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Move & retire

Vietnam

Cheap and pleasant, with no retirement visa and no plan to add one.

3/4
ingredients confirmed
Still unknown: healthcare
Living
~$1,100/mo
Couple, all in. Compared at country level, so capital cities and large metros run higher. The price level behind it prices the basket residents buy, and a foreign renter cannot reach the cheap end of local housing — poorer countries may still sit too low here.
Safety
High
Residency
No retirement visa
A temporary residence card follows a work permit, an investment or family ties, and runs up to two years. Retirees without one of those cycle through e-visas. The subject has been under policy discussion but nothing has been introduced

More is being checked.

Where these figures came from

One row per ingredient. Open any of them for the source, how far we trust it, and when we last checked.

Living~$1,100/mo

Pathoff judgement directed by evidence, not computed from it: the country’s position comes from the World Bank household consumption price level for 2024 (0.296 of the United States, CC BY 4.0 — the ICP benchmark carried forward annually by the World Bank’s own method); the US reference budget is ours. See the Pathoff method, section 12.

Couple, all in. Compared at country level, so capital cities and large metros run higher. The price level behind it prices the basket residents buy, and a foreign renter cannot reach the cheap end of local housing — poorer countries may still sit too low here.

Confidence
made by us from the source
SafetyHigh

Global Peace Index 2026: rank 41 of 163, score 1.738. Converted by the Pathoff GPI formula (GPI in lib/scoring.ts)

Confidence
made by us from the source
ResidencyNo retirement visa

Pathoff outcome rubric (the Pathoff method, section 10-4), residency band "Hard, and partly out of your hands": No retirement visa. A temporary residence card follows a work permit, an investment or family ties, runs two years, and does not clearly lead to permanence.

A temporary residence card follows a work permit, an investment or family ties, and runs up to two years. Retirees without one of those cycle through e-visas. The subject has been under policy discussion but nothing has been introduced

Confidence
made by us from the source
Rule
No change known to us
Last checked
2026-09
HealthcareNo data yet

No source recorded.

We did not find a source we would stand behind on quality and cost of care for a foreign resident. Anecdote about flying to Bangkok or Singapore for serious treatment is common but is not evidence

Confidence
no figure

What it is like here

The cost of living is the draw and it is real. The paperwork is not: Vietnam has no retirement visa, unlike Thailand or Malaysia, and long-term residence runs through employment, investment or family. In practice most foreign retirees cycle through e-visas, which is a way of living somewhere without ever being resident there. Healthcare is the other open question, and we have left it open rather than guess.

How the process works

1

Find a basis other than retirement

Employment, investment or family. There is no category for arriving with savings.

Timing not confirmed
2

Temporary residence card, tied to that basis

Valid up to two years and aligned to the underlying permit, so it lapses when the basis does.

⏱ up to 2 years

Where people settle

Da Nang
Coastal, cheaper than the two big cities, a long-standing foreign-resident base

Open any ingredient above to see where its figure came from, how far we trust it and when we last checked. Nothing here is a substitute for the official source. Last reviewed 2026-09-03.

Photograph of Vietnam, licensed Pexels License, via Pexels.