Moving to Paraguay from the UK, step by step

Moving from the UK to Paraguay is not complicated once you've done it, but almost nobody moving for the first time knows the actual order of operations — which comes before residency, what waits on your cédula, and which UK habits (driving licence, banking, the NHS) simply don't transfer. This page walks the move end to end, in the order it actually happens, without oversimplifying any of it. If you're still choosing between Paraguay and Portugal, start with our comparison for British citizens.

Flights: there's no direct route

The first practical fact to plan around: no airline currently flies direct between the UK and Paraguay. Every route involves at least one connection, most commonly through São Paulo, Madrid or Buenos Aires, with the exact options depending on your UK departure airport and the time of year. We're not going to quote a total flight time or a price here — routings, connection times and fares all move — but the practical planning point is the same regardless: build in a realistic connection window rather than the tightest one the booking engine offers, particularly on your first trip, when you'll also be carrying original documents you cannot afford to have delayed with lost luggage.

If you're travelling for a residency appointment specifically, we help you plan the trip around the actual appointment dates once your file is moving, so you're not booking flights before you know when you need to be in Asunción.

Banking: it waits on your cédula, not just your residency approval

A UK current account opens in minutes online. A Paraguayan one doesn't, and the gap catches British arrivals off guard more than almost anything else on this list. Paraguayan banks generally need your residency approved — and in practice, your cédula in hand — before they'll open a fully functional account with cards and transfers enabled. Our guide to keeping UK accounts and opening one here covers what the bank actually asks for and where the process typically stalls.

In the meantime, keep your UK account open and active. Most people run a UK account alongside a Paraguayan one for a good while after moving — the UK account still handles anything billed there, and closing it before you're sure you won't need it tends to create more admin than it saves. Our guide to keeping UK bank accounts after the move covers what British banks tend to do when you tell them you live abroad.

Healthcare: no NHS equivalent, so plan private cover

This is worth stating plainly because it's the single biggest mental adjustment for a UK mover: there is no NHS-style system here that a foreign resident can rely on free at the point of use. Private healthcare in Asunción is generally well regarded — modern clinics, English-speaking specialists in a reasonable share of cases, short appointment waits — but "generally well regarded" and "free" are two different things.

Budget for private cover from day one rather than treating it as something to arrange once you're settled. If you're bringing an existing UK private medical or international expat policy, check specifically whether it covers care inside Paraguay before you assume it does — several widely sold expat policies exclude South America outright or price it as a separate add-on. Our cost of living guide goes into healthcare costs by household size in more detail.

Driving: your UK licence doesn't just carry over indefinitely

Confirm the current rules for your specific situation rather than assuming your full UK driving licence covers you the whole time you're resident here — the position for a short-term visitor and a resident is often different, and residents are generally expected to exchange or register a licence at some point after their residency is settled. We flag the current requirement, and the realistic timeline for it, as part of your residency filing, so it's one fewer thing to research alone. Our UK driving licence guide sets out what the FCDO says for visitors and how the exchange works once you live here.

Cost of living: lower, with real exceptions

Asunción runs noticeably cheaper than most UK cities across rent, groceries bought locally, and eating out — a difference British movers, and Londoners especially, tend to notice within the first few weeks. It's not uniformly cheap, though: imported goods, some utilities load in the hot months, and family-sized healthcare and schooling costs can run higher than the headline "low cost of living" suggests. Our detailed cost of living guide breaks this down by category rather than quoting one number that fits nobody's actual household. If you're retiring on a UK pension, read retiring in Paraguay on a UK State Pension as well: the pension is paid here, but it doesn't rise each year.

The residency steps themselves

Everything above sits around a residency process that, at its core, is document-driven rather than discretionary. In outline:

1. Choose your route. Most British applicants start with temporary residency, moving to permanent residency after the initial period; some qualify for a faster route through the Investor Pass. Our route finder takes a few minutes and points you at the one that fits your situation.
2. Prepare your documents. A birth certificate, an ACRO police certificate and proof of means, apostilled through the FCDO and translated locally in Paraguay — our UK police certificate guide and UK apostille guide cover this in full, and our document checklist tool turns it into a dated list for you.
3. File and attend your appointments in Asunción. This is the trip the flight planning above is really for. We schedule appointments together so one visit covers the filing.
4. Get your cédula, then sort banking, a driving licence exchange if you need one, and — if it applies to you — a RUC. Our tax residency service and our UK tax guide cover what changes, and doesn't, with HMRC once you've made the move.
5. If you're moving as a family, our family filing service covers dependants alongside the primary application.

What we actually do

We handle the residency filing itself end to end — the document checklist tailored to a British applicant, the appointments in Asunción, the cédula and RUC that follow — with a fixed fee quoted in writing before you commit, and a reply within one working day. We won't pretend the flight, the healthcare adjustment or the driving licence exchange are trivial, because they're genuinely part of the move. What we can take off your plate is the residency process itself, which is the part most people find hardest to get right from the UK without having done it before.

Check current pricing, see how we work in our process overview, or get in touch and we'll walk through your specific move — flights, timing and all — before you book anything.