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Moving to Plano
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Cost of living in Plano
Can you move to United States?
Pick your passport to see whether you can enter United States — and what it takes to stay.
Entry rules come from github.com/imorte/passport-index-data, updated 17 February 2026. They change without notice — confirm with the official immigration service before booking.
Getting set up in United States
Status, a Social Security number, and a Texas licence in 90 days
There is no post-arrival registration in the United States: your electronic I-94 record is your status. In the first weeks you need a Social Security number if work-authorised, or an ITIN if not. Texas expects a new resident to obtain a Texas licence within 90 days, and unlike some states it does not issue a driving credential to residents who cannot document lawful presence — so the licence is downstream of your immigration paperwork rather than parallel to it. Plano's advantage over a single-office city is the sheer density of DPS offices across the metroplex: appointment availability, not the 90-day rule, is what actually determines when this happens, and checking Plano, McKinney, Garland, Denton and Sherman rather than only the nearest office routinely finds a slot weeks earlier. If you are here on an employment-based petition, note that the North Texas business-immigration bar is one of the largest in the country and its habits are worth using.
Read the full step-by-step guideNinety days, a Collin County emissions test, a TollTag — and now two rail lines
Texas gives new residents 90 days to obtain a Texas licence and register a vehicle. The inspection regime changed on 1 January 2025: the annual safety inspection for non-commercial vehicles was abolished and replaced with a $7.50 inspection programme replacement fee at registration. Emissions testing continues in designated counties, and Collin County is inside the Dallas-Fort Worth programme area alongside Dallas, Denton, Tarrant, Ellis, Johnson, Kaufman, Parker and Rockwall — so a vehicle registered here still needs an annual emissions test. Add a TollTag before your first week is out, because Plano sits at the junction of the Dallas North Tollway, the President George Bush Turnpike and the Sam Rayburn, and comprehensive insurance, because this is one of the most hail-prone regions on earth. Then check whether the Red Line or the Silver Line actually serves your commute before you assume it does not.
Read the full step-by-step guideA bank account, US credit from zero, and choosing an electricity retailer
You can open a US account without a Social Security number: federal Customer Identification Program rules let a bank use your passport number and country of issuance, or an ITIN, as the identifying number. The credit problem is the standard American one — no US file scores worse than a bad one, and here it lands on both a car loan you cannot avoid and a rental application in a competitive suburb. What is genuinely different in Plano is the utility side: this is a deregulated electricity market, so nobody assigns you a supplier. You pick one, the plan you pick moves your annual bill by hundreds of dollars, and the deposit a retailer demands without a US credit file varies between providers — so shopping around matters twice over. Water is billed by the city but sourced from the North Texas Municipal Water District, whose conservation rules are regional rather than local.
Read the full step-by-step guideHealthCare.gov, no Medicaid expansion — and no county hospital either
Coverage comes from an employer or from HealthCare.gov, the federal marketplace. Texas has not expanded Medicaid, so adult Medicaid is limited to narrow categories and a low-income working adult can fall into a coverage gap with nothing underneath. What makes Plano different from Dallas or Fort Worth is what sits below that gap. Dallas County funds Parkland and Tarrant County funds JPS — large public hospital systems with financial-assistance programmes. Collin County has neither. Under the Texas Indigent Health Care and Treatment Act a county without a hospital district or public hospital must instead run a county indigent health care programme, which is a much narrower instrument. Clinically the provision here is excellent and new — Texas Health Presbyterian, Medical City, Baylor Scott & White and Children's Health all have Plano campuses. Structurally, the floor is lower. Enrol in your employer's plan in the new-hire window and treat that benefit as part of the salary.
Read the full step-by-step guideA US phone number, tornado alerts, and a plan for when the grid fails
The United States has no SIM registration requirement, so getting connected is trivially easy: buy a prepaid SIM or eSIM and it works immediately. The friction is postpaid contracts, which run a credit check you cannot pass on arrival. Locally, two habits matter. Leave wireless emergency alerts on — tornado and severe thunderstorm warnings arrive that way and the lead time is minutes, and Collin County has taken direct tornado hits within living memory. And keep a power bank, because Texas's grid is largely isolated from the rest of the country and cannot be backfilled from neighbouring states the way one elsewhere can. For home internet, check the FCC's broadband map against the exact address: fibre coverage across Plano is good in parts and patchy in others, and the leasing brochure is not evidence.
Read the full step-by-step guideNo income tax, a $140,000 homestead exemption, and four taxing entities
Texas levies no personal income tax, and voters amended the state constitution in November 2019 to prohibit one — a constitutional position, not merely an unlegislated one. Property tax does the work instead. A Plano parcel is taxed by four entities: Collin County, the City of Plano, Collin College, and one of Plano ISD, Frisco ISD or Lewisville ISD. The City of Plano's own rate is among the lower municipal rates in the metroplex, but Collin County values are among the highest in Texas and the bill is rate times value, so the low rate is less comforting than it sounds. The figures worth knowing are the school district residence homestead exemption, currently $140,000, and the further $60,000 for owners aged 65 or over or with a disability — both confirmed against the Comptroller and both higher than older guidance says. Sales tax runs at the 8.25% ceiling, with groceries and prescription medicine exempt.
Read the full step-by-step guideEach guide has verified costs, timelines, required documents, and the non-obvious gotchas — sourced from official government pages. Last verified August 2026.
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What to know before you go
Collin County has no public hospital district — and Texas never expanded Medicaid
CriticalThis is the most consequential thing about moving to Plano rather than to Dallas or Fort Worth, and almost nobody says it. Dallas County funds Parkland and Tarrant County funds JPS; Collin County funds neither. Under the Texas Indigent Health Care and Treatment Act, a county without a hospital district or public hospital must run a county indigent health care programme instead — a much thinner instrument than a public hospital system, with tighter eligibility. Combine that with Texas's refusal to expand Medicaid and the result is that a working-age adult in Plano on a low income has less underneath them than the same person twenty miles south. Treat an employer health plan as a material part of any Plano job offer, and enrol in the new-hire window.
Find out which ISD your address is in before you sign anything
CriticalPlano is not a Plano ISD city. It is carved between Plano ISD, Frisco ISD and Lewisville ISD, and the boundaries follow neither neighbourhood names nor the city limit — the far west and north-west of the city are largely Frisco or Lewisville ISD. Plano ISD itself also runs an unusual structure, with senior high schools serving years 11 and 12 and separate senior-high and high-school campuses beneath them, which surprises people expecting a single four-year high school. If schools matter at all, verify the district and the specific campus against the exact street address with the district itself, not a listing site. This is the most expensive mistake newcomers make in this metro.
You choose your own electricity retailer, and Collin County still requires an emissions test
CriticalTwo North Texas facts in one. Plano sits in the deregulated ERCOT retail market: Oncor delivers the power whoever you buy from, but you pick the retail electric provider, and the plan choice is worth several hundred dollars a year. Use the Public Utility Commission's own comparison site, read the Electricity Facts Label at the usage level you will actually consume, and diary the contract end date because the roll-over rate is where providers make their money. Separately, Texas abolished the annual safety inspection for non-commercial vehicles on 1 January 2025 and replaced it with a $7.50 fee at registration — but emissions testing continues in designated counties and Collin County is inside the Dallas-Fort Worth programme area. So you still have an annual emissions test here.
Model the property tax, because there is no income tax to model instead
CriticalTexas levies no personal income tax and voters wrote a prohibition into the state constitution in 2019. The money is raised on property: a Plano address carries a combined rate from Collin County, the City of Plano, Collin College and one of three school districts. The City of Plano's own rate is among the lower municipal rates in the metro, but Collin County home values are among the highest in Texas, and the bill is rate times value. The school district residence homestead exemption is currently $140,000, with a further $60,000 for owners aged 65 or over or with a disability — both confirmed against the Comptroller, and both higher than an older article will tell you. Renters pay all of it through the rent.
Plano now has two rail lines, which no other DFW suburb can say
ImportantThe DART Red Line has run up Highway 75 through downtown Plano to Parker Road for years. On 25 October 2025 the Silver Line opened: 26 miles, ten stations, running west from its eastern terminus at Shiloh Road in Plano through Richardson, Addison, Carrollton, Dallas, Coppell and Grapevine to DFW Airport, with a second Plano stop at 12th Street. Shiloh Road to Terminal B is about an hour. Off-peak it is one train an hour in each direction and two at peak, so it is a planned journey rather than a turn-up-and-go one — but for an airport run or a Richardson commute it genuinely works, and it is a real reason to weigh an east Plano address against a Legacy one.
Your water comes from a regional district, not from the city
ImportantThe North Texas Municipal Water District supplies Plano and most of Collin County from Lavon Lake and, since 2022, Bois d'Arc Lake — the first major new reservoir built in Texas in decades. Two practical consequences. Watering restrictions and conservation rules are set regionally and are effectively permanent rather than drought-triggered, so plan the garden accordingly. And each year the district temporarily switches its disinfectant from chloramine to free chlorine for system maintenance; the water tastes and smells of a swimming pool for a few weeks, it is announced in advance, and every spring a wave of newcomers assumes something has gone wrong.
Hail, the grid and a percentage deductible
ImportantNorth Texas is one of the most hail-prone regions in the world and a single storm writes off large numbers of vehicles at once, so comprehensive cover is not optional and covered parking has directly calculable value. On a house, ask whether the wind-and-hail deductible is a percentage of the dwelling limit and get it as a dollar figure before comparing premiums. And Texas runs its own electricity grid, largely isolated from the rest of the country, which failed catastrophically in the February 2021 freeze — a few days of water, a battery and a plan is ordinary local preparedness here rather than paranoia.
Top industries & employers
Corporate headquarters & shared services
Toyota Motor North America (headquartered at Legacy West), Liberty Mutual, JPMorgan Chase's largest campus outside New York, Capital One, Keurig Dr Pepper, Frito-Lay (PepsiCo), FedEx Office, Cinemark, Tyler Technologies
Plano's economy is corporate relocation made visible. Toyota moved its North American headquarters here from California in 2017 and Liberty Mutual and JPMorgan built campuses beside it, turning a stretch of former farmland at Legacy West into one of the densest concentrations of Fortune 500 headquarters and shared-service centres in the country. For a newcomer this is the most accessible part of the job market: finance, operations, supply chain, HR and analytics roles at scale, with employers experienced in relocating people internationally.
Technology & telecoms
NTT Data, Ericsson, Intuit, Diodes, Alkami Technology, Tyler Technologies, a deep enterprise-software and systems-integration layer along the Tollway
The Richardson-Plano stretch of the Tollway and Highway 75 was the original Telecom Corridor and remains a serious enterprise technology cluster — telecoms equipment, government software, payments and fintech. It is unglamorous next to Austin and it hires steadily, in volume, and with far less of Austin's boom-bust hiring pattern.
Financial services & payments
JPMorgan Chase, Capital One, Bank of America operations, Toyota Financial Services, USAA operations nearby, a large mortgage and insurance back-office layer
The northern suburbs of Dallas have become one of the largest financial-services back-office concentrations in the United States, drawing operations out of higher-cost coastal states. Plano and Legacy West are its centre of gravity. These are the employers most likely to sponsor, most likely to offer hybrid work, and most likely to have relocated someone through the same process you are going through.
Health care
Texas Health Presbyterian Plano, Medical City Plano, Baylor Scott & White Plano, Children's Health Plano, a dense outpatient and specialist layer
Plano is well provided with hospitals and they are private systems — there is no county public hospital in Collin County the way Parkland serves Dallas and JPS serves Tarrant. Clinically the provision is strong and the facilities are new; structurally, the safety net underneath it is thinner than in the neighbouring counties, which matters if you are ever uninsured.
Retail, restaurant & consumer brands
At Home, Rent-A-Center, Pizza Hut and Yum operations nearby, Keurig Dr Pepper, a substantial franchising and consumer-brand headquarters layer
North Texas is the historic home of American restaurant franchising and a great deal of that corporate infrastructure sits in Plano and its neighbours — brand management, supply chain, franchise development and marketing rather than store operations. It is a specific and portable set of skills and this is one of the best places in the world to build them.
Professional services & consulting
The big four accounting firms' North Texas offices, a large legal and immigration bar, Toyota's and JPMorgan's supplier ecosystems
Where the headquarters go, the advisers follow. Plano and the wider DFW metro carry a deep professional services layer, and specifically one of the larger business-immigration bars in the country — which is genuinely useful if your move involves an employment-based petition. Firms here process a high volume of these and know the Texas Service Center's habits.
Where to go in Plano
Legacy West and the Shops at Legacy
Neighborhood · Legacy Drive at the Dallas North Tollway
A purpose-built urban district on former farmland — Toyota, Liberty Mutual and JPMorgan campuses wrapped around Legacy Hall's food hall, a hotel and a walkable street grid of restaurants and flats.
Local tip: Legacy Hall's ground floor is the best casual meal in north Plano and the rooftop is where people actually go after work. Park once in a garage rather than circling; the surface spaces are a trap. It is busiest Thursday evening, quietest Sunday morning.
Historic Downtown Plano
Culture · 15th Street at the DART Red Line
The original 1870s railway town — two-storey brick shopfronts, independent bars and restaurants, a theatre and the Interurban Railway Museum, with a light rail station in the middle of it.
Local tip: This is the one part of Plano with genuine street life and a train station, which makes it the sensible place to meet if anyone is coming from Dallas. The Saturday farmers market at Haggard Park runs from spring to autumn and is much better than a suburb has any right to have.
Arbor Hills Nature Preserve
Nature · West Plano, off Parker Road
Two hundred acres of blackland prairie, oak savannah and bottomland forest with a paved loop, singletrack and an observation tower over the whole of west Plano.
Local tip: Go early — the car park fills by nine at weekends and there is very little shade on the prairie section. The unpaved trails on the north side are far quieter than the paved loop and are where the wildflowers are in April.
Oak Point Park and Nature Preserve
Nature · East Plano, off Spring Creek Parkway
Plano's largest park at around 800 acres of creek bottom and prairie, linked into the city's trail network, and the site of the Plano Balloon Festival each September.
Local tip: The Chisholm and Bluebonnet trails connect here and you can ride a long way across the city without crossing a major road, which is unusual for a Texas suburb. The amphitheatre hosts free concerts in spring and autumn — check the city's calendar rather than turning up.
The Legacy Drive and Coit Road food corridor
Hidden gemFood · North and west Plano
The everyday food geography of a city where nearly a quarter of residents are Asian American — South Indian, North Indian, Sichuan, Taiwanese, Korean and Vietnamese kitchens alongside the big Asian supermarkets.
Local tip: This is not a themed district; it is where people actually shop and eat. Go to one of the large Asian supermarkets on a Saturday morning and eat in its food court before you attempt the restaurants — it is the fastest way to work out what is here.
Shiloh Road station and the Silver Line
Landmark · East Plano, off Shiloh Road
The eastern terminus of DART's Silver Line, opened 25 October 2025 — 26 miles and ten stations west to DFW Airport, with a second Plano stop at 12th Street.
Local tip: About an hour to Terminal B, and one train an hour off-peak rising to two at peak, so check the timetable rather than turning up. For a flight it beats parking at DFW comprehensively; for a daily commute it only works if both ends are near a station.
Emergency numbers in Plano
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