Living in Athens

Athens, Greece, about 664,046 people. What you would earn and keep, the climate month by month, and every open figure we hold, each with its source, period and licence.

Weigh Athens against other cities, with your own numbers

Key facts

• Athens has about 664,046 residents (GeoNames).
• On a gross salary of €60,000 a year, an employee in Athens takes home about €38,407 a year (€3,201 a month) after income tax and employee contributions, an effective rate of 36.0% (Greece 2026 rules).
• In Athens the average daily high (air temperature in the shade) peaks at 34.9 °C in July and the average daily low falls to 6.2 °C in February (Historical weather (ERA5 reanalysis), Open-Meteo, 2021-2025).
• Athens has about 97 nice days a year, days that are dry, mostly clear and feel 18 to 30 °C on average from 8 am to 8 pm, most of them in September (21) (Historical weather (ERA5 reanalysis), Open-Meteo, 2021-2025).
• Between 2021 and 2025 the air in Athens reached 43.5 °C at its hottest and −2.4 °C at its coldest (Historical weather (ERA5 reanalysis), Open-Meteo).
• It rains or snows (at least 1 mm) on about 65 days a year in Athens (Historical weather (ERA5 reanalysis), Open-Meteo, 2021-2025).
• The shortest day in Athens lasts 9 h 31 min and the longest 14 h 48 min (computed from latitude).
• Fine dust (PM2.5) in Athens averages 12.6 µg/m³ a year, 2.5 times the WHO guideline of 5 µg/m³ (WHO Ambient Air Quality Database v8.0 (2026), World Health Organization, 2025).
• Everyday prices in Greece sit at 65.5 on an index where the United States is 100 (World Development Indicators, World Bank, 2025).
• Life expectancy at birth in Greece is 81.8 years (World Development Indicators, World Bank, 2024).
• Greece records 0.84 intentional homicides per 100,000 people a year (World Development Indicators, World Bank, 2023).
• Besides citizens of Greece, citizens of 29 other countries under EU and EEA free movement and of Switzerland (Swiss-EU free movement) can live and work in Athens without a visa.

What you would take home

Single resident private-sector employee in Greece over 30 without children: income tax with the art. 16 reduction, EFKA employee contributions. Rules for 2026. Sources: AADE circular Ο.3068/18-11-2025: law 5246/2025 art. 3, the 2026 income tax scale (art. 15 ΚΦΕ), AADE e-library: law 4646/2019, art. 9 (art. 16 ΚΦΕ, the €777 reduction), AADE e-library: ΠΟΛ.1104/2014, taxable pay is gross less the employee's compulsory contributions, AADE: income categories and taxation in Greece (art. 16 reduction above €12,000), e-EFKA circular 38/2024: contribution rates from 1 January 2025 (ΚΠΚ 101: employee 13.37%), e-EFKA circular 4/2026: insurable earnings ceiling €7,761.94 a month from 1 January 2026.

• Assumes age over 30: under 25 the first €20,000 is taxed at 0%, from 26 to 30 the €10,000-20,000 band at 9%. Dependent children lower the rates and raise the reduction; neither is modelled.
• The gross is read as fourteen equal payments (twelve salaries plus the Christmas, Easter and holiday bonuses), each capped at the monthly contribution ceiling.
• Contributions are the standard private-sector package (ΚΠΚ 101); heavy and unhealthy occupations and some funds pay more. No later EFKA circular changing it was found up to October 2026.
• The art. 16 reduction falls by €20 per €1,000 of taxable pay above €12,000, applied pro rata.
• Art. 15 par. 6 ΚΦΕ requires part of your income to be spent by card or other electronic payment, with a charge on any shortfall (extended to 2026 by law 5246/2025); assumed met.
• Newcomers: article 5C makes half of Greek pay tax-free for seven years; switch it on in Money or set a taxable share of 0.5.

A month in Athens

Assumed: one person, €60,000 gross a year, renting a one-bedroom home, and everyday spending of €1,200 a month in Lisbon scaled by each country's price level. These are the app's defaults; change any of them there.

Who can live and work here freely

• Citizens of Greece.
• Citizens of Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, under EU and EEA free movement (Directive 2004/38/EC and the EEA Agreement). Directive 2004/38/EC, extended to Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway by the EEA Agreement. Beyond three months a registration is usually required, but no visa or permit to work.
• Citizens of Switzerland, under Swiss-EU free movement (Agreement on the Free Movement of Persons (EU-Switzerland)).

Climate

Daylight is computed from latitude: the shortest day lasts 9 h 31 min, the longest 14 h 48 min.

Every figure

No open figure yet for: rent, one bedroom, rent, three bedrooms, your childcare cost, health insurance premium, public swimming pools (official), green urban areas (official), commuting by public transport, commute time, monthly transit pass, born abroad, walking or cycling to work, politics, left to right. A country-wide figure is marked as such where it stands in for the city.

Compare Athens with

• Athens vs Amsterdam
• Athens vs Bologna
• Athens vs Budapest
• Athens vs Dubai
• Athens vs Florence
• Athens vs Helsinki
• Athens vs Málaga
• Athens vs Munich
• Athens vs Naples
• Athens vs Rome
• Athens vs Singapore
• Athens vs Vienna

Elsewhere

Sources we link to but do not copy, because their licences forbid it.

• Numbeo: cost of living in Athens
• WeatherSpark: year-round weather in Athens
• Wikipedia: Athens

Credits

• Borgo contributors, from the statutes cited in each figure's note (CC BY 4.0)
• Borgo's summary of the EU-Swiss Agreement on the Free Movement of Persons (State Secretariat for Migration) (Borgo's own summary of the law cited (CC BY 4.0); the official text is cited, not copied)
• Unicode CLDR territory information. Copyright © 1991-2026 Unicode, Inc. Used under the Unicode License v3 (https://www.unicode.org/license.txt) (Unicode License v3)
• Borgo contributors, from the statutes cited in each figure's note (CC BY 4.0)
• Borgo's summary of Directive 2004/38/EC (© European Union, EUR-Lex) (Borgo's own summary of the law cited (CC BY 4.0); the official text is cited, not copied)
• Source: Eurostat, EU Labour Force Survey (edat_lfse_04, © European Union). Borgo keeps each region's latest value Eurostat is not responsible for Borgo's use of its data. (European Commission reuse policy (Decision 2011/833/EU): reuse with the source acknowledged and changes stated)
• Source: Eurostat, Urban Audit (© European Union). Borgo keeps each city's latest value and converts units where its note says so Eurostat is not responsible for Borgo's use of its data. (European Commission reuse policy (Decision 2011/833/EU): reuse with the source acknowledged and changes stated)
• Founders Running Club communities list (facts of presence and links only) (No licence from the publisher: only facts of presence are stored)
• Places, coordinates, populations and time zones from GeoNames (geonames.org), CC BY 4.0 (CC BY 4.0)
• GHS-UCDB R2024A, European Commission, Joint Research Centre, CC BY 4.0, doi:10.2905/1a338be6-7eaf-480c-9664-3a8ade88cbcd; Borgo derives the distance from the centre to the urban centre's edge Shores and lakes from Natural Earth (public domain) decide which directions lead on to land. (CC BY 4.0)
• Counts of GitHub profiles by stated location, from GitHub's public user search (counts only, no profile data) (No data licence from the publisher: only total counts are stored, no record about anyone, as its terms allow public, non-personal information in openly published research)
• Borgo contributors, from the labour codes cited in each figure's note (CC BY 4.0)
• Source: Meteostat (meteostat.net) and its data providers (dev.meteostat.net/providers), CC BY 4.0 (CC BY 4.0)
• The M-Lab NDT Data Set, 2023-01-01–2023-12-31. https://measurementlab.net/tests/ndt (CC0 1.0 (public domain dedication))
• Public holidays from Nager.Date (date.nager.at), MIT License, Copyright (c) Nager (MIT License)
• Made with Natural Earth (public domain) (Public domain (dedicated by the publisher))
• OECD (2026), Net childcare costs, OECD Tax-Benefit Models, https://www.oecd.org/en/data/indicators/net-childcare-costs.html Reusers must cite the OECD as above and pass this acknowledgement requirement on to anyone they share the data with. (OECD terms for data: any use, with the OECD citation passed on)
• OECD (2026), OECD Family Database, PF2.1 Parental leave systems, https://www.oecd.org/en/data/datasets/oecd-family-database.html Reusers must cite the OECD as above and pass this acknowledgement requirement on to anyone they share the data with. (OECD terms for data: any use, with the OECD citation passed on)
• OECD (2026), OECD Well-being Database (How's Life?), https://www.oecd.org/en/data/datasets/well-being-database.html Reusers must cite the OECD as above and pass this acknowledgement requirement on to anyone they share the data with. (OECD terms for data: any use, with the OECD citation passed on)
• Weather data by Open-Meteo.com (https://open-meteo.com/), CC BY 4.0 Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2021-2025. Neither the European Commission nor ECMWF is responsible for any use that may be made of the Copernicus information or data it contains. (CC BY 4.0)
• OpenAlex (openalex.org), CC0 (CC0 1.0 (public domain dedication))
• © OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL 1.0 (https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright) (Open Database License 1.0)
• © OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL 1.0 (https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright) (Open Database License 1.0)
• Airports from OurAirports (ourairports.com), public domain (Public domain (dedicated by the publisher))
• Research Organization Registry (ror.org), CC0 (CC0 1.0 (public domain dedication))
• Terrain Tiles on AWS Open Data (Mapzen, a Linux Foundation project): SRTM and GMTED2010 terrain data courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey; ETOPO1, U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; Canada terrain data contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence – Canada (Terrain Tiles source terms: public domain (USGS, NOAA) and Open Government Licence – Canada, with attribution)
• World Health Organization, WHO Ambient Air Quality Database (Version 8.0), 2026, accessed 2026-10-27; data provided by the national and regional agencies named in each value's note WHO does not endorse Borgo, its use of these data, or any city ranking built from them. Values are as published by WHO; WHO advises against using the database to rank cities or compare countries directly, because monitoring differs between places. (WHO terms and conditions for data compilations)
• World Bank, World Development Indicators, CC BY 4.0 (underlying sources named in each figure's note: ICP, IMF, UNODC, UN Population Division, WHO, ILO, UNESCO Institute for Statistics) (CC BY 4.0)
• World Bank, Worldwide Governance Indicators, Control of Corruption estimate, CC BY 4.0 (CC BY 4.0)

Cite this page

Borgo, “Living in Athens”, https://borgo.abcastor.com/city/athens-gr/, figures as of 2026-11-05. Please also name the original source of any figure you use; each is listed above with its licence. Data: athens-gr.json.