Living in Medan — Cost, Visa & Wifi Reality

Cost of Living

Monthly budgets (last verified 14 October 2026: nomads.com tiers read live today, 17,918 rupiah to the dollar; Numbeo basket dated 2 October 2026):

Nomad budget: ~$650-900/month

The nomad tier reads $674 a month, and it is honest: a central studio at $231, dinner at $2, a hot desk at $112. nomads.com grades places to work from Great and calls the whole place Cheap. Only 30 reviews back the score, the thinnest sample in our set, so treat the rating as indicative rather than settled.

Expat comfort: ~$500-800/month

The expat tier is $518: a one-bedroom outside the centre at $89 to $209 on the Numbeo basket, plus bills. Utilities for 85 square metres run Rp1,509,524 ($84), 60 Mbps fibre Rp416,667 ($23) and a phone plan Rp58,500 ($3.27), so the overhead is low. Families pay for the cheapness: the family tier is $1,245 and nomads.com grades the city Bad for families.

Local baseline: ~$356/month

The local tier is $356 against a nomads.com income grade of Very poor at $422 a month. Numbeo's average net salary is Rp3,866,372 ($216), worth keeping in mind when a landlord quotes a foreigner price. GDP per capita is $5,060 a year.

What the prices mean

Numbeo basket 2 October 2026: one-bedroom in the centre Rp4,125,000 ($230), outside Rp1,600,000 ($89), 60 Mbps fibre Rp416,667 ($23), monthly transport pass Rp105,000 ($5.86). The same basket on a Java city reads very differently: compare the Jakarta cost page.

Visa Options

Nothing new is asserted here: Indonesia's rules live on the Indonesia visa hub, last verified 4 October 2026.

The e-VOA

For a first look, the e-VOA costs Rp500,000 (about $28) for 30 days and can be extended once by another 30 days for the same fee. Kualanamu is a visa-on-arrival point.

The E33G remote-worker permit

The E33G is Indonesia's answer for remote workers: a one-year stay permit, total fees Rp7,000,000 (about $391), against proof of $60,000 a year in income and a $2,000 bank balance held over three months. You work for a foreign employer only, and the tax-residency threshold is 183 days. Fees and pages move: the official portals block automated checks from this machine, so re-read the hub before you rely on a figure.

WiFi & Coworking

Be sceptical about Medan's connectivity until you have tested the line you are renting. nomads.com's community average is 10 Mbps, graded Slow, and the city has no row in the Speedtest Global Index at all, so there is no independent measurement to check it against.

What to buy

The nearest measured Indonesian rows are South Jakarta at 57.30 Mbps down and 38.50 up (rank 135) and Bekasi at 61.59/44.60 (rank 131), aggregated June 2026. WhereNext scores Indonesia's digital infrastructure 33, tier Limited, rank 82 of 95, with frequent power outages noted nationally. Numbeo's fibre quote of Rp416,667 ($23) for 60 Mbps or better is cheap, but a quote is not a speed test: ask for one, and keep a data SIM as the fallback, since free WiFi in cafes grades only Okay.

Coworking and cafes

A hot desk runs $112 a month and nomads.com names Regus, which tells you the market is small and corporate rather than nomad-built. The compensation is the cafe culture: hundreds of places with espresso and food, most with WiFi, at prices that make working from a cafe all day viable. Caffe Bene is the name nomads.com lists.

Healthcare

Grade this honestly. nomads.com members rate safety Bad and put hospitals on the member dislike list, while food safety grades Okay and lack of crime grades Great, which is a real split rather than a contradiction: petty crime is low, sanitation and infrastructure are the weak points. Medan has private hospitals of reasonable standard, but anything complex means Jakarta or Singapore, so medical cover is not optional and neither is bottled water.

Safety

The grades run Bad for safety, Bad for women and Bad for LGBTQ+, with walkability Bad and traffic safety Bad, which is a lot of red on one page and the honest read of a big Indonesian city with open sewers, aggressive driving and a becak overcharging scam documented well enough to have a fixed pattern. Against that: lack of crime Great, lack of racism Good, power grid Great, airline scores Great, and members grade it Okay to be a foreigner here.

Air quality read 96 US AQI, Moderate, on 14 October. Tipping runs about 7.5%, is expected rather than optional, and cash remains the default for anything non-mall.