What a Passport Ranking Measures — and What It Leaves Out
2026-08-22
A passport ranking is a single number standing in for thousands of bilateral arrangements. It is useful, and it is routinely over-read. This page sets out exactly what the PassportGrade figure counts, why it will not match every other index, and which questions it cannot answer.
What the mobility score counts
The mobility score is a count of destinations a passport holder can reach without obtaining a visa from a consulate in advance. It includes:
- Visa-free destinations
- eVisa destinations
- Visa on arrival destinations
- eTA destinations
It excludes destinations where a visa must be obtained in advance from an embassy or consulate.
Those four categories are collapsed into one total deliberately — the score is a measure of administrative friction before departure, not of whether any paperwork exists at all. An eVisa still costs money and time. It simply does not require an appointment.
The country page for each passport breaks the total back out into its components, which is usually the more useful view. A score of 150 made up mostly of visa-free entries is a different travel experience from a score of 150 that leans on eVisas.
How ties are handled
Passports with identical scores share the same rank. This is dense ranking: if three passports tie at rank 7, the next passport is rank 8, not rank 10.
The practical consequence is that a rank can move without any policy change affecting that passport — if a different passport's score changes, the positions around it shift. A rank movement is not evidence that anything happened to your passport. The score is the figure to watch.
Why indexes disagree
Two published rankings can give the same passport different numbers in the same week. The reasons, in rough order of how much they matter:
Different destination lists. Indexes differ on what counts as a destination. Territories, dependencies and partially recognised states are treated differently by different publishers, which changes the denominator before any policy is considered.
Different category boundaries. Whether an eTA counts as "visa-free" is a judgement call. An index that treats eTA as visa-free will report a higher visa-free figure than one that separates it, from identical underlying data.
Different snapshot dates. Visa policy changes continuously. Two indexes refreshed a week apart will differ on any destination that changed in between.
Different sources. Publishers draw on different datasets with different update practices and different error profiles.
Date alone rarely explains a large gap. If two indexes differ by more than a handful of destinations, the cause is usually the destination list or the category treatment, not timing — so comparing two rankings without comparing their methodologies produces a conclusion about nothing.
Always cite a rank with its source attached: "rank 24 according to PassportGrade", not "rank 24". A number without its methodology is not a fact about the passport.
Where our figures come from
Visa requirements come from the open Passport Index dataset, refreshed automatically every day, with our own verified corrections applied on top. It is a community-maintained dataset, not an official government feed.
Passport photo specifications and official eVisa portal links are a separate matter: those are checked individually against the issuing authority, and any country we could not verify is labelled as such on its own page rather than filled in from a default.
The about page states this in full, including what we do and do not verify.
Three dates, not one
It matters which date you are looking at:
- Dataset updated — when our copy of the visa data was last refreshed.
- Official sources checked — when a specific claim was last confirmed against an authority. This applies to photo specifications and portal links, not to every visa pairing.
- Article modified — when the page text was last edited.
These are different events and we keep them separate. A refresh of the dataset is not a verification against a government source, and we do not present it as one.
What the score cannot tell you
The number is an aggregate. It says nothing about:
- Your trip. A high score is irrelevant if the one destination you need requires a consular visa from your passport.
- Permission to work or study. The score measures short-visit access only. See visa-free does not mean you can work.
- Whether you will be admitted. Eligibility to travel and permission to enter are different decisions, made by different people. See your passport is valid and you still cannot fly.
- Transit. Transit permission is a separate framework the dataset does not record. See airport transit visa rules.
- Cost or time. Two eVisa destinations can differ by an order of magnitude in fee and processing time, and the score treats them identically.
- Regional shape. Two passports with equal scores can open entirely different parts of the world.
Using the data properly
If you are planning a trip, the ranking is the wrong tool. Use the visa requirement checker for your specific pairing, then confirm against the destination's own authority.
If you are comparing two passports — for a residence or citizenship decision, say — the comparison view is more informative than two scores, because it shows which destinations differ, not how many.
If you are citing a figure in writing, state the index, the date of the snapshot and the methodology in one sentence. Readers can then evaluate the claim instead of inheriting it.
When a passport comparison misleads you
Three limits sit under every comparison on this site, and each has its own page. Read them together and you have the whole picture:
- The number is a sum of unlike things — see not all of your score is visa-free.
- Equal totals can mean different worlds — see equal score, different worlds.
- A rank can move without your access changing — see why your rank moved.
The other direction
Every figure here reads the data from the passport's side. Read it from the destination's side and a different picture appears — see who opens more than they receive and which regions are open to the world.
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