Staying a Month or Longer in Lagos: What the Costs Actually Are

If you are coming to Lagos for a month, the figure you want is a monthly rate for a serviced apartment or a long-stay hotel. There is no published series for either, in Lagos or anywhere in Nigeria that we could find. What is published is an annual residential asking rent per district, and the gap between those two things is the most useful fact in this article.

The monthly rate you came for is not published

No official body and no publisher we could read puts out a rate series for serviced apartments or extended-stay hotel rooms in Lagos. So this article gives none. The dollar ranges that circulate for this question — a month in a serviced apartment, a night in a hotel, a worked example on a nightly rate — have been removed rather than refreshed, because there was nothing to refresh them against.

Where you can get a real number: from the property, in writing, with your dates and the length of stay in the request. Ask for the all-in figure, ask what is excluded, and ask whether the price is quoted in naira or in dollars, because that single question decides who carries the currency risk for a month.

What is published is an annual rent, not a monthly one

Residential asking rents for Lagos districts are published and we hold them as approved reference data. They are aggregated Hutbay listing asking prices over the publisher's 90-day reporting window, measured on 6 October 2026, and they are stated per year. Nothing below was divided by twelve.

For each district, three amounts: the lower bound of the middle 50 per cent of asking prices, the median, and the upper bound. Those three are the publisher's figures; calling them a basic, a comfortable and an expatriate tier is our label and not the publisher's, so read them as what they are — three points in one distribution.

• Yaba: NGN 2,500,000, NGN 4,500,000 and NGN 7,000,000 per year, from 362 priced rental advertisements.
• Surulere: NGN 3,000,000, NGN 6,000,000 and NGN 12,000,000 per year, from 239 advertisements.
• Lekki: NGN 7,000,000, NGN 12,000,000 and NGN 20,000,000 per year, from 9,707 advertisements — by far the deepest sample here.
• Victoria Island: NGN 16,000,000, NGN 30,000,000 and NGN 50,000,000 per year, from 1,345 advertisements.
• Ikoyi: NGN 35,000,000, NGN 45,000,000 and NGN 70,000,000 per year, from 2,250 advertisements.

Two warnings that belong with the figures. The publisher states that prices remain asking prices, not verified completion values, and this market's own dataset block counts no listings at all marked rented or leased — so there are no concluded lettings behind any of it. And the page carries no effective date for the amounts; 6 October 2026 is when the market was measured.

Why an annual rent decides what your month costs

Nigerian residential rent is quoted and paid annually in advance. That is why the figures above are per year and why turning one into a monthly budget would hide the thing that actually blocks a short stay: a landlord on the residential market is not selling you a month.

So a one-month stay is a different product with a different seller — a short-let operator, a serviced-apartment company, a hotel — and that product has no published price. Use the annual figures only as a benchmark: if a short-let quote for a district works out far below the local annual median divided across the year, ask what is different about the unit, and if it works out far above, ask what the premium is buying. Then put four questions to the operator in writing: what is the total for my dates, what is the deposit and when is it returned, which utilities are included and metered how, and what notice applies if I extend or leave early.

Utilities: internet by thirty days, electricity by hours of supply

Internet is the one cost with a genuine period price. Spectranet's published fixed wireless plans for Lagos, read on 6 October 2026, are NGN 20,000 for up to 7 Mbps, NGN 22,000 for up to 10 Mbps, NGN 25,000 for up to 15 Mbps and NGN 29,000 for up to 20 Mbps, each with unlimited data. The term is 30 Days validity and not a calendar month, so a year holds about 12.17 of them rather than 12. One publisher, no effective date on the page: the regulator sets price conditions but publishes no package prices, and other providers either load their prices with scripts or do not answer.

Electricity cannot be budgeted the same way, and the reason is structural. Since the 2024 reform the household rate follows the hours of supply rather than the units consumed. Eko Electricity Distribution Company, which serves southern Lagos, publishes per kilowatt-hour household rates of NGN 209.50 for band A, which guarantees a minimum of 20 hours of supply a day, NGN 61.00 for band B at 16 hours, NGN 48.53 for band C at 12 hours, NGN 32.48 for band D and NGN 32.44 for band E, read on 6 October 2026 with no effective date on the page.

Note what that does to a monthly estimate. The same kilowatt-hour costs more than six times as much in band A as in band E, this is one distributor of eleven, and no consumption profile for a Lagos household is published anywhere we could read. A monthly electricity figure therefore cannot be derived from these rates, and we do not give one. The question to ask before you sign is which band the address is on, because that single answer moves the bill by a factor.

Cooking gas, fuel and fares, each with the month it was measured

These come from the National Bureau of Statistics, which publishes monthly with a lag of several months. The date on each figure is the month the price was observed, not the day it was read.

• Cooking gas, Lagos State, April 2026: NGN 24,362.75 to refill a 12.5 kg cylinder and NGN 9,745.10 for a 5 kg cylinder. Two sizes, because that is how it is sold.
• Pump prices, Lagos State, May 2026: NGN 1,561.22 per liter of gasoline, NGN 3,150.45 per liter of diesel and NGN 3,185.71 per liter of kerosene.
• Fares, May 2026, national averages: NGN 1,431.25 for a bus journey within a city per drop, NGN 1,072.51 for a motorcycle taxi per drop, NGN 9,699.55 for an intercity bus on a state route, NGN 2,276.48 for a waterway passenger journey and NGN 157,552.19 for a single domestic flight.
• Food, May 2026, national averages: NGN 1,687.18 for a 450 g loaf of sliced bread and NGN 6,149.18 for a crate of 30 agric hen eggs.

The fares and the food prices are labeled national averages for a reason, and it is not caution for its own sake. That transport sheet divides the country into six zones and never names Lagos; the zone containing Lagos also contains Ibadan and Oyo, so presenting a zone figure as a Lagos figure would be a guess wearing an official source. The fuel and cooking gas series from the same office do carry a Lagos row, which is why those two are stated as Lagos. No Lagos grocery basket is published at all, so the monthly grocery range the earlier version of this article gave has been removed.

Choosing a district: the questions, not a rating

We do not describe any Lagos district as safe or unsafe. There is no published source that would support it, those are real neighborhoods with residents, and a label like that in a relocation article does damage out of all proportion to its evidence.

What a month-long stay actually turns on is answerable, and mostly by asking:

• How long is the commute at the hour you would really travel it, tested on the day of the week you would travel? A distance in kilometers tells you nothing here.
• Which electricity band is the address on, and is there a generator, who fuels it, and is that cost in the rent?
• How does water reach the building, and who pays when it does not?
• Is the internet already installed, on which product, and does it transfer to you?
• For a short let: what is included, what is metered, and what is the total for your dates?

What expats should know

• No published series exists for serviced apartments or extended-stay hotels in Lagos. Any monthly range you are shown is somebody's estimate.
• Published Lagos rents are annual asking prices, measured on 6 October 2026, and not monthly rents.
• Residential rent is paid annually in advance, which is why a month is a different product with a different seller.
• Ask which electricity band the address is on. Band A costs more than six times band E per kilowatt-hour.
• Internet is priced per 30 days, not per month. NGN 20,000 to NGN 29,000 for the Lagos fixed wireless plans.
• Fares and food prices are national averages. The transport sheet never names Lagos.
• We give no currency conversion. The rate on the day you pay is the only one that applies to you.
• Get the quote in writing with your dates in it. That is the only figure that binds anyone.

Where to check

The district rents are aggregated Hutbay listing asking prices held in our own approved reference data, with the measurement date and the advertisement count given per district above. The broadband plans are Spectranet's published Lagos plans. The per-kilowatt-hour household rates are Eko Electricity Distribution Company's published service band tariffs. The cooking gas, pump price, fare and food figures are from the National Bureau of Statistics price and fare watches, each dated by the month the sheet names. Reference data read on 24 October 2026.

AI-Generated Content: This article was created with AI assistance and may contain inaccuracies. Please verify important information with official sources.