How Buenos Aires and Florianopolis compare on cost, visas, working hours, weather, internet and safety. Every figure comes from our city guides and tools, checked and dated there.
Dollars and pounds at today's exchange rate. Download speeds are the typical figure from each guide, which says where it comes from: some are for the city, some for the whole country, so treat a small gap as no gap.
Rent, a coworking desk, a cheap lunch on each of 22 working days, and getting around: the same four costs our budget calculator uses. The rent figures aren't always the same kind of figure (some are furnished one-beds, some are averages across every size of flat), so read the note under each.
$878 to $2,130£659 to £1,600 a month
$1,090 to $1,220£820 to £918 a month
Digital nomad temporary residence
The catch. You apply in person at the immigration office in Argentina, and only passports that can visit visa-free qualify.
Digital nomad visa (VITEM XIV)
The catch. If your income falls short, USD 18,000 in the bank qualifies instead. But the visa does not stop you becoming tax resident on day 184, and Brazil then taxes the foreign salary that got you the visa.
See where your own income stands in every country. Check your income
A 9am to 5pm day in the employer's city, shown in local time, for today's date, so it allows for the clocks changing.
Different hours or another employer city? Use the time-zone planner
The average high in °C each month, coloured by the rule on our best-time page: green is a high of 20 to 32°C with under 150mm of rain; red is a high of 38°C or more or under 12°C, 250mm of rain or more, or 33°C or more with 150mm of rain or more. Hover over a month for its rain.
| City | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Buenos Aires | 30° | 29° | 27° | 23° | 19° | 16° | 16° | 18° | 20° | 23° | 26° | 29° |
| Florianopolis | 29° | 30° | 29° | 27° | 24° | 22° | 21° | 22° | 22° | 24° | 26° | 28° |
Buenos Aires: seasons and events · Florianopolis: seasons and events
Level 1: normal precautions
Level 2: increased caution
The US level is for the whole country, as the State Department sets it, and some countries have stricter advice for particular regions.
From each city guide, word for word.
You have hard-currency income and you want a genuinely major city rather than a stopover. Three years of temporary residency gets you permanent status, and the rental market has more supply than it has had in years — freely negotiable, landlords who will take dollars, no guarantor if you pay ahead. It suits anyone whose Spanish is decent or who intends to make it so, and anyone who would rather live somewhere with a life of its own than somewhere assembled for visitors. And it suits people who can hold two ideas at once: that this is a country in the middle of a violent macroeconomic adjustment, and that right now, for somebody earning abroad, that adjustment has produced a stable and unusually good-value place to work from.
If you want the number on the page to still be the number in three months, go somewhere else. Inflation is 33.5 per cent a year and every peso figure here will be wrong by Christmas. The exchange-rate arbitrage that made this city famous among nomads is dead — the blue rate beats the official rate by about one per cent, so anyone still telling you to bring five thousand dollars in cash is describing 2023. English will get you fed and will not get you through an immigration appointment. Under the 2025 decree you now need health insurance and proof you can support yourself, and if you leave for six months your residency evaporates. Citizenship still says two years and now says continuous, which means two years without going home.
People who surf, hike or swim and want an outdoor island life, and who earn comfortably above the USD 1,500 a month the nomad visa asks. It suits anyone who will learn some Portuguese, come in March and April or October and November, and work from a coworking desk rather than a cafe. Britons can try it first on a 90-day visa-free stay.
Anyone who wants Latin American prices: a full lunch costs BRL 66.40 against a national average of BRL 52.75, and the staple-food basket is the 4th dearest of 27 state capitals. Anyone without a car or a lot of patience, because the island is long and in summer every beach road jams. Anyone who wants to stay for good, since nomad years do not count towards citizenship. Anyone who wants winter sun: June to August averages about 16 to 17 degrees and the sea is cold. And anyone who plans to spend more than half the year there without being taxed on worldwide income. On day 184, Brazil will.
Most visas want health cover for the whole stay. Compare nomad health insurance · Build your trip checklist