How the World Passport Index is calculated

Ground rules

The principles behind the index

Anyone should be able to rebuild the index with the same data and the same formulas and get the same result. Five rules follow from that:

1. Reproducible. Formulas, weights and the full dataset (CSV) are published with every edition.
2. A source for every point. Every value in the dataset carries a source and the date it was checked.
3. Methodology frozen before results. Weights are fixed before the calculation and never adjusted after we see the ranking. Any change means a new methodology version and a recalculation of the previous edition.
4. Objective criteria. Each indicator is defined by verifiable rules — a law, an official list, a treaty — not by opinions about countries.
5. Declared conflict of interest. We provide citizenship and residence by investment services; the methodology contains no criterion linked to the programmes we arrange.

The index rates the passport of someone who lives, invests and travels internationally. It does not rate quality of life in the issuing country, nor citizenship by investment programmes.

Coverage

Which passports and destinations are covered

We rate 199 passports against about 227 destinations, in line with the reference indexes, so that results can be compared.

Passports (199): the 193 UN member states, the 2 observer states (the Holy See and Palestine), Kosovo, Taiwan, Hong Kong (SAR) and Macao (SAR).

Destinations: the same 199 jurisdictions plus territories with their own entry rules (for example Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, Greenland and French Polynesia). The exact list is frozen in the dataset before each edition; a territory that applies the rules of its sovereign state is not counted separately.

Classification rules

• We rate the ordinary passport of full citizens — not diplomatic, service or special-status passports such as the British BN(O) or BOTC passports.
• Entry rules are assessed for a short tourist or business stay, arriving by air, on the edition's closing date.
• The issuing country is not counted as a destination for its own passport.
• Access that depends on another visa (for example "visa-free only with a valid US or Schengen visa") counts as visa required and is flagged in the data.
• Transit-only access does not count.
• Temporary suspensions in force on the closing date apply as they stand.

Architecture

Two scores, six pillars

The Mobility Score is the figure the press can compare with classic travel indexes. The Investor Score (0–100) is our own measure, in which mobility is only one of six pillars.

The weights reflect what matters in practice to an investor: travel and the right to relocate make up half the score, and the hidden costs of a citizenship — banks, taxes, obligations — almost a third.

Pillar 1 · 30 points

Pillar 1 — Weighted mobility

Each passport–destination pair gets an access score between 0 and 1, depending on how much effort entry requires. Unlike indexes that score only 1 or 0, we distinguish electronic travel authorisations from e-visas.

An authorisation that requires supporting documents or routine manual review is classed as an e-visa, whatever the state calls it. Where several options exist, the easiest one counts.

Mobility Score (public, unweighted)

Two figures, for direct comparison in the press: destinations without a prior visa — the number of destinations with a(p,d) of 0.70 or more, which corresponds almost exactly to the classic visa-free count — and the Mobility Score, the sum of access scores to one decimal place.

Weighted mobility (for the Investor Score)

Access to large economies is worth more. Each destination gets a weight w(d) from its share of world GDP, g(d), and of world international arrivals, t(d). A small floor makes every destination count a little, however small.

N is the number of destinations. g(d) and t(d) are shares between 0 and 1 that add up to 1; GDP is nominal, in US dollars, and arrivals are the average of the last three available years, so that one unusual year does not distort the result. W(p) lies between 0 and 1.

Pillar 2 · 20 points

Pillar 2 — Right to live and work abroad

This pillar measures in which other countries a citizenship gives you the right to live and work without a work visa or a discretionary permit. For an investor it is the difference between "I can visit" and "I can move tomorrow".

Each agreement is classified once, from its official text, in an agreements table published with the data. Residence by investment programmes, digital nomad visas and other schemes open to every nationality do not count: they do not depend on the passport.

The value of each destination combines the size of its economy, g(d), and its level of development, h(d) (its share of the sum of Human Development Index values):

The issuing country does not count. S(p) is small in absolute terms — even an EU passport covers only part of the world economy — so it is scaled against the best passport of the edition.

Pillar 3 · 15 points

Pillar 3 — Banking access

This pillar measures the friction a citizenship creates when you open and keep accounts abroad. Banks base their decisions on official lists, so we use official lists only. Each passport starts at 100 points; penalties are deducted, and the score cannot fall below 0.

Penalties add up: a state on both the FATF grey list and the EU list loses 45 points. FATF lists change after each plenary (three times a year); each edition uses the version in force on its closing date.

Pillar 4 · 15 points

Pillar 4 — Tax and citizen obligations

This pillar measures what you owe the state simply for being its citizen, even if you live elsewhere. It does not measure tax levels for residents — those depend on where you live, not on your passport. Each passport starts at 100 points.

For taxation (the first two rows) and for military service (rows three and four) only the most severe penalty in the group applies; the others add up.

Pillar 5 · 10 points

Pillar 5 — Citizenship flexibility

This pillar measures whether you can keep the citizenship alongside others, whether you pass it on to your children and how easily the state can take it away. Three components, 100 points in total, assessed under the citizenship law in force.

We assess the position of a citizen who also holds other citizenships; rules that only concern acquisition (for example renouncing a previous citizenship on naturalisation) count as restrictions.

Pillar 6 · 10 points

Pillar 6 — Stability and consular protection

This pillar measures how solid the state that guarantees your citizenship is, and how easily you can reach it when you need help abroad.

Honorary consulates do not count: in most cases they cannot issue emergency travel documents. For EU citizens we count only their own state's network, even though EU law provides mutual consular protection.

Aggregation

From pillars to the final Investor Score

The Investor Score is the sum of the six pillars, each brought to a 0–1 scale and multiplied by its points. Pillar 2 is the only one scaled against the best passport of the edition, because its absolute values are small; the others use absolute scales and can be compared from one edition to the next.

Ranking rules

• Rounding: the final score is shown to one decimal place, rounded half up; the ranking uses the rounded value.
• Ties: passports with the same score share a place; the next place is skipped accordingly (1, 1, 3).
• Missing data: a missing indicator is replaced by the median of the region (World Bank regional grouping) and flagged. A passport with more than two replaced indicators keeps its score but is marked "incomplete data".
• The Mobility Score has its own ranking, under the same tie rule.

Worked example

A fictional passport, with illustrative values:

Data

Data sources and licences

All sources are official or academic, and each is cited next to the published data.

For each passport–destination pair the dataset keeps the access score, the entry rule, the maximum stay, the source URL and the date it was checked.

Process

How the data is collected and corrected

The index is published quarterly, in January, April, July and October. Data is frozen 15 days before publication, and the closing date appears on every edition.

1. Building the dataset. The first full edition checks the whole matrix — about 45,000 passport–destination pairs. Later editions check only the changes, identified from continuously monitored official announcements.
2. Source hierarchy. When sources disagree, the destination's official source wins; without one, IATA Timatic. Wikipedia and aggregators never decide a score on their own.
3. Double check. Every value that changed since the previous edition is checked by a second person. In addition, 5% of unchanged values are re-checked at random each edition.
4. Change log. Each edition publishes the list of changes since the previous one: passport, destination, old and new rule, effective date and source.
5. Corrections. Anyone can report an error through a public form. We reply within 10 working days; a confirmed error leads to a corrected edition, clearly marked, with the ranking recalculated.
6. Archive. All editions, datasets and methodology versions stay public.
7. Methodology review. Once a year. A new version is also applied to the previous edition, recalculated, so that the two remain comparable.

Independence

Neutrality and the sensitivity test

The index is only credible if its results cannot be suspected of favouring the passports we arrange. Three safeguards:

• Declaration of interests on the index page and in every release: "The Discreet Investor provides citizenship and residence by investment services. The methodology, weights and data are public and were fixed before the calculation."
• The sensitivity test. We recalculate the ranking with 1,000 sets of weights generated at random around the base weights (each weight varies by about ±30%, the total stays 100). For each passport we publish the range of places it falls into in 90% of cases. A passport whose place depends heavily on the weights is visible at once.
• Independent review. Before the first full edition, the methodology is sent for comment to a researcher in comparative citizenship law or economic statistics; the comments and our replies are published.

What we do not do: add criteria about whether a citizenship by investment programme exists, adjust scores by hand, or publish partial rankings that highlight only the passports we offer.

October 2026

What is different in the preliminary edition

The October 2026 edition is a preview, published before the full verification the methodology requires. The first verified edition is planned for January 2027. Until then:

• Entry rules come from the Wikipedia "Visa requirements for … citizens" articles (CC BY-SA 4.0), read in October 2026, classified with the rules above. They have not yet been checked pair by pair against official sources.
• For Luxembourg, the Marshall Islands and Singapore, whose Wikipedia tables could not be read, and for two corrupted entries on the Slovak page, entry rules come from the open Passport Index dataset published on GitHub (February 2026, MIT licence).
• Destinations are the 199 jurisdictions that issue passports; territories with their own entry rules will be added in the first full edition.
• Pillars 2 to 6 come from public sources (official lists, legislation, World Bank, UNDP, UN Tourism and Wikipedia), researched once and not yet double-checked.
• Entry that the source marks as conditional is counted as visa required, because the condition cannot be checked yet; missing values are replaced by the median of the passport's continent.
• The dataset (CSV) is published under CC BY-SA 4.0, because it builds on Wikipedia data.

If you spot an error, write to office@thediscreetinvestor.com; corrections are applied in the next update.