Brazil · Latin America
Moving to Recife
Recife quick facts
Brazil at a glance
Latin America & Caribbean
Economy
World Bank · 2025Religion
% of populationCIA World Factbook / national censuses
Cost of living in Recife
Can you move to Brazil?
Pick your passport to see whether you can enter Brazil — and what it takes to stay.
Entry rules come from github.com/imorte/passport-index-data, updated 17 February 2026. They change without notice — confirm with the official immigration service before booking.
Getting set up in Brazil
CRNM registration, the 90-day clock, and applying from inside Brazil
Register with the Polícia Federal and collect your CRNM within 90 days of entering Brazil on that visa — or within 30 days of publication in the Diário Oficial where residence was authorised from inside the country. The CPF comes before everything and has no immigration prerequisite. Recife's local wrinkle is demand-side: Porto Digital's growth has produced a steady flow of transferred and hired foreign engineers, which competes for the same Pernambuco superintendency appointment slots as everyone else in the state.
Read the full step-by-step guideConverting at DETRAN-PE, and driving a city that floods
A foreign licence is good for a maximum of 180 days of regular stay, on the basis of the road traffic conventions Brazil has ratified and of reciprocity, in practice carried with an International Driving Permit. Conversion through DETRAN-PE then requires a sworn translation, a medical fitness examination and a compulsory psychological assessment that nobody from Europe or North America expects. The locally distinctive part is water: Recife sits on rivers and reclaimed land barely above sea level, several arterial routes flood in the April–July wet season, and the combination of heavy rain and a high tide is a real reason to change your route or not drive at all.
Read the full step-by-step guideAccounts, Pix, and the boleto you will meet every month
The CPF is the hard gate. Past it, digital banks onboard foreigners in days where traditional branches want documents you will not have for months. Pix, the central bank's free instant transfer rail, is what you use daily. The other half of Brazilian payments is the boleto — a barcoded slip still used for rent, condomínio, IPTU and many services. If you are contracting to a Porto Digital company as a PJ rather than as an employee, the account you open is a business account and the sequence is different; plan for that before you arrive.
Read the full step-by-step guideSUS in the Northeast's referral city, arboviruses, and the beaches you do not swim past
Recife is the medical referral centre for a large part of the Northeast, so the hospital depth here is genuinely better than the city's size suggests — the trade-off is that its hospitals also carry patients sent in from several states. SUS will treat you free whatever your paperwork says. Locally distinctive: Aedes-borne dengue, chikungunya and Zika circulate year-round with a wet-season peak, leptospirosis follows street flooding, and the urban coast has bathing prohibitions in force because of shark incidents.
Read the full step-by-step guideChips, fibre in a tech city, and the theft-blocking service to register first
Vivo, Claro and TIM all cover the city and the choice is essentially a price decision. Fixed broadband is better than the Northeast's reputation suggests, particularly in and around Porto Digital and the northern residential districts, but the constraint is still the building rather than the street. Register on Celular Seguro in your first week — handset theft here targets the banking apps, and the block only works if you set it up beforehand.
Read the full step-by-step guideFederal income tax, and the two municipal taxes Recife deliberately cut
You become a Brazilian tax resident immediately on arrival with a permanent visa or a local employment contract, or — on a temporary visa — on the day you complete 184 days of presence, more than 183, inside a twelve-month period, and residence means worldwide income. Foreign-source income is paid monthly through carnê-leão. Recife's municipal layer is unusual in that both of its variable rates have been cut on purpose: ISS is 2% rather than the standard 5% for qualifying companies inside Porto Digital under Lei Municipal 17.244/2006, and the ITBI on a property transfer has been running at a reduced 2% rather than 3%, a temporary measure the Prefeitura has extended more than once — most recently, on the city's own guidance, to the end of 2026.
Read the full step-by-step guideEach guide has verified costs, timelines, required documents, and the non-obvious gotchas — sourced from official government pages. Last verified August 2026.
Essential Portuguese phrases
Reading a list isn’t learning it. Globe Quest turns these into a trainer — hear each phrase spoken, drill them with spaced repetition, and get scored as you say them out loud.
What to know before you go
Get the CPF before you fly — nothing else can start without it
CriticalReceita Federal issues CPFs online and through consulates to people with no visa, no address and no presence in Brazil. Since 2023 it is the single identification number across every federal, state and municipal database. Bank account, phone chip, lease, health card: all gated on it. Landing in Recife without one converts your first fortnight from a checklist into a dependency chain where every item waits on the same queue.
Register with the Federal Police within 90 days of entry
CriticalThe clock starts at your arrival stamp under that visa, not at issue. The Pernambuco superintendency in Recife handles migration registration for the state and is also the regional hub for a large slice of the Northeast's consular and corporate traffic, so appointment supply is the binding constraint. Book in your first week and reschedule later if documents slip — the reverse order does not work.
Bathing is restricted along the urban coast, and it is not a suggestion
CriticalState decree 21.402/1999 prohibits nautical activities along roughly 33 km of coast from Praia do Farol in Olinda to Praia do Paiva, and a municipal decree in Jaboatão bans bathing on a 2.2 km stretch of Piedade. The state's shark-incident committee, CEMIT, has recorded 84 incidents in Pernambuco since 1992, around 70 of them on Greater Recife's urban beaches. Boa Viagem is a beautiful place to live beside and a bad place to swim past the reef line; the signage is there for a reason and the lifeguards enforce it.
Elevation matters here more than in any other Brazilian capital
CriticalRecife is built on rivers, mangrove and reclaimed land, much of it barely above sea level, with steep informal hillsides — the morros — around it. IBGE counted 206,761 residents, 13.4% of the city, living in areas at risk of flooding or landslide, the fifth-largest such population in the country. In May 2022 more than a hundred people died in Greater Recife when the hillsides gave way after days of rain. Ask about flooding and slope stability before you sign anything, in every part of the city.
The rain comes in the middle of the year, and it comes hard
ImportantThe wet season runs roughly April to July, the opposite of the south of Brazil, and it is intense rather than drizzly — several hundred millimetres in a bad month, delivered in long downpours. Streets flood, traffic stops and the Metrô sometimes suffers. Nothing about it is dangerous if you live on high ground with a well-drained building; everything about it is miserable if you do not.
Porto Digital is not a business park — it is a tax district
Good to knowRecife's tech cluster occupies the old commercial quarter of Recife Antigo and Santo Amaro, and companies established inside the designated area that meet the criteria pay ISS at 2% instead of the standard 5% under Lei Municipal 17.244/2006. That is why the buildings are old warehouses rather than a campus on a ring road, and it is why the density of engineering jobs in Recife's historic centre is unlike anywhere else in Brazil.
Top industries & employers
Technology & innovation
Companies inside Porto Digital, plus Accenture, Capgemini, EY and CESAR
Porto Digital reported 541 companies, 24,079 people and R$7.4 billion of revenue for 2025, up 19% on the year, and Recife recorded the strongest growth in formal ICT jobs of any Brazilian capital that year. It is the reason a Northeastern city has a deep senior engineering market.
Health & medical services
Real Hospital Português, IMIP, Hospital das Clínicas da UFPE, Hospital Esperança
Recife is the referral medical centre for a large part of the Northeast, drawing patients from several states. Clinical, research and hospital-administration roles are a substantial and stable part of the professional job market.
Higher education & research
UFPE, UPE, UNICAP, Fiocruz Pernambuco, CESAR School
UFPE's informatics centre is the reason Porto Digital exists at all — the cluster was built on a pipeline of computer-science graduates. Note that Brazilian nationality is a statutory requirement for the civil service, with a narrow exception for teaching and research posts at federal universities and research institutes.
Logistics, ports & industry
Suape complex operators, Moura, shipyard and petrochemical tenants
The Suape industrial port complex south of the city is one of the largest in the Northeast and anchors chemicals, energy and container logistics. It is an hour from the centre and it employs a very different professional population from Porto Digital.
Creative industries & carnival
Production companies, frevo and maracatu groups, event and audiovisual firms
Recife and Olinda run one of Brazil's largest carnivals, and the production, staging, security and audiovisual work around it is a real seasonal industry rather than a cultural sideline.
Public administration & finance
Government of Pernambuco, Prefeitura do Recife, regional bank and insurance operations
The state capital function concentrates administration, courts and the regional offices of national banks and insurers here, and it is the steadiest white-collar employment base in the city.
Where to go in Recife
Recife Antigo & Rua do Bom Jesus
Culture · The original island quarter
The founding quarter on its own island — the oldest synagogue in the Americas, colonial warehouses now full of software companies, and the Marco Zero square.
Local tip: Sunday afternoons at Marco Zero are when the quarter belongs to residents rather than office workers, with free music on the square. Rua do Bom Jesus is worth walking on a weekday too, when you can see how much of Porto Digital is inside those old façades.
Olinda
Neighborhood · 6 km north, a separate municipality
The UNESCO-listed hill town above Recife — baroque churches, painted houses, artists' studios and the giant carnival puppets.
Local tip: Go up for sunset from the Alto da Sé and stay for tapioca from the stalls. Many people who work in Recife live in Olinda for exactly this; check the commute honestly first, because the road in is a bottleneck.
Instituto Ricardo Brennand & Oficina Cerâmica Francisco Brennand
Hidden gemCulture · Várzea, west of the centre
A neo-gothic castle holding one of the world's largest collections of Dutch colonial art, and a ceramicist's sprawling workshop-garden of sculptures.
Local tip: The two are close and different in every way. The Oficina is the stranger and better one — a former brick factory turned into a walled garden full of monumental ceramic forms, and it is almost never crowded.
Boa Viagem beach & the reef
Nature · South zone
Seven kilometres of urban beach behind a natural sandstone reef, with the promenade the city exercises on.
Local tip: The reef makes calm natural pools at low tide, which is when to go in; past the reef line is where the bathing prohibitions apply and the lifeguards will tell you so. Walk the promenade at six in the morning and you will meet half the neighbourhood.
Casa Forte & Poço da Panela
Neighborhood · North zone, along the Capibaribe
Nineteenth-century riverside houses, mango trees, the Jardim Botânico's neighbourhood square and Recife's quietest good living.
Local tip: The Sunday feira at Praça de Casa Forte is the real thing, and the Poço da Panela riverfront a few streets on is where locals go to sit with a beer. Neither appears in a guidebook.
Porto de Galinhas & the south coast
Nature · 60 km south, past Suape
The reef-pool beaches that made Pernambuco's tourism, plus the quieter Muro Alto and Serrambi beyond them.
Local tip: Porto de Galinhas itself is busy and priced accordingly. Keep going to Serrambi or Carneiros for the same water without the jangada queues, and go at low tide — the natural pools only exist then.
Emergency numbers in Recife
Compare Recife with…
Side-by-side cost of living, language, climate and careers — to help you choose.