How we rank passports
Data version 2026-10-24 · method last updated 24 October 2026
1. What counts as a point
| Entry rule | Points | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Visa-free | 1 | No paperwork before travel |
| Freedom of movement (ID card enough) | 1 | Same as visa-free |
| Electronic travel authorisation (ESTA, eTA, UK ETA, K-ETA, eVisitor…) | 1 | Automated registration, not a visa decision |
| Visa on arrival | 1 | Issued at the border without prior application |
| E-visa or visa on arrival | 1 | The traveller can still choose the border |
| E-visa only | 0 | An application and a decision before travel |
| Visa required | 0 | |
| Admission refused | 0 |
This is the convention used by the established indexes. We do not weight destinations by population, GDP or distance: a passport's score is simply how many places it opens.
2. Which destinations are counted
Sovereign states, partially recognised states with their own border control (Kosovo, Taiwan, Palestine…) and territories with their own entry rules (Hong Kong, Macao, Puerto Rico, Greenland, French Polynesia…). This gives about 227 destinations per passport.
Eighteen small territories whose rules are simply those of their parent country are kept in the app for look-up but not scored, so that the destination universe stays comparable with the published indexes: Åland, Guernsey, Jersey, Isle of Man, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Saint Barthélemy, Saint Pierre and Miquelon, Wallis and Futuna, Christmas Island, Cocos Islands, Norfolk Island, Svalbard, Tokelau, Sint Maarten, British Indian Ocean Territory, Pitcairn and Western Sahara.
US territories (Puerto Rico, Guam, US Virgin Islands, Northern Mariana Islands) always take the rule of the United States mainland, which is the row kept most up to date in the source.
3. Ranking
Passports are sorted by score. Equal scores share a rank and no numbers are skipped (dense ranking), so a passport ranked 5th is the fifth-highest score, not the fifth row.
4. Where the data comes from
Entry rules are parsed from the English Wikipedia articles "Visa requirements for … citizens" (199 passports), licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Those articles cite national immigration authorities and IATA Timatic. We refresh the matrix regularly and review every change between two versions before it ships in an app update.
We deliberately do not copy from other passport indexes.
5. Pre-launch check against the Henley Passport Index
Before launch we compared every passport in our top 25 with the Henley Passport Index (October 2026 edition) destination by destination. On 227 shared destinations the two sets disagree on between 1 and 7 pairs per passport. The ranks differ more than the pairs do, because a handful of destinations are read differently across the whole table (next section) and because Henley counts a few destinations we do not list and vice versa.
| Passport | Visarez rank | Visarez score | Henley rank | Henley score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Singapore | 1 | 188 | 1 | 193 |
| United Arab Emirates | 1 | 188 | 2 | 188 |
| Japan | 2 | 182 | 2 | 188 |
| Austria | 2 | 182 | 5 | 185 |
| Germany | 3 | 181 | 4 | 186 |
| United Kingdom | 3 | 181 | 6 | 184 |
| Czechia | 3 | 181 | 7 | 183 |
| South Korea | 4 | 180 | 2 | 188 |
| Luxembourg | 4 | 180 | 4 | 186 |
| Croatia | 4 | 180 | 8 | 182 |
| Belgium | 5 | 179 | 4 | 186 |
| Ireland | 5 | 179 | 4 | 186 |
| Switzerland | 5 | 179 | 5 | 185 |
| Malta | 5 | 179 | 5 | 185 |
| Hungary | 5 | 179 | 6 | 184 |
| Poland | 5 | 179 | 6 | 184 |
| Finland | 6 | 178 | 4 | 186 |
| Netherlands | 6 | 178 | 4 | 186 |
| Greece | 6 | 178 | 5 | 185 |
| Portugal | 6 | 178 | 5 | 185 |
| Malaysia | 6 | 178 | 6 | 184 |
| Italy | 7 | 177 | 4 | 186 |
| Estonia | 7 | 177 | 8 | 182 |
| Spain | 8 | 176 | 4 | 186 |
| Australia | 8 | 176 | 7 | 183 |
Henley figures: api.henleypassportindex.com, read on 24 October 2026. Henley's scores are typically 4–8 points higher because it counts entry permits and pre-approved arrival visas as open (see below) and lists a few destinations Wikipedia tables do not.
6. Destinations where indexes disagree, and what we chose
These few destinations explain most of the rank differences. For each we read the official source and kept the stricter interpretation.
| Destination | Henley | Visarez | Official position |
|---|---|---|---|
| Saint Helena | Visa-free | E-visa (0) | Entry requires a Holiday Permit applied for online before arrival (evisa.sainthelena.gov.sh, Immigration (Amendment) Ordinance 2025). |
| Iran | Visa on arrival | E-visa (0) | The airport visa is only issued to travellers holding a grant notice obtained online before departure, so it is a pre-approved visa. |
| Djibouti | Visa on arrival | E-visa (0) | The official route is the e-visa portal; arrival visas are reported by Timatic but not advertised by the government. We score the stricter reading. |
| Liberia | Visa online (0) | Visa on arrival (1) | Since March 2025 travellers fill an online form and receive the visa at Roberts International Airport (visaonarrival.lis.gov.lr). The visa itself is issued at the border. |
| Syria | Visa online (0) | E-visa or on arrival (1) | Visa on arrival at Damascus airport has operated since early 2025; the e-visa portal is offline. |
| Australia (EU passports) | Visa online (0) | ETA (1) | The free eVisitor (subclass 651) is granted automatically online, like an ESTA, so we group it with electronic travel authorisations. |
| United States (Romania) | Visa required | Visa required | Romania's Visa Waiver Program designation was paused in 2025; US territories follow the mainland rule. |
7. Known limits
- Scores describe ordinary passports for tourist visits. Diplomatic passports, work, study and long stays are out of scope.
- Entry rules change often. The app shows the data version it was built with; always confirm with the destination's official source before you travel.
- Where Wikipedia leaves a cell ambiguous the app shows "Check official sources" and the destination scores 0.
- A different index counting slightly different destinations will rank some passports one or two places apart from us. That is a difference of method, not an error on either side.
Questions or corrections
Write to [email protected] with the official source and we will review it in the next data release. Visarez is published by Orilay Studio (ORILAY LTD, London). Privacy policy.