Cost of living in Portugal, from the figures the Portuguese state publishes

Ask what Portugal costs and you will be given a monthly budget. The page ranking first for this question at the time of writing is a sample budget for a couple, written by a resident, with no statistic behind any line of it. The second-largest result is a money-transfer company's marketing page: one table, no source. A crowdsourced index sits between them and at least says that it is crowdsourced.

Portugal's statistical office, the Instituto Nacional de Estatística, publishes something better and almost nobody uses it: median rent per square metre by municipality, computed from contracts that were actually signed, and median purchase prices on the same geography. This page is those releases, with the date each was published and the date it was read.

Where a figure does not exist, it is named as missing rather than filled in.

Rent in Portugal: €9.46 a square metre, from 39,395 signed contracts

In the first quarter of 2026 the median rent in new residential leases across Portugal was €9.46 per square metre, up 9.1% on the same quarter a year earlier — an acceleration, since the previous quarter had shown 7.9%.

The number rests on 39,395 new contracts, itself up 0.7% year on year. That is the sentence worth pausing on: this is not an average of listings, and it is not a survey of what people say they pay. It is the price at which new leases were signed and registered.

The rise is universal, and that is a finding rather than a summary. The median increased in every NUTS III subregion and in all twenty-four municipalities of more than a hundred thousand inhabitants. There is no cheap corner that held still. The steepest annual increase among those large municipalities was in Vila Nova de Famalicão, at 15.1%.

Cost of living in Lisbon: the rent alone exceeds the minimum wage

A median is a rate, not a bill, so here is the arithmetic and it is presented as arithmetic. A seventy-square-metre flat at the Lisbon municipal median comes to about €1,219 a month. The same flat at the Greater Lisbon median is about €1,007, and at the national median about €662.

Set the first of those against the national minimum wage, which is €920 a month in 2026. In the capital, the median rent on an ordinary flat is above the full monthly minimum wage before anything is eaten, heated or insured.

This is not a claim about what any particular flat costs. It is what the state's own median implies at a common size, and it is the calculation a reader can check.

Cost of living in Porto: €10.13, and the gap to Lisbon is the story

Porto's metropolitan median is €10.13 per square metre — about 42% below the municipality of Lisbon, and the lowest of the six areas in the table above. The seventy-metre arithmetic gives roughly €709 a month.

The Porto discount is real and it is the reason the city appears in every relocation article. What those articles rarely add is that Porto's median rose too, in the same universal increase, and that the comparison worth making is not Porto against Lisbon today but Porto against Porto a year ago.

The Algarve, Madeira and the Setúbal peninsula

Madeira at €11.97 is the second most expensive area in the country to rent, above the Setúbal peninsula and above the Algarve. That ordering surprises people who expect the holiday coast to lead and an Atlantic island to trail.

The Algarve at €10.71 and Setúbal at €11.35 sit between Porto and Greater Lisbon. Setúbal in particular is the commuter answer to Lisbon prices, and at €11.35 against Lisbon's €17.42 it is a discount rather than an escape.

House prices in Portugal: €2,198 a square metre, rising 17.5% a year

In the fourth quarter of 2025 the median price of housing sold in Portugal was €2,198 per square metre, up 17.5% year on year — again an acceleration, against 16.1% the quarter before. For the whole of 2025 the median was €2,076.

The volume moved the other way: 41,789 transactions, down 5.3% year on year. Fewer sales at sharply higher prices is the shape of a market where supply, not demand, is the binding constraint.

Prices rose in twenty-four of the twenty-six NUTS III subregions. Two fell: Alto Tâmega e Barroso by 12.1% and Madeira by 8.3% — so Madeira is simultaneously the second most expensive place to rent and one of only two places where the purchase price came down.

Property in Portugal costs a foreign buyer 49% more per square metre

This is the figure that repaid going to the source, and we have found it nowhere else in English.

INE computes the median price separately according to the buyer's tax domicile. In the fourth quarter of 2025 the median price per square metre paid by buyers domiciled abroad exceeded the median paid by buyers domiciled in Portugal by:

• 49.0% in Greater Lisbon
• 35.6% in the Porto Metropolitan Area

What can and cannot be said about this. The difference is measured by the national statistical office, so the difference itself is not in doubt. The cause is not stated anywhere in the release, and we are not going to supply one. A different segment of the market, different neighbourhoods, different urgency, different willingness to negotiate in a second language — all are plausible and none is established. Anyone telling you which it is, is guessing.

What it does mean practically is that the regional medians in the table above are not the price a foreign buyer should expect to pay in Lisbon or Porto. They are the midpoint of a market in which one identifiable group pays measurably more.

The release does not publish the absolute price for each domicile group, only the difference between them. That is why the figure above is drawn as an index rather than in euros.

The cost of living in Portugal compared with the rest of the EU

The one measure that is computed by a single office on a single method for every member state is Eurostat's comparative price level index for household final consumption, where the EU average is 100.

Portugal stands at 86.6 on the 2025 round — roughly 13% below the EU average price level. Eurostat flags the 2025 figures as preliminary and subject to revision when the calculation completes, so the number may move.

For context inside this site's other jurisdictions: Greece is at 86 on the 2024 round, Malta at 91.9 on the 2025 preliminary round.

Household spending in Portugal: the figure this page will not print

Every page on this subject eventually quotes an average household's total annual spending. For Portugal the figure in circulation is €24,190 a year, attributed to the 2022/2023 household budget survey.

We could not confirm it, and on 7 September 2026 we tried again and failed. The statistical office's portal searches fine — the rent and price releases above were read there — but a search for the household expenditure survey returns press releases for the 2010/2011 and 2005/2006 waves only. Searches for the 2022/2023 wave and for the indicator's own name return nothing. The Eurostat household budget table is served by JavaScript and returned no Portuguese rows; the national data portal does not carry the indicator.

So the figure may well be right. We have not seen it in the source, we cannot tell you when it was published, and a page whose argument is that numbers should be traceable does not get to make an exception for a convenient one. It is not on this page.

What stands in its place is what is verifiable: the rent and purchase medians above, the Eurostat price level, and the statutory figures below.

The income Portuguese law requires for residence: €920 a month

Two numbers govern the paperwork rather than the shopping.

The national minimum wage is €920 a month in 2026, set by article 3 of Decreto-Lei 139/2025 of 29 December, in force from 1 January. It is the anchor for the means-of-subsistence test on Portuguese residence permits: 100% for the main applicant, 50% for a second adult and 30% per child, under article 2(2) of Portaria 1563/2007.

The IAS, the social support index used across Portuguese administrative law, is €537.13. It is not the residence threshold, and the two are confused constantly.

Put beside the rent figures, the arithmetic is uncomfortable and worth stating plainly: the income Portugal requires a resident to prove is below the median rent on a seventy-square-metre flat in its capital.

Frequently asked questions about the cost of living in Portugal

More on living, residence and property in Portugal

What Portugal asks a resident to prove, and how the D7 test is built on that €920, is in the Portugal guide. What is left of the investment route after the 2023 repeal is in the golden visa piece. How Portugal's thresholds compare with the Greek, Maltese and Emirati ones is in the income comparison, and what living in Greece costs on the same kind of official data is in the Greece guide. Every act named here, with the date it was read, is on the sources page.

Work out your own cost of living in Portugal

We do not sell property and we do not give legal advice. What we do is put a person who knows what they are asking in front of a licensed firm in the right jurisdiction.

The figures above answer what things cost. They do not answer whether a particular move works, because that depends on which permit you would hold, where the income comes from and how it is taxed once you are resident — and those three interact. If you are weighing Lisbon against Porto, or Portugal against somewhere else in this set, send the question through the enquiry form and say what you actually want at the end of it. We take no part in the fee.

Sources for these Portuguese cost-of-living figures

• The median rent of €9.46 per square metre, the 9.1% annual rise, the 39,395 new contracts, the regional and municipal medians, the universality of the increase across every NUTS III subregion and all twenty-four municipalities above a hundred thousand inhabitants, and the 15.1% rise in Vila Nova de Famalicão: INE, «Estatísticas de Rendas da Habitação ao nível local», first quarter of 2026, published 26 June 2026. Read in the office's own portal on 5 September 2026.
• The median purchase price of €2,198 per square metre, the 17.5% annual rise, the 41,789 transactions, the 2025 full-year median of €2,076, the regional and municipal medians, the rise in twenty-four of twenty-six subregions and the falls in Alto Tâmega e Barroso and Madeira, and the tax-domicile differences of 49.0% and 35.6%: INE, «Estatísticas de Preços da Habitação ao nível local», fourth quarter of 2025, published 24 April 2026. Read in the office's own portal on 5 September 2026.
• The comparative price level index of 86.6 for Portugal, 86 for Greece and 91.9 for Malta: Eurostat's comparative price levels of household final consumption expenditure, EU27 = 100. The 2025 round is published as preliminary.
• The minimum wage of €920 a month: article 3 of Decreto-Lei 139/2025 of 29 December, in force 1 January 2026. The 100/50/30 scale: article 2(2) of Portaria 1563/2007. The IAS of €537.13: the value in force for 2026.
• The seventy-square-metre monthly figures are arithmetic from the published medians, not observed rents, and are presented as such throughout.
• Not established and therefore not printed: average annual household expenditure. The €24,190 figure in circulation is attributed to the 2022/2023 household budget survey and could not be found at source on either 5 September or 7 September 2026 — the portal returns press releases for the 2010/2011 and 2005/2006 waves only, and searches for the 2022/2023 wave and for the indicator's name return nothing.
• The description of what competing pages publish is based on reading the two highest-ranking results for this query on 7 September 2026, and is reported as what those pages said on that date.