Retire in Latin America Cost of Living Calculator

Where, and what you have

The metro fare is held at 5 pesos against a stated real cost of 13, so getting around costs less here than anywhere else on this list and the altitude is 2,240 metres.

What this is

Most pages that answer this question give one number for a whole country and no way to check it. This one gives a month in a named city, line by line, and beside every line the figure it started from: what that figure actually measures, when it was published, and a link you can open.

Every line is also a box you type over. A published survey does not know which street you want or what your health cover costs at your age, and a calculator that will not take your number is one you close. The published figure is a starting point with a receipt, never an answer.

A city is in the file only if a dated, named, openable source gives its rent. Nothing here comes from the crowdsourced databases the rest of this search runs on, which is why some lines are blank and why the page says so rather than filling them.

How to use it

1. Pick the city and say who is goingFood, health cover and getting around are counted per person; the rent and the electricity are not. A figure published for a couple is divided, and the division is shown.
2. Type over every line you know betterRent first, then health cover, which is the weakest column on any page of this kind. The exchange rate is an input too, because a budget in dollars is a bet on one.
3. Read the surplus, then the chartWhat is left each month, whether it clears that country's residence income test, and what the remainder becomes at a rate you choose over the years you choose.

What each country asks a retiree to show

A residence permit on a pension is an income test, and most of these countries set it as a multiple of something that moves: a unit of account, a minimum wage, a basic salary. The rule matters more than the number, because the number changes every January or February. Confirm any of these with the consulate before you act on it.

The five mistakes

Not one of these is about being extravagant. They are all about reading a number as something it is not, and each of them is worth hundreds of dollars a month to somebody who has already moved.

What is missing here, and why

This calculator holds 38 cities in 16 countries, which is fewer than it set out to hold. The rule it was built under is that a city without a published, dated, openable source for its rent is not in the file at all, and researching it turned up three things worth saying out loud.

Almost no government publishes a market rent. Statistics offices publish price indexes, household spending surveys and poverty lines, and those are the figures in the food column. What they do not publish is what a one-bedroom costs this month, so every rent here comes from a dated cost-of-living survey by a named publication instead.

Most published budgets are for two people in a two-bedroom. The clause beside each figure says when that is what it is, and the arithmetic that turns it into one person is shown rather than hidden.

The numbers everybody quotes come from crowdsourced databases. Numbeo and its imitators are where the first page of this search gets its figures, they cannot be checked, and they are why those pages disagree with each other by a factor of two. Nothing from one of them is in this file, which is the reason it has gaps at all. Of the 38 cities, 23 have no published rent outside the centre, 6 have no health figure and 8 have no transport figure. Lima and Cali are absent entirely: their rents exist only as property-listing indexes.

Three whole countries fell out of the file, and the reasons differ. Chile publishes no rent LEVEL anywhere a reader can open: its statistics office prices the basket and the poverty line, its housing observatory has lapsed, and every rent figure in circulation comes from a listings portal. Brazil publishes rent only as an index in reais per square metre, which is not a monthly rent and becomes one only if somebody invents a floor area. Paraguay and Peru publish neither, so Asunción and Lima are missing too, along with Cali, Mendoza and Querétaro.

The three American cities are the opposite problem. Every figure in them is a government one — HUD prices rent by postal code, the USDA prices food, the Energy Information Administration prices electricity and the insurance marketplace publishes every premium by county and age — which is why they are here for contrast and why the health line is the number that does the contrasting.

A blank line starts at zero and waits for your number. That is the honest behaviour, and it is better than the alternative, which is a page that fills the gap with something nobody can check and lets you plan a life on it.

Questions

What to remember

• A month is five lines: rent, food, utilities, health cover and getting around. Every one of them here is an input with a source.
• Rent is the line that moves most between cities, and the only one most published sources give a city figure for.
• Health cover is the weakest column on any page of this kind. Mexico publishes an official fee by age and Colombia publishes premiums; almost nowhere else does.
• A budget in dollars is a bet on an exchange rate. Every figure here was converted at one government table on one date, and the rate is an input.
• The residence income test is set as a multiple of something that moves in most of these countries, so it rises every January or February.
• A surplus of 1,000 dollars a month at 7 per cent a year is 173,085 dollars after ten years, of which 53,085 is growth. The tool works it out month by month.
• The gaps in the data are the honest part. A blank line means nobody checkable publishes that figure, not that it is free.

Where the numbers and the words come from

• Treasury Reporting Rates of Exchange, US Department of the TreasuryEvery currency in the calculator is converted at this one government table on one date, so the cities can be compared with each other at all.
• DANE, Boletín técnico Pobreza Monetaria en Colombia 2025The per-person food basket behind the Colombian food lines, and an example of what a statistics office does publish where it publishes no rent.
• IMSS, Seguro de Salud para la FamiliaMexico's official voluntary health enrolment fee by age band, which is the only health figure in the file set by a government rather than estimated.
• Annual returns on stocks, bonds and bills, 1928 to 2024, Aswath Damodaran, NYU SternThe long-run record the seven and ten per cent presets come from, before and after inflation.
• Lineamientos generales para la expedición de visas, DOF, 2025-07-25Mexico's residence income tests, which are stated in days of the UMA rather than in pesos and therefore move every February.