Passport Quality Index (PQI) Measuring the real value of travel. This index evaluates destinations based on their contribution to global tourism. It shifts the focus from the mere quantity of destinations to their actual quality for travelers.
| Rank | Passport | PQI |
|---|---|---|
| 1 |
Singapore
|
83,18 |
| 2 |
United Arab Emirates
|
82,44 |
| 3 |
Belgium
|
82,12 |
| 4 |
Kingdom of the Netherlands
|
82,04 |
| 5 |
Malta
|
82,01 |
| Rank | Passport | VFE |
|---|---|---|
| 1 |
Guatemala
|
68,85 |
| 2 |
Federated States of Micronesia
|
68,85 |
| 3 |
El Salvador
|
68,46 |
| 4 |
Paraguay
|
68,27 |
| 5 |
Venezuela
|
68,27 |
Full PQI Rankings
PQI by Macro Regions
Isolated Regional PQI
Evaluates passport power within specific travel regions (Isolated PQI), assuming travel is restricted to that region only. The 'Home' icon () marks passports from the selected region. A score of 100 means full access to the region.
Visa-Free Efficiency (VFE)
Passports Comparison
Synergy Tool
Add a second passport to your first to discover their combined PQI and find the best options to expand your global reach.
Visa access map for combination
Best Upgrades for Your First Passport
South Africa
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the ranking of the South Africa passport?
The South Africa passport currently ranks #94 in the Global Passport Quality Index (PQI).
How many countries can South Africa citizens visit visa-free?
Holders of the South Africa passport enjoy visa-free access to 59 destinations.
What is the PQI score for South Africa?
The Passport Quality Index (PQI) score for South Africa is 60.38.
What are the strong sides of the South Africa passport?
The South Africa passport has good access to the following regions: Latin America, Southeast Asia, MENA, The Caribbean, Sub-Saharan Africa.
What are the weak sides of the South Africa passport?
The South Africa passport has difficulties accessing the following regions: Europe, Post-Soviet.
About the Project (From the Author)
Hello everyone! I decided to create this site based on my analytical research. I often saw news headlines claiming a certain passport became the "strongest" or ranked high. Checking the sources, I realized: almost all popular rankings use a simple quantitative approach - they just count countries.
This method reflects reality only partially. I wanted to dig a bit deeper and create an index based on the quality of access.
What is the concept?
Visa-free access to different countries cannot be evaluated 1 to 1. For a traveler, different destinations have different actual significance. We must assign a justified "weight" to each destination country. That's how the Passport Quality Index (PQI) was born.
What this index provides:
- Precise Qualitative Assessment: Each passport receives a score based on the PQI methodology.
- Unique Rank for Everyone: I arranged passports so they don't share the same position. Completely identical passports almost don't exist in the world.
In the process of development, I realized that the accumulated data allows deriving a couple more cool things useful for travelers or those thinking about second citizenship:
- Visa-Free Efficiency (VFE): This metric shows how "effective" your visa-free destinations are. It is the median of tourist attractiveness of countries open to you. You will find insights about passports that are not so hyped but give excellent access to global tourism capital with a small number of countries.
- Isolated Regional PQI: This metric evaluates passport power within specific geopolitical regions, assuming travel is restricted to that area only. It is an essential tool for digital nomads, expats, or professionals who focus their mobility within a particular region (e.g., traveling exclusively within Latin America or Southeast Asia). Importantly, the ranking includes all global passports, often revealing that "outsider" passports provide better regional access than those from within the region itself.
- Synergy Tool: My favorite tool. You can experimentally add a second passport to yours and see their combined PQI, as well as the net gain from such a union. By the way, the system itself will suggest passport options that give the greatest increase in your specific case - perhaps you didn't even guess which second passports could be very powerful for you.
What's next?
I plan to update the ranking every month, refine the site, and follow dynamics. I am madly interested in visas and travel topics, and I want to build a community that will help develop this project further.
If you liked the project and want to support me - https://ko-fi.com/pqi
Disclaimer
All data on this resource is for informational purposes only and is based on open sources (including Wikipedia and World Bank), which may contain inaccuracies.
- Verify Data: The Index is not a legal document. Before planning a trip, be sure to check with official sources (embassies, Timatic system).
- Political Factors: In some cases, the index may indicate "Visa Required" for countries, actually closed for political reasons (e.g., restrictions for South Korean citizens visiting the DPRK). Such external factors are difficult to digitize automatically.
- Margin of Error: The methodology focuses on identifying general trends. Isolated errors in the source data do not have a decisive influence on the final rating.
Calculation Methodology
Conditions & Scope
The index exclusively analyzes the 193 UN member states (as of 2026). This ensures data reliability and consistency, as partially recognized or unrecognized territories often lack verifiable, up-to-date information.
Visa requirements are categorized into 5 tiers of accessibility, each assigned a specific weight:
Coefficients reflect the relative difficulty of entry and may be adjusted in future updates.
I used only open data sources and sought a metric that would simultaneously reflect the tourist attractiveness of all countries in the index while ensuring data availability for recent years (preferably with substantial post-COVID data, i.e., after 2020). The compromise solution was the product of tourism's share in service exports and total service exports. This metric has accumulated several years of data since 2020, effectively capturing the most modern trends in tourism.
Primary formula for a single country:
Si (Destination Power)
Derived from World Bank economic data.
Codes: BX.GSR.TRVL.ZS × BX.GSR.NFSV.CD
Ki (Accessibility Score)
The "ease of entry" coefficient (1.0 for Visa-Free, 0.2 for Visa Required, etc.) applied to the destination.
T (Total Importance)
The sum of "Destination Power" for all countries globally. This represents the theoretical maximum score.
Imagine global tourism as a pie. PQI measures what percentage of this pie your passport allows you to "taste". Difficult visas (score 0.2) only let you have crumbs, while visa-free access hands you the whole slice.
Formula:
- Filter: Consider only countries with visa-free entry (K ≥ 0.99).
- Exclusion: The home country is excluded from the calculation. This metric assesses diplomatic efficiency, focusing strictly on external destinations and international travel potential.
- Calculate: Find the median "Destination Power" (Si) of these countries.
- Scale: Multiply by 100 for readability.
- Ranking: In the VFE rankings, passports are ordered first by higher VFE. When two passports have the same VFE, the one with fewer visa-free destinations ranks higher, highlighting efficiency. If both VFE and the visa-free count are equal, the passport with the lower overall PQI is ranked higher, underscoring that seemingly weaker passports by destination count can still be extremely efficient.
This represents the "average coolness" of your visa-free destinations. We line up all the countries you can visit visa-free by their tourism power and pick the one right in the middle.
It reveals the quality of a typical country accessible to you without a visa.
This is a conscious trade-off between precision and sustainability. I maintain this project independently. The current automated classifier allows for validation without a dedicated team.
To accurately account for the nuances of varying e-Visa complexities, I would need:
- Extremely detailed data for each country.
- A full team for data collection and validation.
- Constant monitoring (visa policies change monthly).
I estimate the aggregate impact of such detail to be very low for this ranking system - in practice, the difference would only shift a passport by 2-3 positions within the top 50.
A direct indicator like BX.GSR.TRVL.CD (tourism receipts) from the World Bank is only available up to 2020. If the world hadn't changed so drastically since then, using older data might be acceptable. However, critical shifts have occurred:
- Post-pandemic recovery.
- Geopolitical shifts (sanctions, new visa policies).
- Emergence of new tourism hubs.
Using the product of BX.GSR.TRVL.ZS × BX.GSR.NFSV.CD allows me to derive much fresher data (2020-2024). Crucially, this captures several years of the post-COVID era, better reflecting current tourism trends.
I acknowledge that this product, while algebraically equivalent to tourism receipts, has a margin of error (~8-10%) due to methodological differences in sources (Balance of Payments vs. National Accounts). I consider this an acceptable price for data relevance.
Axiom: No destination has zero tourist or geopolitical significance. I assign a minimal weight (0.01) even to the statistically least demanded destinations.
Using 0 as a minimum would create a mathematical paradox:
- Passport A: Visa required for X
- Passport B: Entry to X completely banned
In reality, a visa requirement is better than a ban. The minimal value of 0.01 resolves this issue.
Data Sources & Open Data
The project is built on the principles of transparency and utilizes exclusively Open Data. The Index is the result of original processing of information available in the public domain or distributed under free licenses.
- Visa Requirements: Data on access types (VF, VoA, eVisa) is aggregated from open summary tables on Wikipedia. This information is transformed from textual descriptions into a digital model of accessibility coefficients. Content is used in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA 4.0) license.
- Tourism Capital: Economic indicators are obtained from public World Bank Open Data datasets. These metrics are used to create a derivative "country weight" indicator. Data is used under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) license, without violating the usage rules of the source databases.
- Geographic Data: Basic information about countries and regions is obtained via Wikidata and UN classifications. This data is distributed under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal (Public Domain Dedication) license and is used exclusively for correct visualization and statistical grouping.
FAQ
The index includes only passports of countries that are full member states of the United Nations. I closely monitor changes in UN membership and international recognition; as soon as a country attains full member status, it will be added to calculations.
Each score is the direct result of the formula detailed in Methodology section under the “PQI (Passport Quality Index)” block. I guarantee that the process is entirely transparent and free from any intentional bias or manual adjustments. However, if you believe there is a data error or a discrepancy in the calculation, I am open to reviewing it. Please feel free to reach out at pqirank@gmail.com.
Please send cases to pqirank@gmail.com. I will try to correct them not only at the level of my project but also make edits to Wikipedia to make accurate data available to Wiki users as well.
Your passport is likely indeed strong, but VFE evaluation works differently. You can learn more in the Methodology section and in the tooltips on the site. Essentially, the rating aims to identify unexpectedly good passports that may not have the highest number of visa-free destinations. It is logical that among them will be far from the most popular passports.
For example, Spain's VFE is lower because they have access to both the most touristic destinations and not-so-popular ones — the median quality of visa-free access is lower, but this does not make the passport bad; it is excellent for travel.
No, the tool evaluates only the mathematical benefit of the combination, not the legal legality of holding two passports.
This is a large field for experimenting with combinations, but one must understand that some passport combinations are practically impossible to have, and many states in practice require renouncing the first citizenship.
This is the main value of the Synergy Tool. Strong passports often have identical lists of visa-free countries. The tool shows that having two "top" passports is often pointless, but if access to the whole world is important to you, then perhaps a not-so-obvious option will be useful for you.