This cost-of-living estimate is built line by line from things you can check: what our long-let book asked on 24 October 2026, the tariffs the electricity and water authorities publish, the price lists of the internet and phone companies, the fuel price PTT posts for Phuket, a supermarket's own online shelf, and one school's published fee schedule.
The headline is simple. For a single remote worker and for a couple, rent is about nine-tenths of every cost we could price. For a family of four, school fees take that role: two children at a mid-fee international school add about ฿55,000 a month, and the priced total comes to about ฿160,000.
Just as important is what is not in those totals. Food, health insurance, household help and a car have no published Phuket price we could stand up, so we have left them out of the arithmetic. Each one is listed below as a gap, not hidden. Read every total as a floor, not a budget.
The method, in one paragraph
Housing comes from our own catalogue: villas, houses and townhouses for long-term rent on a twelve-month minimum, with a published price, available on 24 October 2026. That is 1,686 homes. Condominiums are left out, because we do not let them. Every rent is an asking rent, not one agreed after negotiation. Utilities are arithmetic on the published tariffs, using a level of consumption we chose and state. We hold no meter readings, so treat those lines as the shape of the bill, not a forecast of yours. Every other price is taken from the seller's own page on the day we checked it, and dated in the sources at the foot of the page.
The three households
| Monthly line | Remote worker | Couple | Family of four |
|---|---|---|---|
| Home | 2-bed, Chalong | 2-bed, Bang Tao | 3-bed, Kathu |
| Rent (median asking) | ฿65,000 | ฿100,000 | ฿90,000 |
| Electricity | ฿2,595 (600 units) | ฿5,497 (1,200 units) | ฿6,948 (1,500 units) |
| Water | ฿182 (15 m³) | ฿357 (25 m³) | ฿664 (40 m³) |
| Home fibre | ฿534 | ฿534 | ฿534 |
| Mobile | ฿748 (one line) | ฿1,496 (two lines) | ฿1,496 (two lines) |
| Fuel | ฿1,699 (one 40-litre tank) | ฿3,398 (two tanks) | ฿5,098 (three tanks) |
| School fees | — | — | ฿54,854 (two children) |
| Priced total | ฿70,758 | ฿111,283 | ฿159,594 |
| Rent as a share | 92% | 90% | 56% |
The consumption levels, the number of phone lines and the tanks of fuel are our assumptions, chosen to be plausible and stated so you can replace them with your own. The prices behind them are not assumptions.
Housing: the line that sets the budget
On 24 October our landed long-let book held 4 one-bedroom homes, 149 with two bedrooms (median ฿90,000 a month), 809 with three (median ฿120,000) and 507 with four (median ฿170,000). The district matters at least as much as the bedroom count, which is why each household above is placed somewhere specific.
The remote worker is in a two-bedroom house or villa in Chalong. The median there is ฿65,000, from 23 listings, and the middle half run from ฿57,500 to ฿80,000. The second bedroom is not a luxury; it is what the book holds. With only four one-bedroom houses on it, someone who wants a house to themselves in Phuket is in practice choosing a two-bedroom one. Below that, the choice on our book runs out; condominiums are outside our book and outside this article.
The couple is in a two-bedroom villa in Bang Tao, on the west coast, where the median is ฿100,000 from 54 listings and the middle half run from ฿85,000 to ฿137,500. The same budget buys a different life in Rawai, where two-bedroom homes ask a median of ฿90,000 (45 listings).
The family is in a three-bedroom home in Kathu, ฿90,000 at the median from 30 listings, with the middle half from ฿85,000 to ฿120,000. Kathu is where KIS International School sits, and that is the point: the family's house costs less than the couple's because the school, not the beach, chose the district. The same three bedrooms in Bang Tao ask a median of ฿150,000 (328 listings); in Rawai, ฿120,000 (179); in Chalong, ฿100,000 (100). Our guide to rental prices near Phuket's international schools works through this district by district.
Medians move, and each of these rests on one day's book. They are asking rents, and the middle-half ranges show how much room there is either side of them.
Electricity: a new tariff from September
Phuket is supplied by the Provincial Electricity Authority, and its household tariff changed with the September 2026 bills. PEA's notice of 19 August 2026 replaced the old blocks for a home using more than 150 units a month with three new ones: ฿3.0000 a unit for the first 200, ฿4.1584 from 201 to 400, and ฿4.3583 for every unit above 400, plus a ฿24.62 monthly service charge. On top of that sits the fuel adjustment, or Ft, which the Energy Regulatory Commission held at 16.23 satang a unit for September to December 2026, and then 7% VAT on the lot.
Once VAT is in, every unit above the 400th costs about ฿4.84. What drives the number of units is air conditioning running overnight and a pool pump, and nothing in a listing tells you either. Ask the landlord for the last few bills before you sign. The tariff also settles one argument in advance: the rate is published and the same for every household, so a landlord quoting a per-unit price of their own is adding a margin. Our guide to what a villa rental includes covers how the bills are usually split.
Water, internet and phones
Water is the smallest line. The Provincial Waterworks Authority's Phuket schedule charges a household ฿10.20 a cubic metre for the first 10, rising in bands to ฿21.20 between 31 and 50, so 50 cubic metres comes to ฿876. Above 50 in a month, a household account is charged at the next user type's rate, ฿24.00 a cubic metre from the 51st. PWA's customer guide adds a ฿30 monthly service charge on a half-inch meter, before VAT, which is not in the water figures in the table. A pool that is topped up from the mains in the dry season is how a villa crosses the 50 cubic metre line. Some estates run their own supply instead, and an estate's charge is not on PWA's schedule.
For home internet, the lowest-priced package on 3BB's internet-only page was ฿499 a month before VAT for 300/300 Mbps on a twelve-month contract, which is ฿534 with VAT. the lowest-priced home package on AIS Fibre's page was ฿500 a month for 500/500 Mbps, and TrueOnline's lowest was ฿599 for 500/500 Mbps on a 24-month contract. Neither of those two pages stated whether VAT was included. For mobile, AIS's 5G Max Talk postpaid plan is ฿699 a month before VAT, ฿748 with it, for 10 GB of data and 1,000 minutes.
Fuel
PTT publishes regional pump prices. For Mueang Phuket, effective from 05:00 on 21 October 2026, Gasohol 95 was ฿42.48 a litre and diesel ฿43.98. Its Bangkok prices on the same page were ฿42.04 and ฿43.54, so Phuket pays 44 satang a litre more. A 40-litre tank of Gasohol 95 costs ฿1,699. How many tanks a month depends on where you live relative to the school run and the beach; the budgets above assume one, two and three.
School fees: the family's second rent
The family's two children are at KIS International School in Kathu, one in Year 2 and one in Year 5. KIS's published 2026/27 schedule charges ฿345,000 a year for Years 1 and 2 and ฿365,000 for Years 5 and 6, and takes 15% off the second child's tuition. Applying the discount to the younger child, that is ฿658,250 a year, or ฿54,854 a month. Admission fees, uniforms, transport and meals are separate, and set out in our comparison of KIS and QSI.
KIS is a mid-fee school, not a cheap one and not a dear one. Our map of Phuket's international schools carries the published fee bands for the others; at the top of that table a single place can cost more than the remote worker's whole year of rent. Choose the school first and the district follows. That decision moves the family budget further than any other line in it.
The shopping basket, without a monthly figure
We have not put food into the totals. How a household eats moves that line further than any average could capture, and we could not find a published Phuket shopping survey to anchor one. What we can show is the shelf. These are Lotus's own online prices on 24 October 2026. They are the retailer's default online prices, not those of a particular Phuket store.
| Item | Size | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Chat jasmine rice | 1 kg | ฿55 |
| CP Selection eggs, size 2 | 10 | ฿67 |
| Foremost UHT milk | 1 litre | ฿50 |
| Chicken breast | 1 kg | ฿89 |
| Farmhouse sandwich bread | 480 g | ฿40 |
| Crystal drinking water | 1.5 litres | ฿15 |
| Bananas (kluai hom), one pack | 0.5 kg | ฿22 (normally ฿27) |
| Morakot palm oil | 1 litre | ฿52 |
| Anchor salted butter | 200 g on the label, 227 g in the product address | ฿115 (normally ฿135) |
| Chesdale cheese slices | 250 g | ฿167 |
The pattern matters more than the total. The two imported dairy items cost ฿282 between them, more than the rice, eggs, milk and chicken together (฿261). A household that shops the way it did at home will pay for that habit here, and one that cooks from the Thai shelf will not.
What is not in the totals
- Health insurance. The long-stay insurers we checked publish benefit schedules, not premiums, and we found no general tariff at any private hospital on the island, as our healthcare guide sets out. The one published figure is Thai social security for someone employed in Thailand: 5% of wages, on a wage base capped at ฿17,500 a month, so ฿875 at most. A remote worker paid from abroad is not in that scheme. Get a quote with your age and history before you sign a lease, not after.
- Food and eating out. See the basket above.
- Household help, a pool service and a gardener. No published schedule exists, and the lease decides who pays for the pool and the garden.
- A car. We priced the fuel, not the car, its insurance or a rental.
- Visas. Fees and financial tests vary by visa and by embassy; our guide to the long-term visas sets them out.
The money you need before the first month
The monthly figure is not the hard part of arriving; the cash up front is. The shape we quote most often on a long let is two months' deposit plus the first month's rent. On the three homes above that is ฿195,000 for the remote worker, ฿300,000 for the couple and ฿270,000 for the family. The family's first school invoice comes on the school's own billing calendar, set out in the KIS and QSI comparison. Our guide to getting a rental deposit back covers how to protect that money when you leave.
What it means
For anyone without children, the cost of living in Phuket is mostly a housing decision. The other priced lines together came to about ฿11,300 a month for the couple, and the gap between the Bang Tao and Rawai two-bedroom medians is ฿10,000 on its own. For a family, the school is the decision and the district follows it, which is how a family of four can end up in a cheaper house than a couple.
Start with the district and the school, then look at what the book holds there. Our long-term rental listings carry the district and the asking rent on every home, and our rentals team can tell you which of them are still free and what the landlord has agreed to include.