How we rank passports and check the rules

P2L Passport Index

The P2L Passport Index ranks passports by the P2L Score: how easily a passport’s holders can enter other countries for a short visit — tourism or business. Each of the 198 other destinations in our list adds a weight that depends on what entry requires:

How the weights are set. The weights follow a simple, published rubric rather than a measurement. A destination you can enter without a visa in advance earns 0.6. It earns 0.2 more if you don’t need to apply online before you travel, and another 0.2 if you don’t need to get a visa at the border. So visa-free entry scores 1, and an eTA and a visa on arrival both score 0.8.

Why an eTA and a visa on arrival weigh the same. Each has one real advantage. An eTA is decided before you buy a ticket — the US ESTA costs USD 40 and is usually decided within 72 hours. A visa on arrival needs nothing in advance, but the fee, the conditions and any refusal come at the border. Which matters more depends on the trip, and the entry category alone can’t tell. Fees, validity, queues and refusal rates differ by destination; we will weigh them only once we have verified data for each destination, not guesses.

eTA or eVisa. We follow the destination’s own law, not the name or the speed of the procedure. An eTA is an online travel authorization that the destination says is not a visa, such as the US ESTA. If the destination issues the online permission as a visa, we count it as an eVisa, even when it is usually granted within minutes, and a refusal is then a visa refusal. Some destinations require online approval before you travel and then put the visa in your passport at the border with no further application. If the destination’s law calls that approval a visa approval and charges a visa fee for it, as India does, we count it as an eVisa. If it is a travel authorization for travellers who need no visa application, as New Zealand’s NZeTA is, we count it as an eTA. Either way, nothing is decided at the border, so it is not a visa on arrival. Telling quick eVisas apart from full visa procedures needs verified data on each procedure, which we don’t have yet.

eVisa or visa required. We look at the standard procedure for someone applying from their own country. If it includes a visit in person, to a consulate, a visa centre or to give fingerprints, the visa counts as required, even when the form is online. A check the authority asks of some applicants after they apply, such as a medical exam or an interview, doesn’t change the category.

One ranking, not a slider. Earlier versions let you set your own weights. We removed that: a ranking is useful when everyone reads the same one, with the reasoning in the open. To see how much a rank depends on the weights, each passport page shows its weight scenarios.

Ranks and ties

A passport’s rank is one plus the number of passports with a higher score. Passports with equal scores share a rank, marked “=”, and the next rank counts everyone ahead: 1, 2, 2, 4. So a rank always tells you how many passports are stronger.

Example from the No Advance Visa Access Ranking: Germany shares rank #6 with 12 other passports. India is #149: 148 passports score higher.

Some indices, such as the Henley Passport Index, count ranks by score level instead (1, 2, 2, 3). On that basis India would be #78, which can read as if far fewer passports were ahead. We show this “score tier” only here, for comparison.

Scores are calculated in tenths, so equal scores are exactly equal — rounding never breaks a tie.

How the rankings fit together

The P2L Passport Index is our main ranking. The others answer narrower questions and fall into three groups:

• Entry access — how easily you get in: the P2L Passport Index and a plain count of destinations without a visa in advance.
• Destination reach — what the places you can reach add up to: their share of the world economy, of its people, and of its most developed countries. The methods are fixed; what changes with time is the visa data and the yearly statistics behind them.
• Experimental — new ways of weighing destinations that may still change: Connected Destinations and Exclusive Access.

“Experimental” describes the method, not the data. Every ranking rests on the same visa rules, and until a rule is verified it is shown as public data, not as verified, whatever the ranking.

No Advance Visa Access Ranking

The No Advance Visa Access Ranking is the classic count: the number of destinations a passport’s holders can visit without applying for a visa in advance — visa-free, with an eTA or with a visa on arrival, each counted once. We don’t call it “visa-free”: an eTA still has to be approved before you travel, and a visa on arrival is a visa. Until October 2026 it was called the Visa-Free Access Ranking; the address and the count are unchanged. It is similar in spirit to the Henley Passport Index, but the numbers are not directly comparable: we compare 198 destinations per passport and classify entry our own way.

Entry restrictions

Where a destination doesn’t admit a passport’s holders at all, that destination adds 0 — the same as a visa in advance. We don’t subtract points: a penalty would turn an index of travel ease into a judgement of politics. Instead, the number of such destinations is shown separately as “entry restrictions”, and a trip check says clearly when the usual route is closed.

Weight scenarios

To show how much a rank depends on our choice of weights, each passport page lists the range of its P2L rank with an eTA weighted from 0.6 to 1 and a visa on arrival from 0.6 to 1. Passports whose access relies on visas on arrival move the most. This is sensitivity to weights, not a margin of error in the data.

Economic Reach Ranking

The Economic Reach Ranking asks how much of the world economy a passport opens: the share of GDP at purchasing power parity in destinations its holders can visit without applying for a visa in advance — visa-free, with an eTA or with a visa on arrival.

• Data: World Bank, World Development Indicators, indicator NY.GDP.MKTP.PP.CD, for a single year (2024) for every country.
• The passport’s own country is left out: you don’t need a visa to go home.
• Countries without data for that year are left out of both sides of the share rather than counted as zero — currently 12 of 199. So the share is of the covered world economy.
• Each reachable country counts in full. A few very large economies weigh a lot, so access to a single big country can move a passport by many places — that is part of what this ranking shows.

Population Reach Ranking

The Population Reach Ranking works the same way with population (World Bank indicator SP.POP.TOTL), 2024: the share of the covered world population living in destinations a passport’s holders can visit without a visa in advance.

Both shares are of the covered world outside the passport’s own country, and both depend on how much of the world the statistics cover. The Connected Destinations Ranking weighs destinations by how freely their own citizens travel instead.

Travel advice and reachable destinations

On each passport page we say how many of the destinations open to its holders without a visa in advance are under the strictest travel advice, and mark them in the table of entry requirements. Each destination page shows the advice of all three governments.

• Data: official travel advice from three governments, retrieved 30 Sept 2026 — the US Department of State (Level 4, “Do not travel”), the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (advice against all travel) and Global Affairs Canada (“Avoid all travel”).
• A destination is marked when at least two of the three give that advice for the whole country — currently 20: Afghanistan, Belarus, Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Mali, Myanmar, Niger, Russia, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Ukraine, Yemen. Warnings for only part of a country don’t count. No government advises on travel to itself, so two out of three is the bar.
• The advice is written for each government’s own citizens and reflects their consular reach and politics as well as risk on the ground. Destinations without such advice are not “safe” — we simply don’t mark them. The advice changes often; every snapshot keeps its date.
• Until October 2026 this was also a separate ranking, Safe Reach. It ranked passports almost exactly as the P2L Passport Index does, and its name promised more than the advice measures, so we show the advice where it helps a decision — on passport and destination pages — instead.

Very High HDI Reach Ranking

The Very High HDI Reach Ranking asks how much of the most developed world a passport opens.

• Data: the UN Development Programme’s Human Development Index for 2023 (Human Development Report 2025), which combines life expectancy, education and income.
• The group is UNDP’s own: “very high human development” means an index of 0.800 or above — 74 destinations in 2023.
• The score is the share of those destinations that a passport’s holders can visit without applying for a visa in advance; the passport’s own country is left out. Destinations without 2023 data are left out rather than counted as outside the group — currently Kosovo, Macao, Monaco, North Korea, Taiwan, Vatican City.
• The index measures development, not how safe or welcoming a destination is for visitors.

Of 199 passports, 82 move ten or more places in the Very High HDI Reach Ranking compared with the P2L Passport Index.

Connected Destinations Ranking experimental

The Connected Destinations Ranking weighs each destination by how strong its own passport is. Two passports can open almost the same number of countries but different ones: access to a country whose citizens can travel widely counts for more.

• A destination’s weight is its P2L Score in the P2L Passport Index above — the same visa data, so there is no outside statistic and no gap in coverage.
• The score is the sum of the weights of the destinations a passport’s holders can visit without applying for a visa in advance, as a share of the weights of all destinations; the passport’s own country is left out.
• It is an indirect measure: a strong passport says how welcome a country’s citizens are abroad, not how rich, safe or interesting the country is. Regional groups that open to each other — the Schengen area, the Gulf states — lift each other’s weight.

It mostly agrees with the P2L Passport Index, but of 199 passports 12 move ten or more places. Passports whose advantage is access to destinations with weaker passports move down.

Exclusive Access Ranking experimental

The Exclusive Access Ranking weighs each destination by how exclusive visa-free access to it is. A country that admits almost every passport without a visa adds little to any one passport; a country that admits few adds a lot.

• A destination’s weight is ln((N + 1) / (n + 1)), where N is the number of passports and n the number of other passports it admits without a visa in advance. A destination open to every passport weighs almost nothing; one open to about a quarter of them weighs around 1.4.
• Destinations open to fewer than 5 passports weigh as if they were open to 5: such access is usually a one-off arrangement between two countries.
• The score is the weighted share of all destinations, with visa-free entry counting 1 and an eTA or a visa on arrival 0.8, as in the P2L Score; the passport’s own country is left out.
• We use a logarithm on purpose. A straight-line weight barely changes the P2L order, and a weight of 1/n hands the ranking to a few neighbours who let each other in. Groups of countries that open to each other but few others — such as the Economic Community of West African States — lift their own passports here.

Of 199 passports, 61 move ten or more places compared with the P2L Passport Index.

Entry categories

Every rule is one of seven categories, ordered from the easiest entry to the hardest.

Free movementFreedom of movement

Live, work and travel without a visa.

Visa-freeVisa-free

No visa needed for a short visit.

eTAElectronic travel authorization

Apply online before you travel. Not a visa.

On arrivalVisa on arrival

Get your visa at the border.

eVisaeVisa

Apply for a visa online before you travel. You may still be asked to give fingerprints or attend an interview in person.

Visa requiredVisa required

Apply for a visa before you travel, with a visit in person: to a consulate or visa centre, or to give fingerprints.

No admissionNo admission

Short visits are currently suspended or refused, apart from narrow exceptions.

Stamps with rounded corners mean no visa is needed in advance; square stamps mean you need a visa before you travel. The colours follow the same split, but the words always carry the meaning.

Verification

Every rule on this site shows one of these statuses:

Verified

Checked against an official source — the destination’s government, the law itself, or official travel advice from another government. We show the date of the check.

Public data

Comes from the public visa data we started from (as of 17 Feb 2026) and hasn’t been checked against an official source yet.

Due for recheck

Verified more than 90 days ago. Rules change, so older checks are flagged.

Needs clarification

Official sources disagree, or a reported change contradicts the official record. We’re looking into it.

When you check a single passport and destination, we show what our data says together with the rule’s status. An answer that isn’t verified, or is due for recheck, is marked as such, with the date of the data and a reminder to confirm with the destination’s official sources. When official sources disagree, we show no answer until we’ve looked into it.

Where we are today: 6,873 of39,402 rules are verified. The verified share on this site counts only checks made within the last 90 days. We check destination by destination, because each country sets its entry rules for all nationalities at once. We start with recent changes and the most-travelled routes. Every check, with the rules it changed, is listed in the log of checks and changes.

Entry systems such as ETIAS and EES

Some systems apply across a group of countries rather than to one passport and one destination: for example, the EU’s travel authorisation ETIAS and its Entry/Exit System (EES). We check them the same way as rules. Two independent AI-assisted checks against official sources and the law must agree on the system’s status, its start date or expected launch, who it applies to and who is exempt by nationality. A passport page shows a system only if it applies to that passport, with the date of the check and a quote from the official source.

These systems change quickly, so we re-check them every 30 days, and every 90 days once a system is fully in operation, and before a phase ends or an announced launch begins. If a re-check is overdue, the page says what we found when we last checked and asks you to confirm with the official website instead of telling you what to do.

Passport validity

How long a passport must still be valid at entry is a separate check. We record only what the destination itself requires at the border — its law, border or immigration agency, or foreign ministry — and not what a government advises its own citizens or what an airline asks for. Two independent AI-assisted checks must agree on the requirement exactly: the minimum period and its unit, the date it counts from (arrival, the day you plan to leave, or the end of your authorised stay) and how recently the passport must have been issued. Where some nationalities have a different rule, such as the US list of countries whose passports are treated as valid for six months after they expire, each rule is checked separately, and a passport on such a list never falls back to the general rule.

If the official sources name no minimum, we say nothing rather than “no requirement”. We re-check these rules every 180 days, and every 90 days where a list of nationalities is involved.

Where the data comes from

Starting point: public visa data

We started from publicly available visa data for every pair of passport and destination (data as of 17 Feb 2026). An automated job looks for new revisions every day; the revision in use was imported on 24 Sept 2026. These rules are marked “Public data” until we confirm them, and are replaced as they are checked.

Official sources

An official source always replaces the starting data. We use, in order of priority:

1. the destination’s own rules: immigration and border agencies, foreign ministries, official gazettes and legislation;
2. official travel advice that governments publish for their own citizens, such as GOV.UK, the US State Department, Smartraveller (Australia), travel.gc.ca (Canada), SafeTravel (New Zealand), Ireland’s DFA and Germany’s Federal Foreign Office.

We record facts in our own words and link to the source. Where a page shows what the official sources say, the passages are quoted as published, with the source and the date it was retrieved.

Signals

Wikipedia, other open datasets and news feeds help us spot possible changes. They are never a source for a rule: a signal only puts a rule on our list to re-check.

What we don’t cover yet

• Transit, work, study and residence rules — only short visits for tourism or business.
• Most conditional rules, for example visa-free entry for holders of a valid US visa or for travellers pre-cleared before departure. We show the general rule: the one that applies when none of the conditions is met. Where both independent checks confirm a different rule under specific travel conditions, we name it under the general rule. Rankings count only the general rule.
• Rules that apply to only some holders of a passport. We show the rule for the typical holder of an ordinary passport: for example, Taiwan passports that bear the national ID number, or citizens of Micronesia covered by its Compact of Free Association with the United States.
• Territories that set their own entry rules but aren’t in our list yet.
• Vaccination, onward-ticket, proof of funds and similar entry conditions; passport validity only for destinations where we have checked it.

Versions

Methodology 2.4.0 (4 October 2026): the Safe Reach Ranking is retired; the travel advice behind it is shown on passport and destination pages instead. The rankings are grouped into Entry access, Destination reach and Experimental; Economic Reach, Population Reach and Very High HDI Reach are no longer marked experimental, and the Visa-Free Access Ranking is renamed the No Advance Visa Access Ranking. Scores and ranks are unchanged.

Methodology 2.3.0 (3 October 2026): the experimental Exclusive Access Ranking, which weighs each destination by how few passports it admits without a visa. The P2L Passport Index and its weights are unchanged.

Methodology 2.2.0 (2 October 2026): the experimental Connected Destinations Ranking, which weighs each destination by its own passport’s P2L Score. The P2L Passport Index and its weights are unchanged.

Methodology 2.1.0 (1 October 2026): the experimental Safe Reach and Very High HDI Reach rankings, based on US, UK and Canadian travel advice and on the UNDP Human Development Index. The P2L Passport Index and its weights are unchanged.

Methodology 2.0.0 (29 September 2026): a visa on arrival now weighs 0.8, the same as an eTA (it was 0.6), following the published rubric above; custom weights are no longer offered, and weight scenarios now run from 0.6 to 1 for both. On current data, 117 of 199 passports change rank; the median move is 1 place. Passports whose access relies on visas on arrival move up most:

Methodology 1.1.0 (27 September 2026): the experimental Economic Reach and Population Reach rankings, based on World Bank data for a single year.

Methodology 1.0.0 (26 September 2026): the P2L Passport Index with published, adjustable weights (eTA 0.8, visa on arrival 0.6); ranks that count every passport ahead; the Visa-Free Access Ranking; entry restrictions shown separately; weight scenarios.

Any change to weights, categories, rank rules or the set of rankings gets a new version and an entry here.

Disclaimer

Visa rules change, sometimes without notice. This site is for general information only and is not legal or immigration advice. Always confirm the requirements for your trip with the destination’s official sources or embassy before you travel. We are not affiliated with any government. Rules not yet verified come from public visa data (see Sources and licences).