Moving to Taiwan from the UK

Our residency index: 60/100, possible, with conditions. It is our own rating of how realistic long-term residency in Taiwan is for UK citizens, based on the routes Taiwan publishes. Realistic long-term routes are the Employment Gold Card for skilled professionals or high earners (open work, no sponsor needed) and the investment resident visa; Taiwan has no passive-income or retirement visa, and permanent residency (APRC) generally requires five years of residence.

The cheapest self-funded routes we track:

• Income: about $5,100 a month (Taiwan Employment Gold Card salary criterion, NT$160,000/mo before tax (USD/TWD ~31.35); as of June 2026)
• Investment: about $200k (Taiwan Resident Visa for Investment, USD 200,000 minimum capital (approx NT$6 million); 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, UK 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 UK 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. Taipei

   79% match

   Est. cost

   €3,362/mo

   Avg temp

   23°C

   Safety index

   82/100

Our estimate for a couple living centrally in Taipei is €3,362 a month. For comparison, we estimate €4,315 a month in London. Use these figures to compare places rather than to set a budget.

Taiwan is in our low to medium tax tier (moderate personal income tax); the UK 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 the UK 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 big cities to live in
• Safest cities to live abroad
• Best places to live in Asia
• Cities with the best healthcare to move to
• Best places to retire in the world

• Moving to Taiwan from the US
• Moving to Taiwan from Canada
• Moving to Taiwan from Australia
• Moving to Taiwan from Ireland
• Moving to Taiwan 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 UK 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.