How these figures are made

What a nomad visa is, and what is covered

A digital nomad visa is a temporary residence permit for people whose work — a job, clients, or a business of their own — is based outside the country they are moving to. Most ask you to prove a monthly income; some also ask for money in the bank.

NomadYou covers 83 countries: 54 you can apply for today, 21 with no programme of their own, 3 announced and never opened, and 5 that have closed. The ones that are not open are kept on purpose — “this country has no such visa” is an answer, and a list that silently omits them makes you go and look for yourself.

Where the figures come from

In this order: the country's own immigration ministry, then the law itself, then an embassy or consulate page. A relocation guide is used only where official material is silent, and the country is marked as an estimate when it is. Amounts are converted from the local currency at daily open-market rates, and every country links to the government page that takes the application, so nothing here has to be taken on trust.

What “first year, all in” means. Twelve months of the income a country asks you to prove, plus any bank balance it asks you to hold. It is a yardstick for comparing countries, not a bill: the savings are money you keep, not money you spend. Several countries index their threshold to the minimum wage, so the figure moves when that does.

A guide's figure is never stored as the threshold. Where a law asks for “sufficient means” and names no amount, NomadYou says no fixed amount and explains that a consulate decides. That is true of 7 of the open programmes. A further 6 set no income test at all, which is a different thing, and the two are kept apart because they are different questions at the counter.

How sure we are, field by field

Income, residence, the paperwork, the cost of living and where the application is submitted each carry their own grade and the date they were last looked at, because they were researched separately and one being solid says nothing about the others.

Income figures graded high

29 of 54

Residence claims checked

74 of 83

Official document lists

20 of 54

Cost of living

83 of 83

Where you apply from

10 of 54

Each of those grades is about the sourcing, not about the country. They mean this:

high

Taken from the immigration ministry, the law itself or an embassy page, and read directly.

medium

From official material that is incomplete, dated or indirect on this point, so it is reported with the gap named.

low

No official source says it outright; taken from secondary material and marked as an estimate.

unverified

Nobody has checked this claim against the destination country’s own statute yet. It is not a finding of no.

An empty field means nobody has checked it, never that the answer is no. That rule decides how the pages behave: they will not refuse you on a requirement nobody has researched.

The cost-of-living figure, and what it is not

Each country carries what a month costs one resident, housing included. It comes from national accounts — household consumption from the World Bank, or the UN Statistics Division where the World Bank publishes no series — divided by population and by twelve. Not from a site strangers fill in.

It is what a resident spends, not what you will spend. A newcomer renting at market rates spends more, and most of all in the cheapest countries. The city figures on 66 country pages are the correction to that, and they say plainly that they are crowdsourced.

What has been checked, and when

1. 7 September 2026. Every income figure read against the law or the government page. Where the law named no amount, the invented numbers came out.
2. 8 September 2026. The residence claim on every country checked against that country's own rules, after one was found to contradict them.
3. 11 September 2026. Every country gained a cost of living from national accounts, with crowdsourced city figures beside it on the country pages.
4. 19 September 2026. Where each application is actually submitted from — online, from inside the country, or at an embassy or consulate before you travel — recorded as a field of its own rather than left buried in the notes. Where a country takes it at a mission, the page says there is not one everywhere and links that ministry's own list. Where each country keeps its embassies and consulates is recorded too, from Wikidata — which is free to reuse and is not a foreign ministry. So a country page will name a mission it knows of in the country you live in, and says in the same breath that the list is unofficial and to check the ministry's own. It never says the opposite: silence there means “not recorded”, never “there is none where you are”. Six of the 83 keep no missions at all, because another country represents them abroad.

Last checked 21 September 2026. Thresholds change every year and consulates apply their own rules, so this is a starting point for your own research, not advice.