Cost of living in Morocco for a Muslim family: Casablanca, Rabat, Marrakech, Tangier

Cost-of-living pages for Morocco often quote one number for “a family” and rarely say where it comes from. This guide separates what is official from what is crowd-sourced, lists the lines we could not source, and gives each figure with its date. It is information, not financial advice, and it recommends no city, school or product.

Morocco publishes no official rent series, so every rent figure on this page is crowd-sourced and labelled as such. That is the single most important limit of any Moroccan budget.

Currency and date

Amounts are in Moroccan dirhams (MAD), read on 12 November 2026. Dollar figures use Bank Al-Maghrib’s reference rate for 12 November 2026, the central bank’s published mid-rate: USD 1 = MAD 9.8346 (EUR 1 = MAD 10.9124). The page was readable, and we used it as published. Dollar values are rounded.

Monthly budget by city

The table uses a three-bedroom flat for a family of four, Numbeo’s basic utilities bundle for an 85 m² flat, and two adult monthly transport passes at Numbeo’s listed price. All of it is crowd-sourced, from Numbeo’s Casablanca and Rabat page (77 and 44 contributors in the past twelve months, updated 12 November 2026) and its Marrakech and Tangier page (36 and 31 contributors, updated 10 and 12 November).

Line (MAD per month)	Casablanca	Rabat	Marrakech	Tangier
Rent, 3 bedrooms, outside centre	5,907	6,785	4,385	4,943
Rent, 3 bedrooms, city centre	10,791	9,529	6,989	8,387
Basic utilities, 85 m²	456	352	346	725
Monthly transport pass (one adult)	250	250	300	150
Three lines, outside centre, 2 passes	6,864 (USD 698)	7,637 (USD 777)	5,331 (USD 542)	5,968 (USD 607)
Three lines, city centre, 2 passes	11,747 (USD 1,195)	10,381 (USD 1,056)	7,935 (USD 807)	9,412 (USD 957)

These totals are a floor. They leave out food, school, health, phone and internet. The samples are small, so a single high or low entry can move a city’s figure, and the ranking between cities changes depending on whether you look at the centre or the outskirts. Casablanca has the most expensive city centre of the four, while Rabat is the most expensive outside the centre, which is a reminder to treat the numbers as indicative rather than as a league table.

For one-bedroom flats, the same Numbeo pages list centre and outside-centre rents of MAD 6,344 and 3,768 in Casablanca, MAD 5,535 and 3,326 in Rabat, MAD 4,995 and 3,526 in Marrakech and MAD 5,338 and 3,624 in Tangier.

Housing: no official rent data

We found no official, published average rent for any of the four cities. The HCP price index page we read does not break out housing for the month, and we did not find a regulator’s rent table. Crowd-sourced listings are therefore the only series available, and they reflect what contributors report, not a census of leases. Before relying on any figure, compare with current listings and ask local residents. We do not cover rental law or tenancy rights here.

Reading the numbers with care

A few habits make crowd-sourced figures more useful. Compare the same line across the same two or three cities, never one city’s figure against an official statistic. Look at the date: Numbeo shows when each city was last updated, and Marrakech was refreshed two days before the others. Notice the contributor counts, which run from 31 to 77 for these cities, and remember that a three-bedroom flat in a modern building and one in an older quarter can sit at very different prices inside the same city. Finally, ask what a figure leaves out: deposits, agency fees, furnishing and building service charges are not mentioned in the figures we read.

Electricity and water: what is published

Electricity and water in the four cities come from different operators, and the current residential price per kWh and per cubic metre was not available to us in a readable form. What we can say is limited.

Lydec, the operator in Casablanca, says on its blog that tariffs there are set by the delegated-management monitoring committee, not by Lydec, and that billing is progressive for monthly use up to 12 m³ of water and 150 kWh of electricity and selective above that. The same page lists VAT of 14% on domestic electricity and 7% on household water. The page is undated and does not give the current prices, so we quote the rules and not the rates.

On the national side, Medias24 reported in December 2025 that the electricity tariff has not been formally revised since 2015, that in 2022 the average sale price was 0.94 MAD per kWh against an average cost of 1.21, and that the regulator’s reform points to a possible rise in 2027. These are press summaries of regulator and ONEE data, not a tariff table. The Numbeo utilities line above (MAD 352 to 725 a month, USD 36 to 74) is the only monthly figure we can give, and it is crowd-sourced.

Read alsoMorocco: residence, costs, schools and Muslim life

Transport: the Rabat-Salé tram

Bladi.net reported on 11 July 2026 that from the beginning of July the Rabat-Salé tram raised a single ticket from MAD 6 to MAD 7 (USD 0.71), the general-public monthly pass from MAD 250 to MAD 270 (USD 27.45), and the student pass from MAD 150 to MAD 170. The article attributes the prices to the tram company and does not link to an official notice, so we treat the figures as reported, and ask you to confirm them at a ticket office.

We could not read a confirmed 2026 single-ticket fare for the Casablanca tram or busway. Numbeo lists a monthly pass of MAD 250 for Casablanca, which is the crowd-sourced figure used in the table above. We left official Casablanca fares out rather than quote an undated news item.

Schools: what is published

French-curriculum schools run by the AEFE publish a financial regulation. The Lycée Descartes regulation for 2026-27 in Rabat lists a first-registration fee (DPI) of MAD 30,000 for all nationalities and levels, about USD 3,050, with reductions for a second and later child enrolled at the same time. We could not extract the tuition grid from the document, which varies by level and declared nationality, so we do not quote it.

On the direction of fees, the French embassy denied reports of a 25% rise in February 2026, and Le Desk described rising tension over fees. Reports we found put the increase for 2026-27 in the Casablanca-Mohammedia network at about 6%, after a planned 7% was reduced under parent pressure. We cite those as press accounts and do not use them as a price.

For a wider crowd-sourced view, Numbeo lists an international primary school per child at MAD 112,327 a year in Casablanca (USD 11,422), MAD 136,697 in Rabat (USD 13,900), MAD 123,587 in Marrakech (USD 12,567) and MAD 109,250 in Tangier (USD 11,109). Those mix very different schools. We do not rate schools here; see the Morocco country page for how the education system is organised.

Food prices: what the HCP shows

The HCP does not publish a shopping basket in dirhams on the page we read, but it does publish the price index. Its September 2026 release, issued on 22 October 2026, reports that the consumer price index rose 1.0% over August and 0.5% over twelve months. Food prices rose 1.6% in the month but were 2.5% lower than a year earlier; non-food prices were up 2.8% over the year, with transport up 9.4%. Underlying inflation was 0.6% over twelve months.

So Morocco’s overall inflation is low by the standards of some other countries in our cost guides, and food was cheaper than a year before, but a monthly jump of 1.6% in food shows that prices can move quickly. The release page did not give yearly changes for housing, water, electricity or education.

What we left out

These lines are missing because we could not read a reliable source today.

• Official rent levels for any city: none are published, as far as we could find.
• ONEE, Lydec and Redal residential tariffs per kWh and per m³: not available in a readable current form. Only the billing rules and the national averages above are given.
• Casablanca tram and busway fares: not confirmed.
• Tuition at the AEFE schools: the Descartes grid could not be extracted, and other press figures were partial or not clearly tied to one school.
• Health cover and private care: no official premium or price list; we do not recommend insurance products.
• Food basket in dirhams, internet, mobile and clothing: no official household price in dirhams.
• Halal food: we found no price comparison.

How to use this page

Use the table as a floor for housing, utilities and transport, add food and school costs from current sources, and re-check the tram fare and school fees on the day you decide. For the rules on residence, safety, religious life and halal food, see Living in Morocco. To compare with a neighbour in the same format, see the Turkey cost guide, and for other regions, the guides for Dubai and Malaysia.