About BetterInThailand
An independent EU-focused publication writing about Thailand — what it costs, how to navigate it, and the parts other guides leave out.
We’re run by people who’ve spent serious time there. No sponsors, no paid placements, no advertising.
What we cover
Five things, all from a European perspective:
- Tourists — itineraries, region guides, the practical first-trip stuff
- Long-stayers — €500–€2,000 monthly budgets, real receipts, where each works
- DTV applicants — the visa nobody else explains for EU citizens, including country-specific tax and paperwork
- Active expats — banking, 90-day reporting, tax residency, long-stay apartments
- Pre-retirees and family travellers — the niche audiences underserved by general travel content
If you’re a North American citizen, you’ll still find most of this useful — but the visa, tax, and insurance details are written for EU passport holders.
What we don’t do
- We don’t run sponsored content
- We don’t accept paid guest posts from visa agents, real-estate companies, or insurance brokers
- We don’t take advertising
- We don’t sell your email or share your data
- We don’t pretend €1,500 a month is the only way to live in Thailand
- We don’t recycle 2019 itineraries with new dates on them
How we make money
We make money two ways:
Direct sales of digital products. Guides, templates, workbooks, and checklists ranging from €15 to €49. You can see the catalogue at /products. The proceeds fund site operations.
Affiliate referrals to services we’d recommend regardless. Wise (banking), SafetyWing and Genki (insurance), Holafly and Airalo (eSIMs), Klook and GetYourGuide (tours), Booking.com and Agoda (hotels), 12Go (transport), NordVPN (streaming/privacy), and others. When you click through an affiliate link and buy, we earn a small commission at no extra cost to you — the price is identical whether you use our link or go direct.
The honest mechanics: affiliate companies pay us only when readers actually find their products useful enough to buy. That keeps our incentives aligned with yours. We don’t accept payment to write nice things about products. We recommend competitors when they’re a better fit (Genki for long-stay, SafetyWing for short trips, etc.). We disclose every affiliate relationship.
Full disclosure, including the complete list of affiliate partners and our GDPR-compliant data policy: betterinthailand.com/disclosure.
Got a question?
Email hello@betterinthailand.com. Every email gets read.
If you find something on the site that’s out of date — a price changed, a visa rule shifted, an app got worse — let us know and we’ll update.