How far does each passport reach?
The strongest passport reaches 161 destinations with no visa applied for in advance — United Arab Emirates’s. The weakest, Afghanistan’s, reaches 19. Same planet, 142 destinations apart, across 196 passports.
The passport atlas
Every country shaded by how many destinations its passport reaches without a prior visa. Switch the metric to map visa-free, on-arrival or eTA access instead.
Tap a country to read its figure.
Natural Earth 10m · Crimea shown as Ukraine · source: English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0
All passports, ranked
Sort by any column. Destinations is the score; the six modes to its right show exactly how each passport earns it.
| # ▲ | Country | Destinations | Visa free | On arrival | eTA | E-visa | Visa required |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  United Arab Emirates | 161 | 120 | 35 | 6 | 16 | 7 |
| 2 |  Singapore | 153 | 126 | 22 | 5 | 20 | 11 |
| 3 |  Malaysia | 151 | 120 | 28 | 3 | 23 | 8 |
| 4 |  Japan | 149 | 107 | 35 | 7 | 22 | 13 |
| 5 |  South Korea | 148 | 109 | 33 | 6 | 24 | 11 |
| 6 |  Ireland | 147 | 112 | 29 | 6 | 24 | 13 |
| 6 |  Malta | 147 | 117 | 25 | 5 | 25 | 12 |
| 8 |  Austria | 146 | 114 | 27 | 5 | 26 | 12 |
| 8 |  Belgium | 146 | 117 | 23 | 6 | 26 | 12 |
| 8 |  Bulgaria | 146 | 114 | 27 | 5 | 26 | 12 |
| 8 |  Finland | 146 | 118 | 22 | 6 | 24 | 13 |
| 8 |  Italy | 146 | 115 | 26 | 5 | 27 | 11 |
| 8 |  Luxembourg | 146 | 114 | 26 | 6 | 24 | 14 |
| 8 |  Spain | 146 | 117 | 24 | 5 | 27 | 11 |
| 15 |  Croatia | 145 | 112 | 27 | 6 | 28 | 11 |
The world is split, not spread
Each column is a group of passports. The dip in the middle is the point: passports cluster at the two ends, not around the average.
destinations reachable without a prior visa
Two ways to count a passport
There is no single passport-power number. What you count decides who comes first.
Henley, the best-known index, counts only where you can go visa-free, and puts Singapore first. Passport Index counts a broader mobility score that also includes visa on arrival, and has ranked the United Arab Emirates first for seven years running. We are in that second camp, and a little stricter: a destination counts only if you can board a plane with nothing arranged in advance — visa-free, visa on arrival, or a quick electronic authorization. That is why the UAE — which has signed visa-on-arrival and visa-free deals across Africa, Asia and the former Soviet states — tops our list too, while passports that lean on e-visas for the harder countries sit lower than their Henley rank. Both Henley and Passport Index are built on the airline industry’s closed Timatic database; we count from open Wikipedia data and publish the parser, so expect a few points of difference either way.
For every nationality we read the visa table maintained on Wikipedia, classify each destination into one of six modes, and add up the three that let you board a plane without paperwork in advance: visa free, visa on arrival, and electronic travel authorization. E-visas are excluded from the score — an e-visa is still an application, filed before departure — but they are shown in every row, so you can judge for yourself. Every passport is scored against the same fixed list of destinations — the sovereign countries nearly every article covers — so none is flattered because its article happens to list more islands and territories.
The parser that produces these numbers is published with the site, and the whole table rebuilds from the source on every update. If you disagree with a number, you can see exactly where it came from.
Find your passport
Pick a country to see what its passport opens — and how that number is made up.
- 161
- 153
- 151
- 149
- 148
- 147
- 147
- 146
- 146
- 146
Questions
What does "without a visa in advance" mean?
You can travel and get your entry stamp on arrival — either with no formality at all, with a visa issued at the border, or with an electronic authorization that takes minutes online. It does not mean no rules: passports still need validity, return tickets and funds.
Why is an e-visa not counted?
Because it is an application. You file it before you fly, you can be refused, and it takes days. Counting it would flatter dozens of passports that in practice require paperwork — most countries offer an e-visa to almost everyone, so it barely separates a strong passport from a weak one. We show the e-visa count in every row instead.
Why is the UAE first, ahead of Singapore and Germany?
Because we count visa on arrival, not just visa-free entry. The UAE has signed visa-on-arrival and visa-free deals with dozens of countries across Africa, Asia and the former Soviet states, so its citizens can fly to more places with nothing arranged in advance. Passport Index, which counts the same way, has ranked the UAE first for seven years. Henley counts visa-free entry only, and puts Singapore first — both are right, they just measure different things.
Does a strong passport mean a good country?
No. This measures one thing: how many border officials will wave you through. It says nothing about how it is to live there — see life expectancy, income or safety for that.
How often does this change?
Constantly. Visa policies shift monthly, and one new agreement can move a passport several places. Every number here carries the date it was rebuilt.
Where does the data come from?
The per-nationality visa tables on English Wikipedia, which in turn cite foreign ministries and border agencies. The text is used under CC BY-SA 4.0 with attribution.
Sources
Built from open data, with the method and parser published beside the numbers.
Rebuilt 2026-07-26. Each passport row is derived from that nationality’s article; 183 destinations were compared for the average passport, all measured against the same list.