Dominican Republic 🇩🇴

With an EU, UK, US or Canadian passport, or one from much of Latin America, you enter as a tourist without a visa and get 30 days. If you fly in, the tourist card is already included in the ticket, so there is nothing to pay on landing (official requirements).

• Fill in the e-ticket, the free form that combines immigration and customs, on the official portal. You can do it as soon as you have your flight details, and it generates two QR codes, one for arrival and one for departure. The airline asks for it at check-in.
• Have your accommodation’s full address ready (province, municipality and sector, the local word for neighborhood): the form asks for it.
• Carry a ticket out of the country: airlines have checked it before boarding since April 2023. If you don’t know your exit date yet, a temporary onward ticket covers the requirement.
• Passport: the general rule asks for six months of validity, but until December 31, 2026 it only needs to cover the whole stay if you are from the EU, the UK, the US, Canada, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia or Ecuador (Migración notice).
• Don’t pay websites that offer to process the e-ticket: the official one is free.

You don’t need to leave the country or request anything on arrival. You pay a stay fee when you leave, based on the total time spent: 3,500 DOP from 30 days to 3 months, 5,600 DOP from 3 to 9 months and 7,000 DOP from 9 to 12 months (table in force since March 2025). The straightforward way is to pay it at the airport on your way out, at the Migración desk after check-in and security, where they take cards; arrive with time to spare. You can also have the fee worked out and paid beforehand on the Migración website, and if you do, keep the receipt on your phone. If you prefer to be in order from the start, Migración also processes an extension of up to 120 days.

There is no digital nomad visa. Remote workers stay as tourists, a status that does not formally cover work, and chaining years that way is not a plan. Living here means a residency (retiree, rentista, investor), which starts at a consulate and takes months of paperwork.

You pay in Dominican pesos (DOP). Banknotes come in 50, 100, 200, 500, 1,000 and 2,000 DOP and coins in 1, 5, 10 and 25 DOP. The Central Bank publishes the official daily rate; in September 2026 it was around 59 DOP to the dollar. In Punta Cana, Las Terrenas and rentals aimed at foreigners you will see plenty of prices in dollars, but for everyday spending paying in pesos works out better.

Cards work in supermarkets, malls, chains and most restaurants in cities and tourist areas. Cash rules at colmados (the neighborhood shop on every corner), comedores, guaguas (local buses and minibuses), motoconchos (motorbike taxis), markets and for tips. Always carry small notes: hand a 2,000 DOP note to a colmado or a motoconcho driver and there may well be no change.

• Withdraw at ATMs inside bank branches, malls or supermarkets: card cloning is what the travel advisories keep flagging, and they point at the ones out on the street (UK FCDO). It doesn’t happen every time, but that is where the risk sits.
• Use a card with no foreign exchange fee, such as Wise or Revolut; the local bank also charges its own withdrawal fee, usually 150 to 300 DOP depending on the bank and the machine, and some charge nothing. The screen tells you before you confirm, so withdraw rarely and in large amounts.
• If the ATM or card terminal offers to charge you in your home currency, choose pesos: that conversion always costs more.
• Don’t change money with people offering on the street.

• Coffee at a café: ~150 DOP
• Plato del día (set lunch) at a comedor: 200–300 DOP in the capital, 350–500 DOP with a drink in beach towns (El Nacional, September 2026)
• Meal at a simple restaurant: ~600 DOP; dinner for two at a mid-range one: ~3,000 DOP
• Local beer at a bar: ~150 DOP
• 5-gallon water jug delivered: 50–110 DOP (2026 prices)
• Metro or cable car in Santo Domingo: 20 DOP; city guagua: ~35 DOP
• Uber between central districts of the capital: 200–500 DOP
• Bus from Santo Domingo to Santiago: 450 DOP
• Gym, monthly fee: 800–1,500 DOP at a neighborhood gym, 1,800–3,500 DOP at a chain (reference)
• Unfurnished one-bedroom on a long lease in Santo Domingo: ~21,000 DOP outside the center and ~43,000 DOP in central areas; furnished by the month, quite a bit more
• Santo Domingo references from Numbeo (September 2026); Punta Cana and Las Terrenas cost more

Restaurant bills already carry the 10% "ley" (the legal service charge, which goes to the staff); for good service, an extra 5–10% in cash is customary but optional. At the supermarket people give 20–50 DOP to whoever bags the shopping, and in taxis and Ubers rounding up is enough (tipping guide).

Install an eSIM before you fly and you will have data when you land, with no shop, no passport and no local number. Holafly has unlimited data plans for the Dominican Republic (running on the Altice network; 30 days cost 99.90 USD in September 2026, see plans), and you keep your usual WhatsApp. If you are chaining countries, their unlimited data subscription works out better: 59.95 EUR a month, renewing itself every 30 days and valid in more than 160 destinations, which is less than the single-country plan costs. Either unlimited plan lets you share data with your laptop.

Monthly rentals in central Santo Domingo, central Las Terrenas and Bávaro usually have Claro or Altice fiber, enough for video calls and long sessions. Outside those cores (hillside developments, rural areas) you are more likely to end up on wireless internet or Starlink. You don’t need to set an exam: asking the host what connection the flat has and at what speed already tells you what you are getting, and if you want to be sure, ask for a speed test screenshot. When you arrive, run one yourself at the hour you plan to work. If the house runs on Starlink, expect the bandwidth to move: residential plans are the last in the queue when the area gets busy and the capacity is shared with everyone on the same cell (Starlink’s fair use policy), so it can be perfect at one hour and choppy at another.

A local prepaid SIM pays off: Claro has the widest coverage and Altice is the alternative, and you buy one with your passport at their official stores (there are some in the malls). Data comes from top-ups and packs bought in the app or at any colmado (Claro prepaid, Altice prepaid); at Claro, top-ups from 150 DOP come with data bonuses. Getting your own fiber line only makes sense with a long lease; in a monthly rental it is already included.

Apagones (power cuts) depend heavily on the area: central city districts run on "24-hour circuits" designed not to be cut, while working-class neighborhoods and rural areas see more frequent cuts. Two separate cases: Punta Cana and Bávaro run on CEPM, a very stable private utility, and Las Terrenas on a local company with occasional cuts, mostly announced maintenance.

What people who live off their connection do: ask before booking whether the building has "planta full" (a generator for the whole building) or an "inversor" (batteries that keep some outlets and the router running), work with the laptop charged, and carry a power bank for the phone. Edesur, the distributor for the capital and the south, publishes scheduled maintenance for each circuit (lookup).

The default is the air-conditioned intercity coach, comfortable, punctual and cheap, leaving from each company’s own terminal.

• Caribe Tours: the widest network, from its terminal on Avenida 27 de Febrero. Santo Domingo to Santiago costs 450 DOP and takes about 3 hours; to Puerto Plata or Sosúa, 600–650 DOP and 4–5 hours; to Samaná, 550 DOP and under 3 hours.
• Metro Tours: to Santiago, Puerto Plata and Sosúa from its terminal on Avenida Winston Churchill; bookings via WhatsApp.
• Expreso Bávaro: Santo Domingo to Bávaro and Punta Cana in about 3 hours, for 400–600 DOP. Tickets are sold only at the station and they ask you to be there an hour early.
• For Las Terrenas, the Asotrapusa guaguas (covered in the Las Terrenas guide).
• Local guaguas (buses and minibuses that stop wherever you wave) link towns for very little: fine for short daytime hops; for long trips, use the companies above.

Buses fill up on Friday afternoons, Sunday evenings and during Holy Week: buy ahead or arrive early.

Useful domestic flights barely exist: what matters is picking the right arrival airport. Santo Domingo (SDQ) for the capital, Punta Cana (PUJ) for the east, Puerto Plata (POP) and Santiago (STI) for the north, and El Catey (AZS) for Samaná and Las Terrenas.

Uber works in Santo Domingo, Santiago, Puerto Plata, Punta Cana and La Romana, and the capital also has DiDi and inDrive: a fixed price before you get in and card payment, the easiest way to get around. Santo Domingo also has a metro and cable car for 20 DOP (covered in the Santo Domingo guide). In towns without apps there are unmetered taxis (agree the fare before getting in) and motoconchos: cheap for short hops, by day and with a helmet.

Your own licence is valid for the first three months; bring an International Driving Permit too. In Santo Domingo it isn’t worth it: traffic, parking and cheap Ubers. It does make sense for day trips, along the Punta Cana corridor and on the Samaná peninsula, where people get around by motorbike, scooter or quad. Rent from a company with an office, take full insurance or excess cover, and photograph the vehicle before driving off.

Aggressive: motorbikes overtaking on both sides, lanes nobody respects, constant horns. The country has one of the highest road death rates in the world, and most victims are on motorbikes (ECLAC report). Allow double the time at rush hour in the capital and on weekend getaways.

For one person, with a furnished one-bedroom apartment, food, transport, data and electricity:

• Santo Domingo: 1,500–2,500 USD. The low end in districts like Gazcue, the high end in full-service towers in Piantini.
• Las Terrenas: 1,000–1,800 USD, including a scooter or quad, and there is real room below that off season: monthly flats turn up from about 500–600 USD if you look ahead, with the scooter on top (roughly 20–25 USD a day, negotiable by the month). There are far pricier rentals too, so check the local listings on Corotos before taking any figure as given.
• Punta Cana: 1,800–2,500 USD cooking at home; living by the beach and eating out in tourist areas quickly goes past 3,000 USD.

The currency varies: you will see listings in dollars and listings in pesos, and some landlords take euros. Being a foreigner is not what sets it, so agree the amount and the currency before paying and settle who covers the exchange.

• Book the first month on Airbnb with the monthly stay filter: with the monthly discount it sometimes costs less than two weeks, and it gives you time to get to know the area without rushing.
• If you want to stay on, negotiate the renewal directly with the landlord, which usually comes out a little cheaper, or take your time to find something you like better.
• For long stays, check local listings on SuperCasas and Corotos and the Facebook groups of each town or neighborhood, where plenty of flats circulate that never reach the portals.
• Don’t send deposits for a flat you haven’t seen or that isn’t on a platform with a guarantee.

A monthly rental usually includes wifi, water and furniture, sometimes cleaning. Electricity is the exception: most places read the meter when you move in and when you leave and charge you the difference. The residential tariff is tiered and climbs with consumption (tariffs), so with daily air conditioning a month comes to around 80–120 USD. Drinking water is extra, in jugs delivered by the colmado.

Formal leases run 12 months, with one or two months of deposit plus the first month up front (how they work), and the 2026 national reference for a one-bedroom is about 38,000 DOP a month (rent data). Before signing, visit the flat at the hour you would work and ask about fiber, a planta or inversor, and the tinaco or cisterna (the water tank for when supply fails).

• La bandera: white rice, habichuelas (stewed beans) and stewed chicken or meat, with salad or tostones. The everyday lunch.
• Mangú with los tres golpes: mashed green plantain with pickled red onion, fried salami, fried cheese and egg. The classic breakfast.
• Sancocho: a thick stew of several meats and root vegetables (cassava, yam, plantain). Weekend food.
• Moro de guandules: rice cooked with pigeon peas, typical on Sundays and at Christmas.
• Fried fish with tostones: on the coast, with slices of green plantain flattened and fried.
• Pica pollo: crispy fried chicken from neighborhood picapollerías.
• Chimi: the Dominican burger, seasoned meat with cabbage and sauce in soft bread, from the night-time food trucks.
• Quipes and empanadas: fried snacks for any hour; quipes are made of bulgur wheat and meat.
• To drink: chinola (passion fruit) juice, morir soñando (orange juice with milk) and ice-cold Presidente beer.

The tourism ministry has a dish guide to get started.

Neighborhood restaurants for lunch, roughly noon to 3 pm. You point at what you want at the counter (rice, beans and the meat of the day) and pay for the plato del día: 200–300 DOP in the capital, 350–500 DOP with a drink in beach towns, almost always in cash.

Chimi trucks after dark, fry stands with empanadas and quipes, and carts of cut fruit. Cheap and good; pick the stalls with a queue of locals.

City malls have food courts with air conditioning and card payment. Supermarkets such as La Sirena, Nacional and Bravo have a ready-food counter, handy for the first few days.

Dominican coffee is short, strong and sweet, and the capital and tourist towns have specialty cafés. The colmado is the corner shop: cold beer, basics, phone top-ups, motorbike delivery via WhatsApp, and the neighborhood meeting point, loud music included.

Don’t drink tap water: homes use 5-gallon jugs delivered by the colmado. The food isn’t spicy. Eating vegetarian is possible with rice, beans, tostones and salads, but ask, since many stews have a meat base.

Private clinics, which are the ones you will use, ask for payment or an insurer’s guarantee before treating you. Travel with travel or nomad insurance that includes medical cover, such as Intermundial, Heymondo, IATI or SafetyWing, and save its assistance number on your phone.

• Santo Domingo: CEDIMAT, at Plaza de la Salud, and Clínica Abreu, in Gazcue.
• Santiago: HOMS.
• Punta Cana: Hospiten Bávaro.
• Small towns have clinics for the basics; anything serious is referred to the nearest big city.

Every neighborhood has one, many open 24 hours, and almost all deliver if you message them on WhatsApp. Chains such as Farmacia Carol and Los Hidalgos are all over the country. One difference catches Europeans out: Dominican law does require a prescription for antibiotics and for sexual stimulants (Salud Pública), but enforcement is uneven and medicines that would need one at home get dispensed over the counter (a study on antibiotics). Being able to buy it doesn’t make it a good idea: bring your usual medication from home, and for anything serious go to a clinic.

Dengue, chikungunya and Zika are present all year, with more cases in the rainy season: use repellent, especially at dawn and dusk. The CDC recommends being up to date on routine vaccines and hepatitis A, and there is some malaria risk in a few provinces, including La Altagracia (Punta Cana) and Santo Domingo (CDC details); check with a travel clinic before you go. The sun burns fast: cap, sunscreen and electrolytes if you walk at midday.

• Snatch theft from motorbikes: phones grabbed from your hand on the sidewalk and bags through car windows at traffic lights (UK advice).
• Card cloning: the advisories point at ATMs out on the street, so use the ones inside banks, malls and supermarkets.
• Empty streets at night, even a few blocks from lively areas: to get home, call an Uber.
• Your phone left on the towel while you swim.

• Taxis without a fare agreed before getting in.
• Self-appointed "guides" in tourist areas who steer you to shops or change money.
• Websites charging for the e-ticket, and deposits for flats nobody has visited.

Drug penalties are harsh, with pretrial detention that can drag on. Carry a copy of your passport with the entry stamp, and never take someone else’s package through customs.

911 covers police, fire and ambulance nationwide. The tourist police (CESTUR) are on 809-200-3500 (website).

It is hot all year: highs of 28–32 °C and lows of 21–24 °C. What changes from month to month is rain, humidity and hurricane risk, not temperature.

December to April: less humidity and rain in the capital and the east, with January to March the driest months in Santo Domingo. It is also high season, with higher prices, and during Holy Week (March or April) half the country heads to the beach. May and June, before the hurricane peak, are usually a good middle ground.

• Santo Domingo and the south coast: wettest in May and from August to October (about 190 mm in August and September), usually as short, heavy afternoon downpours.
• Punta Cana and the east: the driest area, with September the wettest month.
• North coast (Puerto Plata, Sosúa, Cabarete): the other way round, with heavy rain from November to January and a drier summer. The Samaná peninsula has its own calendar, detailed in the Las Terrenas guide.
• In the Cordillera Central (Jarabacoa, Constanza) nights get cool.

It runs from June 1 to November 30, with most activity from mid-August to mid-October (NOAA). Not every year brings one, but a tropical storm is enough for days of heavy rain, flooding and power cuts. If you come in those months, book with flexible cancellation, follow alerts from INDOMET, the national weather service, and the COE, and keep water, some cash and a charged power bank at hand.

Light clothes, sunscreen, repellent and a rain shell or umbrella in your daypack, because downpours arrive suddenly. Add a sweater for the air conditioning on buses and in malls. On the east coast, sargassum seaweed can reach some beaches from June to August; the Punta Cana guide covers it.

• Santo Domingo: the country’s tech and startup community, almost all the coworkings and the events. For people who want a city and peers close by (details in the Santo Domingo guide).
• Cabarete and Sosúa, on the north coast: the closest thing to a classic beach nomad scene, built around kitesurfing, with people from many countries and spaces like Co-Cabarete. For people who want beach, sport and community.
• Las Terrenas: a beach town with settled European residents and a small remote community; you live on foot and work from home (Las Terrenas guide).
• Punta Cana: the most stable power and the airport with the most flights, but little community and a car for everything (Punta Cana guide).

Go to Santo Domingo: there are coworkings with day passes and rooms for calls, and air-conditioned malls as plan B. On the north coast, Cabarete. Las Terrenas and Punta Cana have a space or two (COMÚN CoWork in the first, Cana Work in the second), but the real office is usually the apartment. Dedicated colivings barely exist; the usual setup is your own flat plus a coworking.

• GDG Santo Domingo: developer meetups and workshops, and the organizer of DevFest Santo Domingo, the country’s largest community tech event, in October.
• Startup Grind Santo Domingo: monthly founder events.
• In beach towns, each area’s Facebook and WhatsApp groups are where flats, shared rides and meetups circulate; the local coworking can tell you how to join.

There is no digital nomad visa or program. Remote workers enter as tourists and pay the stay fee when leaving (see Entry & visas).

The clock is UTC-4 all year, with no daylight saving. It matches New York during the US summer and runs one hour ahead in winter. Spain and the rest of central Europe are five or six hours ahead, so your morning is their afternoon: if you work with a European team, calls land between 8 am and noon local time and the afternoon stays free for coding.

US style, at 120 V and 60 Hz. Laptop and phone chargers handle that voltage, so from Europe you only need a travel adapter. Some older buildings only have two-pin sockets: if your charger has a ground pin, the adapter solves it.

• WhatsApp: everything here runs on WhatsApp, from the landlord to the colmado, the pharmacy or the bus company.
• Uber, DiDi or inDrive, with your card already set up.
• Google Maps, with the area downloaded for offline use.
• PedidosYa for food and grocery delivery in the cities.
• Mi Claro or Mi Altice if you get a local SIM, to top up and buy packs.

• People speak Caribbean Spanish, fast and full of local words (guagua, colmado, vaina); English is only common in tourist areas. When you walk into a shop or a lift, you greet people with a "buenas".
• At public offices such as Migración, wear long trousers: in shorts or flip-flops you may not be let in.
• Noise is part of neighborhood life: music from colmados and homes, especially at weekends. If you sleep lightly, bring earplugs and ask for an inner bedroom.

Several public holidays move to the Monday to make long weekends; the Ministry of Labour calendar lists each year’s dates. Holy Week is the one to plan around: the whole country heads to beaches and rivers, buses fill up, prices rise and quiet towns get loud. Christmas and New Year work the same way, and February brings carnival parades on Sundays around Independence Day (February 27).

Many monthly rentals have a washing machine; if not, neighborhood laundries wash by weight and hand it back folded. Drinking water comes in jugs, and the colmado carries them up to your flat.