How Lisbon and Cape Town 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.
$1,490 to $2,520£1,120 to £1,890 a month
$951 to $1,020£714 to £767 a month
D8 digital nomad visa
The catch. The bar is four times the minimum wage, so it rises every January. And a partner can now join you only once you have held the permit for two years.
Remote work visa
The catch. Home Affairs counted 539 visas under the section that covers it in the year to March 2026, though that figure includes other visitor's visas. The regulation says R650,976, but Home Affairs and its embassies use R650,796.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lisbon | 15° | 16° | 19° | 20° | 23° | 26° | 28° | 29° | 27° | 23° | 18° | 15° |
| Cape Town | 29° | 28° | 26° | 24° | 21° | 18° | 18° | 18° | 20° | 22° | 24° | 26° |
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 want a European base that works for a London or New York working day, you would rather eat in a tasca than a restaurant, and you are coming for at least a season rather than a fortnight. It rewards staying: the third month is better than the first, because by then you have a market, a cafe and a couple of people, and you are no longer paying tourist prices for anything.
You are on a tight budget, or you want to work from cafes all day. Lisbon is no longer cheap — rents have gone up faster than almost anywhere in Europe and you are competing with people earning in dollars. And it is not a laptop city: the cafes tolerate you, they do not want you. If you cannot afford a desk somewhere, you will have a worse time here than the internet suggests. Come for the winter and the flat will be colder than you think.
Somebody earning above ZAR 650,976 a year from a foreign employer who wants mountain and sea before and after work, on European time zones. The visa exists and is issued, load-shedding has been off for well over a year, coworking is good and cheap in pounds, and March to April and October to November are glorious.
Anyone who wants to walk home alone at night, hike at dawn on their own, leave a bag on a car seat or drive in from the airport on autopilot. The FCDO warns of muggings on Lion's Head and Signal Hill and of targeted attacks on airport routes. Cape Town Central and Sea Point police stations sit near the top of the Western Cape's crime tables, and South Africa recorded 5,427 murders in three months this year. If you want a city you never have to think about, this is not it.
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