Moving to Finland from Canada

Our residency index: 55/100, possible, with conditions. It is our own rating of how realistic long-term residency in Finland is for Canadian citizens, based on the routes Finland publishes. Realistic long-term routes are work-based (employed person, EU Blue Card), entrepreneur/startup, and a discretionary self-supporting residence permit on other grounds; Finland has no passive golden-visa scheme.

The cheapest self-funded routes we track:

• Income: about $1,195 a month (Residence permit on other grounds, self-supporting means, lowest regional tier EUR 1,030/mo (Helsinki tier EUR 1,210); converted at EUR/USD 1.16; 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, Canadian 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 Canadian 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. Turku

   73% match

   Est. cost

   €3,581/mo

   Avg temp

   7°C

   Safety index

   78/100

2. 2

   2. Tampere

   71% match

   Est. cost

   €3,618/mo

   Avg temp

   6°C

   Safety index

   78/100

3. 3

   3. Helsinki

   71% match

   Est. cost

   €3,827/mo

   Avg temp

   7°C

   Safety index

   78/100

4. 4

   4. Oulu

   68% match

   Est. cost

   €3,588/mo

   Avg temp

   4°C

   Safety index

   78/100

Our estimate for a couple living centrally runs from €3,581 a month in Turku to €3,827 in Helsinki. For comparison, we estimate €3,991 a month in Toronto. Use these figures to compare places rather than to set a budget.

Finland is in our high tax tier (high personal income tax); Canada 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 Canada 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
• Safest cities to live in Europe
• Safest cities to live abroad

• Moving to Finland from the US
• Moving to Finland from the UK
• Moving to Finland from Australia
• Moving to Finland from Ireland
• Moving to Finland 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 Canadian 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.