Moving to Hong Kong from Australia

Our residency index: 75/100, comparatively open. It is our own rating of how realistic long-term residency in Hong Kong is for Australian citizens, based on the routes Hong Kong publishes. Realistic long-term residency runs through Hong Kong's talent and skilled-professional routes (the Top Talent Pass and the points-based Quality Migrant Admission Scheme, neither needing an employer sponsor), employment visas, or the Capital Investment Entrant Scheme; there is no retirement or passive-income visa.

The cheapest self-funded routes we track:

• Investment: about $3.8M (New Capital Investment Entrant Scheme, HK$30 million net in permissible assets (HKD pegged to USD at ~7.8375); 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, 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. Hong Kong

   65% match

   Est. cost

   €4,423/mo

   Avg temp

   23°C

   Safety index

   78/100

Our estimate for a couple living centrally in Hong Kong is €4,423 a month. For comparison, we estimate €4,094 a month in Melbourne. Use these figures to compare places rather than to set a budget.

Hong Kong is in our low to medium tax tier (moderate 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.

• Safest cities to live in Asia
• Best places to live in Asia
• Best big cities to live in

• Moving to Hong Kong from the US
• Moving to Hong Kong from the UK
• Moving to Hong Kong from Canada
• Moving to Hong Kong from Ireland
• Moving to Hong Kong 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.