North America for Digital Nomads

Monthly costs are what one person spends living comfortably: a one-bedroom flat on a monthly lease, eating out often, a coworking desk, transport and a social life.

• Big city, low cost: Mexico City, the region’s nomad capital, and Guadalajara, Mexico’s tech city.
• Caribbean beaches: Playa del Carmen, with an easy expat setup on US Eastern time, and San Juan in Puerto Rico, with US infrastructure.
• Pacific beaches: Puerto Vallarta for a walkable resort town, Tamarindo in Costa Rica for surf.
• Food and culture: Oaxaca, Mexico City and Mérida.
• Safety first: Mérida is often called Mexico’s safest city, and Canada’s cities are very safe.
• Learning Spanish: Antigua Guatemala and Oaxaca, both full of good, cheap language schools.
• US cities: Miami and Austin have big remote-work scenes, at US prices.

• Mexico: most Western visitors can stay up to 180 days, but the officer decides the length, and many people now get 30 to 90 days, especially on repeat visits. Have an onward ticket and an address ready. For a year or more, temporary residence needs about $4,400 a month in income or about $74,000 in savings, and you apply at a Mexican consulate before you travel.
• Costa Rica: a nomad visa of one year, renewable, for people earning $3,000 a month, with no Costa Rican income tax on foreign earnings.
• Panama: a remote worker visa of nine months, renewable once, from $3,000 a month.
• Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua share a CA-4 area with one 90-day visa-free allowance across all four.
• The Caribbean: Barbados has a year-long nomad programme for higher earners, and the Bahamas has one whose status is unclear in 2026. Antigua and Barbuda’s has closed.
• The US and Puerto Rico: there is no nomad visa, and US visitor rules do not clearly cover remote work for a foreign employer. ESTA visitors can stay up to 90 days.
• Canada: visitors can stay up to six months, and Canada says visitors may work remotely for a foreign employer during their stay.

A comfortable month costs about $1,500 to $2,000 in Oaxaca, Guadalajara, Mérida and Antigua, $2,000 to $2,600 in Mexico City, Playa del Carmen, Puerto Vallarta, Panama City and Tamarindo, about $2,900 in San Juan, and $4,000 to $4,500 or more in Miami and Austin. These are ballpark figures. The peso has been strong against the dollar in recent years, so Mexico is less of a bargain than it was, and beach towns cost noticeably more in the December to April high season.

Most of the region shares US hours. Mexico City, Guadalajara, Oaxaca, Mérida and Central America are on UTC-6 with no daylight saving: the same as Chicago in winter and an hour behind it in US summer. The Riviera Maya (Playa del Carmen, Tulum, Cancún) and Panama are on UTC-5 all year, the same as New York in winter. Puerto Rico is on UTC-4, an hour ahead of New York in winter.

• December to April is the dry season and the best time almost everywhere, and also the busiest and most expensive.
• June to November is hurricane season on the Caribbean and Gulf coasts and the Pacific coast of Mexico. Storms are most likely from August to October. You can still go, but get flexible bookings and insurance.
• The highlands (Mexico City, Oaxaca, Guadalajara, Antigua) are mild all year thanks to altitude, with an afternoon rainy season from about June to September.
• Mérida is very hot from April to June.

Mexico’s domestic flights (Volaris, Viva and Aeroméxico) are cheap, and its first-class long-distance buses (ADO, ETN, Primera Plus) are comfortable and safe. Uber and DiDi work in most Mexican cities. In Central America, shuttle vans link the main tourist towns, and flights are expensive. Between the US and Mexico, flights are short and often cheap from Texas, California and Florida.

Private hospitals in Mexico City, Guadalajara, Mérida, Panama City and San José are good and much cheaper than in the US. Safety varies hugely by place: the nomad bases on this list are generally fine with normal city habits, but check your government’s advice for each state, use ride-hailing at night, and don’t flash phones and laptops. Cash is still common in Mexico and Central America; use bank ATMs inside branches and decline the ATM’s own currency conversion. The US dollar is used in Panama, El Salvador and Puerto Rico.