How Medellin 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.
$1,080 to $2,110£810 to £1,580 a month
$1,090 to $1,220£820 to £918 a month
Visa V Nomada Digital
The catch. The bar is pinned to the minimum wage, so it moves every January. The 2026 wage survived a court challenge in July, though a final ruling is still due.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Medellin | 28° | 28° | 28° | 28° | 28° | 28° | 29° | 29° | 28° | 27° | 27° | 27° |
| Florianopolis | 29° | 30° | 29° | 27° | 24° | 22° | 21° | 22° | 22° | 24° | 26° | 28° |
Medellin: seasons and events · Florianopolis: seasons and events
Level 3: reconsider travel
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 want a city where the weather stops being a variable — 21 to 22 degrees every month, no heating, no air conditioning, no seasonal reckoning — and where a genuinely good metro means you never need a car. It suits asynchronous or US-facing work, because UTC-5 with no clock changes is the cleanest overlap with North America you will find down here. And it suits anyone who will actually learn Spanish, because the reward curve is steep: the difference between the Poblado bubble at 3.3 million pesos a month and real Medellin at 2.3 is mostly linguistic.
You are expecting the Instagram version. This is a Spanish-speaking city with the English proficiency of a country ranked 76th in the world, and every interaction that matters happens at a counter with a queue. It rains on twenty-five days in October. The nomad visa is a two-year cul-de-sac that leads nowhere near residency, the income bar jumped 23 per cent overnight because it is pinned to the minimum wage, and citizenship got harder rather than easier. And be clear-eyed about the crime: the murder rate is a third of the national average and falling, but El Poblado and Laureles are first and second in the city for drug-assisted robbery, with 428 cases by August against 227 in all of 2025. Both the British and American governments say so in writing.
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