How We Research, Verify, and Update Our Visa Data

The Visa Index tracks visa and entry requirements for 195 passports across 195 destinations — more than 38,000 country-pair data points. This page explains, in detail, how we gather that data, how we verify it, how we categorise it, and how quickly we update it when governments change the rules. Methodology transparency is a deliberate choice: we would rather show our workings than ask you to trust us.

Where Our Data Comes From

Every data point on The Visa Index traces back to at least one primary or authoritative secondary source. The four tiers below are listed in descending order of authority. When sources disagree, the tier-one source wins — and we log the conflict for a human reviewer rather than silently picking one.

• Tier 1 — Official government immigration portals and consular websites (for example, the UK Home Office, the US State Department, the Schengen consular network, Immigration New Zealand).
• Tier 2 — The IATA Travel Information Manual (Timatic), the same database used by airline check-in staff worldwide. IATA's dataset is paid and B2B-only, so we do not redistribute it directly, but we use it as a cross-check.
• Tier 3 — Embassy and consulate websites of the destination country in the country where the traveller is applying (for example, the Embassy of Japan in Ankara for Turkish citizens applying for a Japanese visa).
• Tier 4 — Reputable secondary aggregators and the community-maintained visa-policy tables on Wikipedia. Tier-4 data is never published on its own; it only reinforces or flags conflicts with tier-1 or tier-2 sources.
• Historical rankings and movement scores, where shown, are derived from the public Henley Passport Index dataset and clearly attributed.

How We Verify Each Data Point

Every country-pair entry (for example, "Can a Turkish passport holder enter Japan visa-free?") is checked against at least two independent sources before it is published. Our internal tooling runs daily consistency checks that flag three failure modes: (1) two sources disagreeing on the visa category, (2) the stay duration being missing or unusually short for the region, and (3) a country's policy changing against its historical baseline without a corresponding news trigger. Flagged entries are queued for human review by the editorial team member responsible for that region. We do not ship an automated overwrite to the production database — a named editor signs off on every change.

The named editor who reviewed each major change is recorded in our internal log. For policy changes material enough to appear in our visa-news feed, the reviewing editor's byline is published publicly along with the source URL and the date the change took effect.

What Our Visa Categories Actually Mean

We group entry requirements into six standard categories. The exact legal nuances behind each category can vary from country to country; the definitions below describe how we use the terms on this site.

• Visa-Free — No visa is required in advance and no authorisation needs to be obtained at the border. The traveller enters on their passport alone, subject to standard immigration checks. Any permitted duration of stay shown is the maximum granted under that country's visa-waiver regime for ordinary-passport holders.
• E-Visa — The traveller must apply online before travel through an official government portal and receive an electronic authorisation that is linked to their passport. An e-Visa is legally a visa, not a visa waiver; refusal is possible and the fee is usually non-refundable. We distinguish e-Visas from eTAs (see below) because the application process, scrutiny, and refusal grounds differ.
• Electronic Travel Authorisation (eTA / ETA / ETIAS / ESTA) — A pre-travel screening that visa-exempt travellers must complete online. An eTA is not a visa; approval is usually near-instant and most applicants are approved. We surface eTAs separately from e-Visas because conflating them leads travellers to over- or under-estimate the paperwork involved.
• Visa on Arrival — The visa is obtained at the port of entry (typically an international airport or designated land border). A VoA is still a visa and can be refused. We record the fee (when published), the permitted duration, and any cap on where a VoA can be collected, because several countries issue VoA only at specified airports.
• Visa Required — The traveller must apply in person or by post at an embassy, consulate, or accredited Visa Application Centre before travel. We record the general category (tourist / short-stay) but do not attempt to document every long-stay, work, study, or family-reunification route here; those belong on dedicated guide pages.
• Freedom of Movement — The traveller enters under a regional mobility agreement (for example, Schengen internal movement for EU/EEA nationals, CARICOM, or Mercosur residence agreements) that grants rights beyond a tourist visa. The practical entry experience is usually identical to visa-free, but the legal basis is different.
• Transit Visa Required — A visa is needed even for passengers who change flights without clearing immigration. Transit visa rules trip up more travellers than any other single category, so we flag them prominently on destination pages.

How Fast We Update

Visa policy is not static. Countries adjust rules in response to bilateral negotiations, public-health events, security incidents, and political shifts. Our automated monitoring layer polls 1,600+ official government pages on a rolling schedule — the most volatile sources (for example, consular pages of countries that change policy frequently) are checked daily, stable sources weekly. When the monitor detects a change, a named editor verifies the change against the primary source within 24 to 48 hours and publishes either an updated entry or, if the change is material, a news entry with the responsible editor's byline. Routine entries carry a 'Last verified' date of no more than 30 days; high-traffic entries are re-verified more frequently.

If you believe we have made an error, please use our contact page or email the editor listed on the relevant entry. We publish corrections within 48 hours of verifying them, and significant corrections are logged on our news feed with the date and a description of what changed.

The Visa Index is monetised by display advertising. We do not charge for priority placement, allow advertisers to edit our content, or accept payment from governments or immigration-services firms in exchange for favourable coverage. The editorial team operates independently of the advertising team; this is also documented in our Editorial Policy.

A Note on Translation

The Visa Index publishes in sixteen languages. English is the canonical language for every page; other locales are produced by a combination of human editors (for our highest-traffic languages) and neural machine translation (for less-trafficked locales). Where a page has been machine-translated without a human pass, we aim to make this visible on the page, and we always treat the English version as the authoritative text. Visa policy is precise, and we would rather be honest about translation provenance than pretend every page was written by a native speaker.

What We Are Not

The Visa Index is an editorial reference. We are not a law firm, an immigration adviser, or a visa-processing service. Nothing on this site is legal advice and no article establishes a client relationship. Visa decisions rest with the authorities of the destination country, and the only authoritative source for any individual application is the consulate or immigration authority that will process it. Use our data as a starting point, not as the final word — and always confirm current requirements with the official source before you book flights.