Country guide · Singapore
Moving to Singapore: cost of living, salaries, taxes, visas
Sharply salary-tiered work passes; low personal income tax; foreigners are exempt from CPF; world-tier housing costs.
Singapore's immigration system is among the most explicitly salary-tiered globally. The Employment Pass (EP), ONE Pass, and Tech.Pass each target specific seniority and salary thresholds; Permanent Residency is selective.
Personal income tax is progressive with a low top rate (~22-24% for residents) and foreigners are exempt from CPF (the mandatory savings system). Foreign-sourced income is generally untaxed unless remitted under specific structures — one of the cleaner regimes globally for cross-border earners. The trade-off is housing cost: central condos in Singapore are among the world's most expensive.
Data signals
What the numbers say about Singapore
The take-home math
Take-home pay in Singapore is shaped by a roughly 6% effective payroll deduction (income tax + social security), with VAT at 9%.
The main hub
Its primary hub, Singapore, carries a cost index of 92 (New York = 100).
Income per capita
Average income in Singapore
Singapore's income per capita is about $126,190 (GNI, PPP-adjusted US$), per the World Bank (2024). No comparable national wage survey is published for Singapore, so this is an income proxy rather than an average-salary figure. Source: World Bank.
This is a country-wide figure. For what you actually need to earn in a specific city, see the salary-by-lifestyle breakdown on each city's cost-of-living page.
At a glance
Singapore relocation profile
Vs the catalog average
Is Singapore cheap or expensive, relatively?
Singapore's cost and rent index against the mean across every city Mundevo covers.
Index base: New York = 100. Catalog average is the unweighted mean across all cities Mundevo tracks, recomputed on every build.
Mundevo coverage in Singapore
Singapore is the anchor city for cost-of-living and corridor calculations involving Singapore.
| City | Cost index | Rent index | Safety | Population |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Singapore | 92 | 80 | 88 | 5,917,600 |
Tax and visa landscape
Headline tax model + entry-point visa overview for relocators.
- Effective income tax: 6.0%
- Social security (employee): 0.0%
- Total payroll deduction: 6.0%
- VAT: 9.0%
- Currency: SGD
Effective rates assume a single salaried filer at country median wage. Special regimes (e.g. expat-favoring schemes) are not applied here — see the visa guide for those.
Visa categories, residency routes, and tax-regime context for relocators are detailed in the dedicated visa guide.
Singapore visa guide →Salary bands at Singapore — by role
Illustrative gross-salary bands for 6 senior IC roles in Singapore. Derived from NYC anchor × Singapore pay-tier multiplier. Cross-check Levels.fyi, Glassdoor before negotiating.
| Role | P25 | P50 | P75 | NYC anchor (P50) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Software engineer | SGD 136,273 | SGD 169,167 | SGD 216,157 | $180,000 |
| Product manager | SGD 140,972 | SGD 183,264 | SGD 244,352 | $195,000 |
| UX / product designer | SGD 95,995 | SGD 126,539 | SGD 170,174 | $145,000 |
| Marketing manager | SGD 89,282 | SGD 122,176 | SGD 164,468 | $130,000 |
| Data scientist | SGD 126,875 | SGD 164,468 | SGD 216,157 | $175,000 |
| Finance analyst | SGD 125,532 | SGD 176,887 | SGD 251,065 | $155,000 |
Top relocation corridors
Closest peers by cost-of-living index — the moves most commonly considered alongside Singapore.