The score
A passport’s score is the number of countries its holders can enter without a visa arranged in advance. Each passport is checked against the 194 sovereign countries (the 193 UN member states and Vatican City), leaving out its own country, so the most any UN member’s passport can score is 193.
| Entry type | What it means | Score |
|---|---|---|
| Visa-free | Enter with the passport alone. | Counts |
| eTA | A short online authorisation before travel, such as the US ESTA or the UK ETA. | Counts |
| Visa on arrival | The visa is issued at the border. | Counts |
| e-Visa | A visa applied for and issued online before travel. | Does not count |
| Visa required | Apply through an embassy, consulate or visa centre. | Does not count |
| Entry refused | The destination does not admit holders of this passport. | Does not count |
e-Visas are shown on every passport page but do not count: you still apply and wait for approval before you travel.
Rank and ties
Passports are ranked by score. Passports with the same score share a rank, and the next score takes the next rank, so this edition has 93 ranks for 198 passports.
Territories
Places that set their own entry rules but are not sovereign countries, such as Hong Kong, Macao, Bermuda or the Cook Islands, are listed on each passport page but left out of the score. Counting them would reward passports with access to many small territories over passports with access to more countries. Passports issued by Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan and Kosovo are ranked; they are checked against all 194 sovereign countries.
Free movement areas
Where citizens of a group of countries can travel between them freely, a member’s access to the other members is recorded as visa-free even if the source article does not list it. The groups applied:
- EU / EEA and Switzerland: Citizens move freely between member states.
- Gulf Cooperation Council: Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE admit each other's citizens.
- Mercosur and associates: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay.
- OECS: Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.
Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man follow UK entry rules; Puerto Rico follows US entry rules.
A few cells the articles leave blank are filled from well-known agreements: the Trans-Tasman arrangement (Australia and New Zealand), the Common Travel Area (UK and Ireland), the Belarus–Russia Union State, Andorrans’ access to the Schengen area and visa-free travel among the Western Balkan states.
Where a country asks every visa-exempt visitor for an electronic authorisation (the US ESTA, Canada’s eTA, Australia’s ETA or eVisitor, New Zealand’s NZeTA, the UK ETA and Israel’s ETA-IL), entry is shown as eTA rather than visa-free. Both count towards the score.
Where the data comes from
Entry rules are read from Wikipedia’s “Visa requirements for … citizens” articles, one per passport. Each article is maintained by editors who cite the destination government’s own rules, and colour-codes every destination by entry type. This edition was read on 12 October 2026, and every passport page links to the exact revision used, so any figure can be checked line by line.
The articles are licensed Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0. The scores, ranks and country lists in this index are adapted from them and are shared under the same licence.
Where an article does not state a rule for a destination, the cell is left as “not confirmed” rather than guessed, and it does not count towards the score. Across all passports in this edition there are 50 such cells.
Bands
- Elite access: 150 or more
- High access: 110 to 149
- Strategic mobility: 50 to 109
- Restricted access: below 50
What the index does not tell you
A score counts countries, not how useful they are to you. It does not show the length of stay, whether you can work or study, or the conditions at the border, such as a return ticket, proof of funds or a minimum passport validity. Entry rules change, sometimes overnight. Always confirm with the destination’s embassy or official immigration website before you travel. This index is general information, not legal advice.