Moving to Uruguay from the US

Our residency index: 85/100, comparatively open. It is our own rating of how realistic long-term residency in Uruguay is for US citizens, based on the routes Uruguay publishes. Uruguay grants residency to financially independent foreigners who prove stable foreign passive income or a pension (rentista/pensionado 'sufficient means' route), leading directly to permanent residency with no required investment.

The cheapest self-funded routes we track:

• Income: about $1,500 a month (Uruguay rentista/pensionado 'medios de vida' route, ~USD 1,500/mo passive income for a single applicant (administrative expectation; no statutory minimum); 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.

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.

1. 1

   1. Montevideo

   76% match

   Est. cost

   €3,313/mo

   Avg temp

   17°C

   Safety index

   63/100

Our estimate for a couple living centrally in Montevideo is €3,313 a month. For comparison, we estimate €4,640 a month in New York City. Use these figures to compare places rather than to set a budget.

Uruguay 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.

• Safest cities in Latin America
• Best places to live in South America
• Best places to retire in Latin America
• Best places to live in Latin America
• Easiest countries to move to
• Cheapest cities to live in Latin America

• Moving to Uruguay from the UK
• Moving to Uruguay from Canada
• Moving to Uruguay from Australia
• Moving to Uruguay from Ireland
• Moving to Uruguay 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 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 Uruguay, the cost index and the safety score are country-level estimates from World Bank indicators, calibrated to our reference tables; our Uruguay 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.