Living and Working in Vietnam

Vietnam's cost of living is a city question rather than a national one, so the useful starting point is a set of dated figures rather than an adjective. Numbeo's crowdsourced index, read for this guide on 8 August 2026, estimates the monthly cost for one person excluding rent at about VND 12,700,000 in Ho Chi Minh City on data last updated 27 July 2026, VND 11,800,000 in Hanoi on data of 25 July 2026, and VND 11,700,000 in Da Nang on data of 6 August 2026. Rent is additional to those figures, and crowdsourced averages move, so they are worth re-reading close to a departure date.

On the same source, a one-bedroom apartment in the city centre averages about VND 15,000,000 a month in Ho Chi Minh City, with most reported figures between VND 12,000,000 and VND 25,000,000; about VND 11,000,000 in Hanoi, most figures between VND 9,000,000 and VND 15,000,000; and about VND 13,600,000 in Da Nang, most figures between VND 10,000,000 and VND 18,000,000. Outside the centre the averages fall to roughly VND 7,000,000 in Ho Chi Minh City, VND 7,500,000 in Hanoi and VND 8,900,000 in Da Nang. On these figures Da Nang city-centre rents sit above Hanoi's, and Da Nang is also the most expensive of the three outside the centre.

How that reads depends on where the income is earned, not on nationality. For someone drawing a pension, remote-work income or investment income from outside Vietnam, the relevant comparison is with prices wherever that income is spent today. For someone planning to live on Vietnamese pay, the arithmetic runs the other way: the National Statistics Office puts the average monthly income of workers at VND 8,400,000 for 2025, up 8.9% on 2024, with an urban average of VND 10,100,000. The two sets of figures do not measure the same basket, and the distance between them is why the same city reads so differently depending on where the income comes from. Sector ranges are in the Sectors and salaries section.

Vietnam runs its own entry policy, built from Government resolutions and from bilateral agreements rather than from any regional list, and four routes into the country turn on the traveller's nationality. The first is a unilateral exemption of 45 days from the date of entry, whatever the passport type and whatever the purpose of travel, granted by Resolution 44/NQ-CP of 7 March 2025 to citizens of Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, Russia, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland, and running until 14 March 2028. The second is a 45-day exemption for tourism, granted by Resolution 229/NQ-CP of 8 August 2025 to citizens of Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia, Hungary, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Switzerland, running from 15 August 2025 to 14 August 2028. The third is the bilateral network. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs publishes a schedule of exemption agreements with more than 90 countries; most cover diplomatic and official passports only, and on the schedule as it stands, stated as updated to 14 March 2025, fifteen entries cover the ordinary passport. Ordinary passport holders from Cambodia, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Malaysia, Mongolia, Myanmar, Singapore and Thailand enter without a visa for up to 30 days, Belarus for 30 days within a 90-day total in a calendar year, the Philippines for 21 days, Brunei for 14 days, and Chile and Panama for 90 days. Several of those agreements attach conditions of their own: most require at least six months of passport validity, the agreements with Mongolia, Chile and Panama apply only where the entry is not for income-earning activity, the Myanmar and Singapore texts exclude entry for work, the Malaysian arrangement is confined to listed purposes including tourism, business negotiation, investment and conferences, the Indonesian stay cannot be extended, and the Philippine and Singapore texts require a return or onward ticket. The fourth route is the e-visa, which covers a nationality reached by none of the first three, among them United States, Canadian, Australian, Indian, Irish, Nigerian and South African passport holders. Resolution 127/NQ-CP of 14 August 2023 opens the e-visa to citizens of all countries and territories, and Law No. 23/2023/QH15, in force on 15 August 2023, sets its duration at up to 90 days, single or multiple entry. Those four routes turn on nationality, and article 12 of Law No. 47/2014/QH13 carries exemption cases that do not: the holder of a valid permanent or temporary residence card; entry into a border-gate economic zone, a special administrative-economic unit or a coastal economic zone, where article 31(1)(d) certifies 15 days of temporary residence in the first case and 30 days in the other two; overseas Vietnamese holding a foreign passport together with their foreign spouse and children, and the foreign spouse and children of a Vietnamese citizen, for whom Decree 82/2015/ND-CP of 24 September 2015 issues a visa exemption certificate valid for at most five years and at least six months shorter than the passport; and, since 1 July 2026, a time-limited exemption for foreign nationals in special categories treated as a priority for socio-economic development, added to article 12 by Law No. 118/2025/QH15 of 10 December 2025 on terms set by the Government. Separately from all of these, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs schedule records a 30-day visa exemption for foreign nationals travelling to Phu Quoc, raised to that figure by Decision 80/2013/QD-TTg of 27 December 2013. The two exemption resolutions carry an end date, so they are policy instruments with an expiry rather than a permanent status, while the bilateral agreements run until the parties change them.

Several practical points attach to the short stay. Vietnam states the passport rule itself: article 20(1)(a) of Law No. 47/2014/QH13 requires a person entering under the unilateral exemption to hold a passport with at least six months of remaining validity, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs schedule states the same six months counted from the date of entry; most of the bilateral agreements carry a six-month clause of their own. The British and Canadian governments state six months too, on different bases: the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office counts from the date of arrival, Global Affairs Canada from the expected departure date, and the United Kingdom adds at least two blank pages and an undamaged passport. On what happens at the end of an exempt stay, article 31(1)(c) grants a citizen of a unilaterally exempt country 45 days of temporary residence and provides that a visa or an extension of temporary residence may then be considered under the Law; article 35 sets that procedure, the inviting or sponsoring body applying to the immigration authority or to the competent Ministry of Foreign Affairs body, which examines the request within 5 working days. On the e-visa, the FCDO notes that it restricts the holder to the entry and exit points chosen in the application, which matters for anyone planning an overland arrival. The fee is not set by the application portal but by Ministry of Finance circular, currently Circular 28/2026/TT-BTC of 27 March 2026, in force since 1 April 2026: USD 25 for a single-entry visa and USD 50 for a multiple-entry visa valid up to 90 days, with longer multiple-entry validities running to USD 165.

Beyond a short stay, the visa symbol follows the purpose of entry, and the categories are more granular than the letters DN and DT suggest. DN1 covers foreigners working with a Vietnamese legal entity and DN2 those entering to offer services, establish a commercial presence or act under a treaty; both run up to 12 months. The investor symbols are graded by capital contributed: DT1 from VND 100 billion or investment in an incentivised sector, DT2 from VND 50 billion to under VND 100 billion, DT3 from VND 3 billion to under VND 50 billion, and DT4 below VND 3 billion. The employment symbols are LD1, for foreigners exempt from the work permit requirement, and LD2, for those who need one; both run up to two years. Two further symbols were added to article 8 on 1 July 2026 by Law No. 118/2025/QH15 of 10 December 2025: UD1, for foreign nationals who are high-quality digital technology industry personnel and for the other cases given priority by a law or by a National Assembly resolution, and UD2, for their spouse and children under 18; article 9(6) gives both up to five years. Two consequences follow. A business symbol is not an employment symbol, and Decree 219/2025/ND-CP of 7 August 2025 sets out separately who needs a work permit and who does not. And DN1, DN2 and DT4 do not open the door to a temporary residence card, because article 36(1)(b) of Law No. 47/2014/QH13, in the text in force since 1 July 2026, does not list them, so those three routes are renewed as visas of up to 12 months rather than converted into a card.

The routes are not mutually exclusive: a common sequence is a first entry under an exemption or an e-visa, then a long-stay symbol once a sponsoring organisation or individual and a purpose of stay are established. Whether that symbol can then be paired with a temporary residence card depends on which symbol it is, since article 36(1)(b) of Law No. 47/2014/QH13, in the text in force since 1 July 2026, opens the card to LV1, LV2, LS, DT1, DT2, DT3, NN1, NN2, DH, PV1, LD1, LD2, TT, UD1 and UD2 holders and not to DN1, DN2 or DT4. Where a card is available, article 38 of the same law requires it to expire at least 30 days before the passport does, and article 4(4) of Circular 31/2015/TT-BCA of 6 July 2015, as amended, sets the shortest card term at one year, so a passport with less than thirteen months to run cannot support even the shortest card.

The working language is Vietnamese. English is the main foreign language in multinationals, technology companies and tourism, and French survives residually, mainly in some academic and institutional settings and among older generations. For an international professional, English opens most cross-border environments, but a few basics in Vietnamese noticeably ease daily life and the building of the personal bond that carries so much weight in the local work culture.

The labour market is growing, driven by manufacturing, information technology, finance, real estate and tourism. On the National Statistics Office's own measure, the average monthly income of workers was VND 8,400,000 for 2025, up 8.9% on 2024, reaching VND 8,700,000 in the fourth quarter, with an urban average of VND 10,100,000 against VND 7,300,000 in rural areas. That figure is an average across all workers, not a benchmark for skilled international roles: positions in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City sit well above it, and information technology occupies the top of the published ranges. The sector breakdown is in the Sectors and salaries section.

On authorisation, the governing instrument is Decree 219/2025/ND-CP of 7 August 2025, which took effect on the day it was issued and replaced Decrees 152/2020/ND-CP and 70/2023/ND-CP. It merges the former two-step process, approval of the demand for foreign labour and then the permit application, into a single procedure. Article 7(13)(a) exempts from the work permit requirement foreign managers, executive directors, experts and technical workers whose total working time in Vietnam is under 90 days in a year, counted from 1 January to the last day of the year; the measure is time worked, not time present. Article 9(4) attaches a condition to that exemption: no exemption certificate is required, but the employer must notify the competent authority in writing at least 3 working days before the intended start date. The visa side runs in parallel: LD2 is the symbol for a foreign worker who requires a permit, LD1 for one who is exempt, and a business symbol does not authorise salaried employment whatever its remaining validity. Someone whose income is paid by an employer or clients outside Vietnam is in a different configuration, and the two questions to settle on their own terms are the stay category and tax residence, covered in the Tax section.

Tax residence rests on a presence test. Under article 2 of the Law on Personal Income Tax, a person is a resident if present in Vietnam for 183 days or more in a calendar year or in 12 consecutive months from the date of first presence, or if they have a place of habitual residence in Vietnam, which the article defines as a registered permanent residence or a house rented in Vietnam under a fixed-term lease contract. Anyone who meets neither condition is a non-resident. The test is the same one the previous law used, and it is the pivot on which everything else turns for someone whose income is paid from outside the country.

Law No. 109/2025/QH15, adopted on 10 December 2025, replaced the 2007 law. It takes effect on 1 July 2026, but its employment-income and business-income provisions for residents apply from the 2026 tax period. It cuts the resident scale from seven bands to five: 5% on monthly taxable income up to VND 10 million, 10% from 10 to 30 million, 20% from 30 to 60 million, 30% from 60 to 100 million and 35% above VND 100 million, applied to taxable income after deductions. Residents are taxed on worldwide income wherever it is paid. A non-resident is taxed at a flat 20% on Vietnam-source employment income under article 21. Separately, Resolution 110/2025/UBTVQH15 of 17 October 2025 raised the personal deduction to VND 15,500,000 a month, or VND 186,000,000 a year, and the dependant deduction to VND 6,200,000 a month, in force on 1 January 2026 and applying from the 2026 tax period. This sets out a legal framework, not a plan of action. The basis of taxation is not uniform across the region, and the Thailand guide sets out the Thai rules separately.

Vietnam has double taxation treaties that allocate taxing rights between the two states concerned. Named partners include the United Kingdom, whose 1994 agreement was signed on 9 April 1994 and entered into force on 15 December 1994; Australia, whose agreement was signed on 13 April 1992 and entered into force on 30 December 1992; and France, whose convention was signed at Hanoi on 10 February 1993, entered into force on 1 July 1994 and was published by decree no. 94-1101 of 13 December 1994. The United States is the exception a reader may need to know about: a treaty was signed in Washington on 7 July 2015 but has not entered into force, and Vietnam does not appear on the Internal Revenue Service's list of United States income tax treaties. Whether any treaty reaches a given situation depends on the country of residence and on the article invoked.

The defining feature of Vietnamese property is the land regime. Land is not held in private ownership: it is used through land use rights, and article 4 of the Land Law 2024, Law No. 31/2024/QH15, in force since 1 August 2024, lists the categories of land user without including foreign individuals. What a foreign individual may own is housing, meaning apartments and separate houses inside commercial housing projects, under the Housing Law 2023, Law No. 27/2023/QH15. Land use rights and house ownership are two different objects.

Ownership is granted for a term rather than indefinitely. Article 20(2)(c) of the Housing Law 2023 caps a foreign individual's housing ownership at 50 years from the date the certificate is issued, extendable once on application for a further period of up to 50 years, with the term written into the certificate itself. The same point carries an exception: a foreign individual married to a Vietnamese citizen residing in Vietnam owns housing with the rights of a Vietnamese homeowner, and one married to an overseas Vietnamese permitted to enter Vietnam owns it on the terms that apply to overseas Vietnamese. Quotas apply at building and area level rather than nationally, and they are statutory: article 19(1) of the same law limits foreign organisations and individuals to 30% of the apartments in one apartment building, and to no more than 250 separate houses in an area with a population equivalent to a ward. Article 19(3) leaves the ward equivalence to the Government, and article 5 of Decree 95/2024/ND-CP of 24 July 2024, in force since 1 August 2024, fixes it at 10,000 people and provides that where an area holds two or more housing projects, ownership may be spread across them while the 250-house ceiling applies to the area as a whole.

The implementing decree is in force, so the practical arrangements are now published rather than pending. What still has to be verified transaction by transaction is whether the development is one in which foreign ownership is permitted, whether the quota in the target building or area is still open, and what term the certificate will actually carry. The tax consequences of holding, letting or disposing of property are read against the Tax section.

A stay in Vietnam carries a reporting obligation, and article 33 of Law No. 47/2014/QH13 splits it in two. Under article 33(1) the foreign national in temporary residence must declare that residence, through the person who directly manages the lodging establishment, to the commune, ward or special-zone police or the police post covering the establishment; the establishment for its part has to ask for the passport or international travel document and the documents relating to residence in Vietnam, and make the declaration, before it agrees to accommodate anyone. Under article 33(2) the declaration is made electronically or on a temporary residence declaration form, and where the form is used the manager completes it and passes it to that police unit within 12 hours of the foreign national's arrival at the establishment, or within 24 hours in a remote area. A lodging establishment, as article 32 defines it, covers tourist accommodation and guesthouses but also housing for foreign nationals working, studying or interning, medical facilities and private houses. Article 33(3) requires a fresh declaration on a change of place of temporary residence. Global Affairs Canada states the same obligation from the traveller's side, adding that where the accommodation is non-commercial the report goes to the nearest police station.

On safety, the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office describes violent crime against foreigners as rare and theft and pickpocketing as regular, with bag-snatchers operating in crowded and tourist areas, and it warns about job offers that turn out to involve passport confiscation. Road travel is the substantial risk: the FCDO records that motorbike accidents are common and have killed and injured British nationals, that a helmet is legally required of riders and passengers alike, and that any alcohol in the system is an offence carrying a fine and possible imprisonment. These are practical points, with no judgment implied about the country.

A few legal points are worth knowing before departure, stated factually. Penalties for possessing, using, distributing or manufacturing drugs are severe whatever the quantity and can extend to the death penalty, according to the FCDO. On gambling, Global Affairs Canada states that gambling outside licensed casinos is illegal in Vietnam and that a foreign passport is required to gamble in the licensed establishments. On medication, the same source advises carrying sufficient quantities, keeping them in their original containers and packing them in hand luggage. The general rule is informational caution: check the rules in force before departure, and consult a qualified professional for any personal decision. The corresponding stay routes are set out in the entry and stay section.

A move to Vietnam holds three readings together: a cost base that has to be read city by city from dated figures rather than from reputation; an entry, work and residence framework built from separate instruments, each with its own conditions and, in the case of the exemption resolutions, its own expiry date; and a tax system governed by the 183-day test, a scale rewritten for the 2026 tax period and a treaty network that does not cover every nationality. Checked in advance against official sources and with qualified professionals, these rules lay the groundwork for a move to a country whose work culture rewards patience and the personal bond.