Living in Singapore

Singapore, Singapore, about 5,638,700 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 Singapore against other cities, with your own numbers

Key facts

• Singapore has about 5,638,700 residents (GeoNames).
• On a gross salary of SGD 86,000 a year, an employee in Singapore takes home about SGD 66,304 a year (SGD 5,525 a month) after income tax and employee contributions, an effective rate of 22.9% (Singapore 2026 rules).
• In Singapore the average daily high (air temperature in the shade) peaks at 30.4 °C in May and the average daily low falls to 24.0 °C in January (Historical weather (ERA5 reanalysis), Open-Meteo, 2021-2025).
• Singapore has about 0 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 January (0) (Historical weather (ERA5 reanalysis), Open-Meteo, 2021-2025).
• Between 2021 and 2025 the air in Singapore reached 35.2 °C at its hottest and 22.3 °C at its coldest (Historical weather (ERA5 reanalysis), Open-Meteo).
• It rains or snows (at least 1 mm) on about 282 days a year in Singapore (Historical weather (ERA5 reanalysis), Open-Meteo, 2021-2025).
• The shortest day in Singapore lasts 12 h 03 min and the longest 12 h 12 min (computed from latitude).
• Fine dust (PM2.5) in Singapore averages 12.0 µg/m³ a year, 2.4 times the WHO guideline of 5 µg/m³ (WHO Ambient Air Quality Database v8.0 (2026), World Health Organization, 2021).
• Everyday prices in Singapore sit at 78.3 on an index where the United States is 100 (World Development Indicators, World Bank, 2025).
• Life expectancy at birth in Singapore is 83.3 years (World Development Indicators, World Bank, 2024).
• Singapore records 0.07 intentional homicides per 100,000 people a year (World Development Indicators, World Bank, 2023).
• Only citizens of Singapore can live and work in Singapore without a visa or permit; everyone else needs one.

What you would take home

Tax resident employee under 55, income earned in 2026 (YA 2027): resident rates, earned income relief, and employee CPF with CPF relief for citizens and PRs. Rules for 2026. Sources: IRAS: individual income tax rates, IRAS: earned income relief, IRAS: CPF relief for employees (ordinary wage ceiling), CPF Board: contribution rates from 1 January 2026, IRAS: personal income tax rebate (YA 2024 and 2025 only).

• CPF applies to Singapore citizens and permanent residents only: foreigners on an Employment Pass or S Pass pay no CPF and get no CPF relief; switch on the Employment Pass setting to model that.
• CPF uses the full rates for citizens and PRs from their third year, age 55 and below; PRs in their first two years pay graduated lower rates.
• Salary is treated as twelve equal monthly ordinary wages; bonuses (additional wages) can attract CPF up to the $102,000 annual ceiling.
• No personal income tax rebate: none has been announced for YA 2027.
• No other reliefs (qualifying child, NSman, SRS, course fees), no donations.

A month in Singapore

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 Singapore.
• Everyone else needs a visa or permit.

Climate

Daylight is computed from latitude: the shortest day lasts 12 h 03 min, the longest 12 h 12 min.

Every figure

No open figure yet for: rent, one bedroom, rent, three bedrooms, childcare fees, one child, childcare fees, two children, childcare, net of support: couple, one child, childcare, net of support: couple, two children, childcare, net of support: single parent, one child, childcare, net of support: single parent, two children, your childcare cost, health insurance premium, paid leave for mothers, paid leave for fathers, life satisfaction, public swimming pools (official), green urban areas (official), commuting by public transport, commute time, monthly transit pass, road deaths, born abroad, internet speed, 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 Singapore with

• Singapore vs Athens
• Singapore vs Dubai
• Singapore vs Melbourne
• Singapore vs Sydney
• Singapore vs Tokyo

Elsewhere

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

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

Credits

• Borgo contributors, from the statutes cited in each figure's note (CC BY 4.0)
• 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)
• 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)
• 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))
• 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)
• 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 Singapore”, https://borgo.abcastor.com/city/singapore-sg/, 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: singapore-sg.json.