) one-time in real estate, a 730-day bank CD, or registered company shares; as of June 2026)
Check the official requirements before you apply: amounts, conditions and exchange rates change, and what a couple needs can differ from a single applicant's threshold.
For short visits, US 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.
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).
Where in Ecuador to start
Ranked by our match model for a typical couple who both hold US 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.
Cost of living for two
Our estimate for a couple living centrally runs from €2,567 a month in Cuenca to €2,705 in Quito. For comparison, we estimate €4,640 a month in New York City. Use these figures to compare places rather than to set a budget.
Source: our cost model: a country-level cost-of-living index scaled for city size, from our city dataset (last rebuilt June 2026). An estimate, not a survey of current prices.
Taxes
Ecuador is in our low to medium tax tier (moderate personal income tax); the US is in our low to medium tax tier (moderate personal income tax). Tiers describe each country's own income tax. They do not cover tax you may still owe in the US after you leave, or the treaty between the two countries, so check both with a tax adviser before you move.
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.
Lists with cities in Ecuador
Moving to Ecuador from elsewhere
How we built this page
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 US 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).
- For Ecuador, the cost index and the safety score are country-level estimates from World Bank indicators, calibrated to our reference tables; our Ecuador country page names each indicator and year. Source: The World Bank (World Development Indicators, Worldwide Governance Indicators), CC BY 4.0.
- Tax tiers: three coarse bands we assign by hand from each country's top marginal personal income tax rate and overall tax reputation.