Welcome to expats in france - moving to france
Why This Site Exists
Our wish is to have a Site We Wished Had Existed. Real guidance & experience from real expats β visas, regions, housing, healthcare, and everything in between.
Moving Abroad is a big decision!
Every year, tens of thousands of English-speaking people make the decision to leave their home country and build a new life in France. Some are retiring early. Some are chasing a slower pace. Some β like us β have spent years living abroad and discovered that France has a pull unlike anywhere else.
And almost all of them hit the same wall: where do you actually start?
The French bureaucracy is famously complex. The visa system has layers. The regions each have their own character, climate, and cost of living. The healthcare system is world-class β but only once you know how to enter it. And the internet is full of outdated, generic, or outright incorrect information that leaves people more confused than when they started.
We created ExpatsInFrance.com to change that.
πΊπΈ β π«π· 15,000+ Americans moved to France in 2025 β up 14% year on year
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All guides written from personal, lived expat experience
Not a Travel Blog. Not a Law Firm. Just Two People Who Have Actually Done This and are doing it again!.
We are not academics. We are not consultants who have read about moving to France. We have lived the expat experience in multiple countries, across multiple decades, across multiple cultures. We know what it feels like to start over somewhere new β and we know what information actually matters when you're trying to make it work.
We're Stephan and Bonnie β a Franco-American photographer and a former civil aviation professional who collectively have lived as expats across three countries, navigated French administrative systems from 10,000 kilometres away, and spent the last decade building a life far from where either of us started.
Let's begin YOUR journey IN France
Everything you need to think about before, during, and after your move β from your first visa application to your first French tax return. Practical, accurate, and written by people who have lived it.