Living in Lyon

Lyon, France, about 520,774 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 Lyon against other cities, with your own numbers

Key facts

• Lyon has about 520,774 residents (GeoNames).
• On a gross salary of €60,000 a year, an employee in Lyon takes home about €41,149 a year (€3,429 a month) after income tax and employee contributions, an effective rate of 31.4% (France 2026 rules).
• A one-bedroom home in Lyon rents for about €956 a month (city figure; Carte des loyers: asking-rent indicators by commune (2025), Ministère de la Transition écologique (DHUP), 2025-Q3).
• In Lyon the average daily high (air temperature in the shade) peaks at 28.5 °C in August and the average daily low falls to 0.5 °C in January (Historical weather (ERA5 reanalysis), Open-Meteo, 2021-2025).
• Lyon has about 54 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 July (14) (Historical weather (ERA5 reanalysis), Open-Meteo, 2021-2025).
• Between 2021 and 2025 the air in Lyon reached 40.8 °C at its hottest and −7.2 °C at its coldest (Historical weather (ERA5 reanalysis), Open-Meteo).
• It rains or snows (at least 1 mm) on about 118 days a year in Lyon (Historical weather (ERA5 reanalysis), Open-Meteo, 2021-2025).
• The shortest day in Lyon lasts 8 h 40 min and the longest 15 h 43 min (computed from latitude).
• Fine dust (PM2.5) in Lyon averages 8.9 µg/m³ a year, 1.8 times the WHO guideline of 5 µg/m³ (WHO Ambient Air Quality Database v8.0 (2026), World Health Organization, 2024).
• Everyday prices in France sit at 82.8 on an index where the United States is 100 (World Development Indicators, World Bank, 2025).
• Life expectancy at birth in France is 83.0 years (World Development Indicators, World Bank, 2024).
• France records 1.34 intentional homicides per 100,000 people a year (World Development Indicators, World Bank, 2023).
• Besides citizens of France, citizens of 29 other countries under EU and EEA free movement and of Switzerland (Swiss-EU free movement) can live and work in Lyon without a visa.

What you would take home

Single private-sector employee, one tax share: income tax with the 10% expenses deduction, décote and high-income surcharge; old-age, AGIRC-ARRCO, CSG and CRDS contributions. Rules for 2026. Sources: Service-Public.fr: barème de l'impôt sur le revenu (loi de finances 2026), impots.gouv.fr: brochure pratique 2026, calcul de l'impôt (décote), impots.gouv.fr: brochure pratique 2026, aide-mémoire (10% deduction limits), Urssaf: taux de cotisations secteur privé 2026, Urssaf: plafond de la sécurité sociale 2026, Urssaf mon-entreprise: official salary simulator (AGIRC-ARRCO, CEG and CET rates).

• The income tax scale, 10% deduction limits and décote are those of the 2026 finance law (2025 income); the 2026-income values arrive with the 2027 law and are usually indexed about 1%.
• Non-cadre employee: no APEC contribution; no mandatory health cover (mutuelle) or provident scheme, which typically cost an employee €15-60 a month and add the employer's share to the CSG base.
• The contribution différentielle sur les hauts revenus (minimum 20% average rate above €250,000) is not modelled.
• Same rules in Paris and Lyon; Alsace-Moselle adds 1.3% health contribution (not applied).
• Newcomers: the impatriate regime (CGI art. 155 B) can exempt the impatriation bonus, by default 30% of total pay; set a taxable share of 0.7 to approximate it.

A month in Lyon

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 France.
• Citizens of Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Greece, 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 8 h 40 min, the longest 15 h 43 min.

Every figure

No open figure yet for: your childcare cost, health insurance premium, monthly transit pass. A country-wide figure is marked as such where it stands in for the city.

Compare Lyon with

• Lyon vs Barcelona
• Lyon vs Berlin
• Lyon vs Bristol
• Lyon vs Edinburgh
• Lyon vs Geneva
• Lyon vs Lisbon
• Lyon vs London
• Lyon vs Madrid
• Lyon vs Málaga
• Lyon vs Manchester
• Lyon vs Milan
• Lyon vs Paris
• Lyon vs Rome
• Lyon vs Torino
• Lyon vs Zurich

Elsewhere

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

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

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, 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)
• Ministère de la Transition écologique, carte des loyers 2025 (data.gouv.fr, update of 2025-12-11), Licence Ouverte 2.0. Borgo weights arrondissements by adverts and multiplies the rate per m² by a fixed flat size (Licence Ouverte / Open Licence 2.0 (Etalab))
• 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)
• 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))
• Borgo contributors, from official election results and ParlGov party positions (Döring, Huber and Manow, ParlGov 2024 release, CC0) (CC BY 4.0)
• 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)
• WMO Member Nations (2023). WMO Climatological Standard Normals for 1991-2020 (NCEI Accession 0253808), sunshine duration. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information. https://doi.org/10.25921/800j-vn07 (No licence attached: NCEI public access with a requested citation, under the WMO Unified Data Policy)
• 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 Lyon”, https://borgo.abcastor.com/city/lyon-fr/, 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: lyon-fr.json.