
Show HN: Visalist – Find visa requirements for countries around the world - 1hakr
https://visalist.io
======
_0nac
Interesting, but how do you keep this up to date? These requirement change
constantly and the only reliable source I'm aware of, Timatic (which is what
airlines use), is copyrighted and quite tightly locked down.

Wikipedia does crowdsource this info fairly effectively though, sample:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_requirements_for_Indian_c...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_requirements_for_Indian_citizens)

~~~
SOLAR_FIELDS
You do have to be careful and read the fine print. This year, I was turned
away at the Belarusian-Lithuanian border (US citizen) because I had read on
that Wikipedia page that it was Visa free. In fact, it is only visa free if
you arrive via the Minsk airport. Fortunately I was only driving through a
tiny part of Belarus on my way to Poland so it was a simple matter of another
30 minutes or so of driving to enter Poland via the Lithuanian border.

~~~
krn
To be fair, visa-free entry into Belarus for up to 30 days is a completely new
thing[1]. Unlike most visa-free regimes, it's not driven by any international
agreements, but rather by a Belarusian initiative to promote tourism in the
country. Therefore, they can set their own requirements, and it's still not
possible to take a 2-hour train from Vilnius to Minsk without a visa. The
entire program can be cancelled at any time by one side, since Belarusians
don't have the same visa-free access to the EU.

[1]
[https://www.belarus.by/rel_image/6400](https://www.belarus.by/rel_image/6400)

~~~
agapon
To be fair, Ukraine has the same unilateral visa-free regime for EU (plus some
other countries) citizens. But it's not as arbitrary. If you are a citizen of
one of the countries you can enter through any legal port of entry.

Edit. I keep forgetting that Ukraine now does have visa free travel with
Schengen states.

------
gnicholas
Nice looking site. As others have pointed out, it's important to be 100%
credible so that people can trust that the results are correct and up-to-date.
The overall look of the site is consistent with this, but having "by 1HaKr" in
the lower right would be a red flag for some folks who think of "hackers" as
exclusively black hat.

It would help the site's credibility if you linked to authoritative source
documents showing that you do/don't need a visa for a particular country, so
that folks can trust that your third-party site is correct.

It would also be handy if you could include requirements related to
international driver's license, IMO.

Lastly, the button "LETS GO!" needs an apostrophe.

~~~
1hakr
This is super useful feedback. I will change my name there. There are already
links to official government websites. About driving, license, i will add
that. Also thanks for pointing out the typo.

~~~
ableal
Thanks, nice tool, bookmarked. I'll second that "give an authoritative basis"
advice.

Two minor items that struck me:

\- Country code, I'd suggest going with alpha2 from iso 3166,
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1)
(Portugal is usually .pt/PT =alpha2 , sometimes POR, PRT=alpha3 is kind of
rare)

\- Something strange about the sorting of the left column, mine goes U V V V A
by country initial on (default) "visa type" ...

~~~
1hakr
This is very useful. Thanks a lot.

------
reikonomusha
I find many of the critical comments to be shortsighted, especially those
talking about trust/credibility. Do people really believe folks will check
this site then run over to book an international ticket straight after?

This is an awesome site to get a general idea where I (or my friends & family)
can and can’t travel with and without extra work. It has a nice interface, a
good collection of information, and is easier to browse than, say, Wikipedia
on mobile.

If I’m actually interested in locking down and going on a trip to somewhere
where I may possibly need a visa, of course I’ll do additional due diligence
with the embassy, which the site often helpfully links.

“1HaKr in the corner reminds people of hackers and may turn people away.”
Really?

~~~
diminoten
I have a completely evidence-free theory that, over time, the average
sentiment score of comments on HN has gone down.

Maybe I'm succumbing to bias with this theory (hello Eternal September), but
it seems like all I read on "Show HN" anymore is negativity and
dismissiveness.

I really ought to try and do the analysis. I _think_ it wouldn't be hard (HN
is very good about keeping historical data, and sentiment analysis looks as
easy as importing a library and passing it a dataset), just time consuming.

~~~
wenc
I don't know.

To me, HN is a place where ideas are workshopped. If one is looking for
accolades, Reddit might be a better forum.

I don't think I have any trouble with critical sentiments as long as they are
_correctly_ critical. Of course, too often they are not because some HN folks
have an ax to grind, and to make things worse, they are misinformed because a
little knowledge is a dangerous thing (pseudointellectuals). [1]

But at the same time, if people are not critically examining ideas, that
almost defeats the purpose of this place. I've seen some really bad and
incorrect ideas on Show HN that are given a pass due to lack of expertise and
discernment on the commenters' parts.

Criticism, when done with civility with the intention to build up rather than
tear down, can be a wonderful thing.

Also, despite its purported negativity, people still dip their toe in the
comments sections from time to time, holding out hope for finding the one or
two gems. For all its flaws, there's no other general forum on the Internet
(that I know of) that congregates this level of intellectual ability mixed
with technical expertise. (specialized forums notwithstanding)

[1] [https://danluu.com/hn-comments/](https://danluu.com/hn-comments/)

~~~
diminoten
The comments on HN tend to be so completely out of touch with reality, that
it's sometimes hard to separate the wheat from the proverbial chaff.

If the negativity was constructive, I'd be with you, but I don't think it is.
It's the incorrect or incomplete application of concepts people pick up in
blog posts or half-read books about one person's opinion about how to do a
certain thing, represented as gospel.

Regarding your link, I urge you to check the dates those comments were posted.
You'll find, I theorize, that the number of these quality posts has gone down
over time. I believe the "good parts" are fading, getting lost in the
increasing noise.

~~~
wenc
I'm curious, given your feelings, what motivates your (fairly active)
participation in the comments section?

Not trying to be snarky, just want to know what people are truly looking for
in the comments, because I happen to have a different view of the comments
(maybe it's just in the sampling of topics I'm interested in).

~~~
diminoten
Shouting into the void about the void helps me deal with the void's existence.

Honestly, if I were a completely rational actor, I wouldn't comment on HN.

Besides, I think you'd find the level of comments on HN to be no better than
what's on Reddit or Stack Overflow or Quora or Slashdot or Twitter or Facebook
or even Google+.

~~~
wenc
I think I see where you're coming from. Humans aren't always rational.

I have a different view. I think the quality of a subset of comments here are
appreciably better in some respects than many of the sites you listed. Of
course there are contrarian, misinformed pseudointellects, but at the same
time, one also gets to hear the unvarnished thoughts of lead developers of
specific products (e.g. Timescale, Azure services, D programming language,
etc.). I know of no other forum where this is true.

Maybe my mind is used to filtering out stuff I don't care about, so most of
the cruft and negativity doesn't really bother me. I also come from an
academic tradition where debate and disagreement (high quality or not) is just
part of life. To me, it's just a reflection of the world out there -- all
forums have their brand of stupidity. HN's just a different kind of stupid
from Reddit, and I'm ok with all kinds of stupid as long as there are still
good bits that edify me, which is why I keep coming back.

Site(s) like StackOverflow and certain StackExchanges have higher quality
exchanges on particular topics, but they aren't designed for discussion. They
are heavily constrained Q&A sites. The bar of acceptability is much higher
(questions get closed all the time), but the topics also more or less have
verifiable answers, which makes it easy to achieve "quality"; this is not true
of a general purpose discussion forum. Jeff Atwood (StackOverflow's founder)
was interviewed on the MIT AI podcast recently about this, and his answers on
how to arrive at high quality online communities were insightful.

Finally, and this is my opinion, the way to counter incorrect and unhelpful
discussions isn't to withdraw but to redirect the discussion in more helpful
directions by providing correct information and a counterargument. HN is just
the aggregate of people who visit it -- the same people have to self-govern it
to some extent.

~~~
diminoten
The problem with this attitude is that it's, in a word, superior. Superior
attitudes are rarely productive.

I dislike very strongly those communities who encourage their members to put
themselves above others, and I see that as more harmful than any inherent
value the community might provide.

If HN were really superior, people wouldn't have to keep telling me it's so,
yet that's all I am told when this topic comes up. Why isn't it self-evident?

A large portion of my time on HN (nearly 10 years, blame XKCD) has been
devoted to this topic specifically, and no one has yet shown me the merits of
this site to a degree that it outweighs the arrogance its members have shown
over and over.

I've very recently started writing my thoughts out more long form, maybe I'll
dedicate a post to this topic. Otherwise, I am probably done talking about it,
as dang tends to get upset with me when I go on like this.

~~~
wenc
I'm not sure I agree, but I too will stop here too except to say that this
whole exchange is a bit meta in that it seems to reflect the content and
attitudes it is opposing. (I'm not excluding myself from this--I'm equally
culpable)

------
fareesh
I personally would never use a website like this because I am not going to
trust my precious travel plans and legal standing in another country to a non-
authoritative website.

For my personal comfort, the problem to be solved is officially recognized
information presented in a convenient way.

In fact, I have noticed that websites like this tend to add to my confusion
when they contradict the official forms.

~~~
1hakr
Actually the information is from the official website, infact in the details
page you can find link to the offical website. What i'm trying to do here is
simplify the visa requirements for everyone.

~~~
Carpetsmoker
Over here: [https://visalist.io/new-zealand/visa-
requirements/netherland...](https://visalist.io/new-zealand/visa-
requirements/netherlands) it says "source: wikipedia", which is hardly
"official", and may not be comprehensive.

The Wikipedia page is subtly wrong you get a "visa on arrival", not "visa not
required". There are some important details left out too; for example one of
the conditions for getting the visa is that you have booked flights out of New
Zealand. I've heard stories of people not realizing this and having to book
flights on the spot :-(

You can get a 9 month visa quite easily, but you need to apply for it (and
then you can enter without flights out of the country).

There are probably many more pages where such details (or even more important
details) are lacking; I just chose this one as I recently moved to New Zealand
so I know a thing or two about the Visa requirements there.

It might be useful for a quick "hm, I'd like to go somewhere, what are my
options?", but I would _always_ check the immigration website for these kinds
of requirements/details. And frankly, I don't see what this website adds over
Wikipedia.

~~~
1hakr
So the official website, visa application link, fees and document checklist
are not available on Wikipedia. VisaList tries to aggregate all this info and
show it in a simple and useful manner.

~~~
Carpetsmoker
None of this is visible on VisaList, either?

The New Zealand visa website is pretty good, as is the one from the
Netherlands: [https://www.immigration.govt.nz/new-zealand-
visas/](https://www.immigration.govt.nz/new-zealand-visas/) and
[https://www.netherlandsandyou.nl/travel-and-
residence](https://www.netherlandsandyou.nl/travel-and-residence)

It includes all these things. Perhaps other countries are less helpful, but
certainly in these cases VisaLink isn't really adding anything in its current
state.

Also, "You do not need a chip & PIN card to use an ATM — your standard
magnetic card will work fine" is wrong for the Netherlands, as magnetic cards
were phased out years ago. They're not accepted anywhere AFAIK.

Getting good data on "the entire world" as you're trying to do here is hard,
and requires real experts. Just copying/scraping Wikipedia is frankly not a
good place to start, actually investing money and paying domain experts is.

I know it sucks to have people be critical about something you spent a lot of
time building, and maybe one day your website will have better data, and I
wish you the best of luck with, but right now I don't see how it's adding
value.

Sorry :-(

------
tgamblin
How do you handle some of the more obscure cases? For example, citizens of
some countries, including the US, can do a short, visa-free stay in China if
they’re transiting through the major airports
([https://www.travelchinaguide.com/embassy/visa/transit.htm](https://www.travelchinaguide.com/embassy/visa/transit.htm)).

I saw Beijing this way coming back to SF from Taiwan. It was a pain to find
all the details about how to apply, and a site like this could help people
find out about such opportunities. e.g., you could match trip itinieraries to
interesting stopovers.

~~~
gandutraveler
Another case you could add is for citizens of country A but resident of
Country B. For e.g. Indian citizen residing in US or has valid US Visa gets
Visa free travel to Mexico and other countries.

------
nnd
I recommend using Timatic, through one of the interfaces, like
[https://www.traveldoc.aero](https://www.traveldoc.aero)

This is what industry professionals use to check if you are eligible to board
a flight.

~~~
1hakr
Yes but its very old UI and doesnt have any useful information like document
checklist, visa application link, etc

~~~
nnd
I agree, the only advantage of this site it up-to-date data and detailed
requirements based on your travel itinerary and passport/residence.

With visa requirements there are a lot of details involved, it's not as simple
as nationality -> visa requirements mapping.

------
crypt1d
Bookmarked. Thanks for this!

Some feedback based on first impression:

The title on the front page says "Find countries to travel to" but then I'm
suppose to specify my "home country", which I find just _slightly_ counter-
intuitive. I'd suggest to change it up a bit so that I can specify home
country and, optionally, a destination I have in mind. Then I'd get results
specific for that country only (including, eg, transit visas). I'd also
replace "home country" with "citizenship", since I may have a passport of one
country, but live in another (which is fairly common in some parts of EU, for
example). Many people also have dual citizenship.

~~~
1hakr
Very useful feedback! I will incorporte this soon

~~~
Cyph0n
I second the multiple citizenship option. I would love to be able to see what
countries I can enter with my passports.

But great job with the app, regardless!

~~~
1hakr
Thanks

------
mchannon
The color coding between the two most popular categories could stand to be
more distinct. Discerning between aqua and turquoise is harder than I thought
it would be.

People with felony convictions in their home country may also be refused entry
to some visa-free countries and not others, and while it's a rat's nest of
exceptions and procedures to sift through, it would make this site far more
interesting and useful to show which visa-free countries will still deny
entry.

~~~
EliRivers
_The color coding between the two most popular categories could stand to be
more distinct._

I second this. Came here just to say it. Far too similar.

~~~
1hakr
Point noted! Thanks for the feedback.

------
_xzxj
Nice site. This isn't the first visa site like it i've seen, but they all
focus on travel visas it seems. I suppose that's the low-hanging fruit.

What would be interesting to see are work visas, entrepreneur/freelance visas,
working holiday visas, and so on. Obviously a much more complicated ask but
that is what I have not yet seen from a site.

Main reason being this: If you want to travel somewhere you can pretty much go
on government websites (either yours or theirs) and see what the visa
requirements are. If you're looking to relocate to another country but perhaps
don't have a good idea where you want to (or can) relocate to or how, it can
be a steep hill to climb. Having something with a bit of a hint as to where to
start looking would be nice for people I think.

~~~
scrollaway
Also on HN a while back:
[https://multinational.io/](https://multinational.io/)

I like it a lot because it lets you compare passports, which helps a bunch
when planning travels/moves with someone else.

Edit: Ah yes, [https://passportindex.org](https://passportindex.org) also lets
you do that, I remember using it, it's probably the most featureful of the
lot.

------
dewey
What's the difference to
[https://www.passportindex.org/comparebyPassport.php?p1=ch&fl...](https://www.passportindex.org/comparebyPassport.php?p1=ch&fl=&s=yes)

~~~
degenerate
At a quick glance, passportindex says "visa required" but doesn't give all the
gritty details of what's needed in bullet form.

~~~
dewey
I checked "Swiss passport" and "Malaysia" and it has less data than
passportindex.

visalist.io: "Visa is not required for a certain period, or there is freedom
of movement"

[https://visalist.io/malaysia/visa-
requirements/switzerland](https://visalist.io/malaysia/visa-
requirements/switzerland)

passportindex.org: "visa-free / 90 days"

[https://www.passportindex.org/comparebyPassport.php?p1=ch&fl...](https://www.passportindex.org/comparebyPassport.php?p1=ch&fl=MY,&s=yes)

------
projectramo
This is a handsome site.

For some reason I am quite curious about this kind of thing and keep looking
up passports I don’t have for countries I won’t visit. I use Wikipedia which
is pretty good.

What is missing is all the weird non visitor visas. For instance Canadians
might work in the US on a TN visa or Australians can work on the UK for a year
if they’re under some age (30? 35?)

It’s that sort of thing that would be useful. If Americans can work visa free
in Mongolia for up to 6 months, it would be great to know. (I doubt this is
the case)

~~~
selimthegrim
There’s also that weird US visa that Australians can get courtesy of Bush 43

~~~
SEJeff
It was a quid-pro-quo for them going to Iraq and Afghanistan wars with us.
Seems entirely reasonable to give your closest allies a different set of
"rules" in exchange for their help.

------
jlangenauer
Funnily enough, about 5 years ago, I did pretty much the same thing. It turned
out to be a right pain to actually find, and keep all the data up to date.

(Comments at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5434186](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5434186)
\- the actual site has been taken down)

~~~
nathan_f77
I was planning to build a visa site as well, and I also wanted to fill in the
all the visa application forms online [1]. That's actually one of the main
reasons that I built FormAPI [2].

I decided to stop working on this visa list / forms idea. I think I could make
a bit money from ads (hotels, airlines, etc.), but I can't think of any
subscription models, and I personally wouldn't pay any one-time fees just to
fill out some forms. I think most people would rather use a pen than enter
their credit card details.

It would also be far too much work to organize all of these application forms
and stay up to date with visa requirements. I just wanted some passive income
and wasn't ready to schlep [3].

But I think it could be done with VC funding and a team of salespeople and
immigration experts. You need people calling or emailing embassies, or
visiting them in person, and making sure that they know about these filled-in
forms and are willing to accept them. I was also thinking that I would
eventually build a SaaS service for every embassy, so that people could apply
online and track their applications. Could start with filling out the forms,
and then eventually digitize the process and cut out the paper. But I was
worried about turning into another online visa agency where I was just a
middle-man. That's a service business with low margins, and it would be easy
to settle into that and get stuck there.

Anyway, it's a huge project, so it's not something I could do by myself. Also
trying to sell software to government and immigration agencies is a really bad
idea (from personal experience.) But maybe there's an opportunity here, so let
me know if anyone is interested in working on that.

[1] [https://www.visaforms.co](https://www.visaforms.co)

[2] [https://formapi.io](https://formapi.io)

[3]
[http://www.paulgraham.com/schlep.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/schlep.html)

------
sfifs
The problem with this kind of stuff is how do you keep these up to date. Visa
policies change all the time and generally don't get a lot of publicity. There
is a reason there are specialist visa agencies like CIBT

~~~
1hakr
My plan is to collect as much data as possible and then build crowdsourcing
features so that the community will keep the data up to date. I think that the
only way to make #TravelTensionFree

------
4ad
The site asks for "home country" when it really means citizenship. Not the
same thing at all.

Also, it's missing a way to input multiple citizenships.

~~~
1hakr
I wanted to start with the basic usecase and validate the idea if it will be
useful. Now that i see there are lot of people found it useful, i will try to
add these additional usecases aswell. Thanks for the feedback.

------
hideo
Incredibly useful website. I have a few suggestions but please don't take this
as negative criticism! I travel a fair bit and having these things would make
this website my "one stop shop" for travel needs!

    
    
      * The ability to export a list of results into CSV or something else that I can import into a spreadsheet. I tend to make travel plans on spreadsheets, and this would be very helpful.
      * Scrolling to the left or right makes the colours disappear? I think this may be an OSM limitation but it really confused me. 
      * Is there a way I can filter on multiple categories? I'd like to look at visa-free and visa-on-arrival in the same map.
      * This may be personal preference, but the emoji are really distracting. 
      * The region filter doesn't seem to influence the subregion filter? If I select "Asia" as a region I assumed the sub-regions list would reflect only the sub-regions of Asia but that doesn't seem to be true
      * If I can subscribe to visa status *changes* for my country by email I'd give up my email address immediately. I'd probably be willing to pay money for this if it's accurate :)* The fact that this is non-authoritative doesn't bother me at all. You may want to highlight this a bit more "strongly". Maybe give up some of that priceless above-the-fold real-estate just to save yourself any legal trouble.
      * Consider linking to traveldoc.aero as well.
      * Several people I know and work/travel with have multiple passports from countries that allow it. Consider allowing the multiple home countries!

~~~
1hakr
This is extremely useful feedback.

 _1\. I understand, there isnt a plan as data keeps changing. i will see what
i can do

_ 2\. Go it.

 _3\. I 'm thinking of adding it.

_4 :)

 _5 Yes, it should. I just wanted to keep it dumb in the begining. Will change
that.

_ 6 Interesting

 _7 I will

_ 8 Yes this is the most requested feature, i will build it soon.

Again thanks a lot for the wonderful feedback.

------
grecy
I'd be curious to know where you got this data from.

Also note: Many, many countries have a different policy if you are flying in
(some kind of e-visa) or if you are driving in, where you need a physical visa
in your passport.

Ethiopia is exactly that right now for many passport holders.

------
somberi
A big thumbs up. Very useful. As an Indian citizen, I have traveled close to
50 countries (not including business trips) and Indian citizens, apart from a
handful of countries, need visa for most of the world. This site comes in
handy.

If possible, consider adding which countries have exemptions for holders of
Permanent Residency (Greencard), or an Australian PR and such.

~~~
ganeshkrishnan
So excruciatingly painful to travel on the Indian passport. I was rejected
from visiting my fiancee in France even though I had a UK, Swiss (was not
schengen in 2007) and H1b visa on my passport.

Also visa requirements are by the passport you are holding not usually the PR
so requirements don't change that much.

~~~
avh02
A lot of countries grant visa free access to holders of e.g: us visit visa or
schengen residency, they call it a substitute visa

~~~
vishnu_ks
I had no idea about this. Thanks! For anyone, curious here are the countries
you can travel with a US visa.

[https://www.visatraveler.com/blog/travel-20-countries-
visa-f...](https://www.visatraveler.com/blog/travel-20-countries-visa-free-
with-us-visa/)

------
edtau
Really nice. If an eVisa is available for my selection, consider offering me a
link so I can sign up direct... and, as an alternative, possibly wrapper a
service around this to submit the application process on my behalf (making
clear this is a paid/premium service).

~~~
1hakr
Interesting, i havent thought about it yet. But i guess then i have to build a
company around this as it wont be a microstartup anymore!

~~~
Ninn
Microstartup? Do you mean just a webpage, which is exclusively not a
startup/buisness?

~~~
rileymat2
It has ads.

~~~
Ninn
Which makes it a business?

------
guessmyname
Every page I’ve visited says:

> _The [country] passport holders can visit 193 countries with different visa_

Check Vietnam, for example: [https://visalist.io/vietnam/all-
visas](https://visalist.io/vietnam/all-visas)

~~~
1hakr
Most of the major countries information is available out of 201 countries

------
optimusprinceps
Just checked and it isn't accurate for citizens of Pakistan. For instance it
says, "visa is required for Israel". Pakistan doesn't recognise Israel
therefore they can't even apply for a visa.

~~~
EliRivers
I think you've made a mistake there. Pakistan isn't in charge of deciding who
can visit Israel. It's up to Israel to decide that.

There are a number of accounts on the internet of Pakistani citizens asking
Israel for a visa, and receiving one.

------
MlkedChocolate
nice, however this information is not too hard to get myself. Add Dual
nationality/ multi-nationality, and that would actually save me time.

(single nationals can just search for any website, whereas dual nationals
would want to search for 2 as they have more options, and if they only have to
use your website that saves their time!) :)

~~~
1hakr
I wanted to first validate the idea, now that its proven useful, i will add
these features aswell. Thanks for the feedback.

------
eatbitseveryday
Other sites that provide this:

[https://multinational.io](https://multinational.io)

[https://passportindex.org](https://passportindex.org)

Given the amount of work needed to maintain this information in useful detail,
perhaps a site could ask for $X (maybe less than 10) per lookup for a given
nationality to a given country, then use that to have a lawyer or someone keep
the data accurate.

------
cfv
While this is super cool, as an Argentinian I show up as visa-free for a bunch
of Schengen countries, which while strictly not false it's not super useful:
We get 3 out of every 6 months stay, and the list would prob be a lot more
useful to people who don't know this if these things were somehow displayed;
it's after all not a minor caveat when picking travel destinations

~~~
1hakr
Thanks, i didnt know this. I will add this info aswell.

------
mb_72
There are spelling errors on each page I've looked at so far (eg travel
"Iternary").

Personally I'd never trust such a site; I'd rather rely on my own research of
visa conditions direct from official sources for the couples of times a year I
need such information. If you can somehow increase the trustworthiness of your
site, this might change.

~~~
1hakr
Apologies for the typo, corrected it. Currently there are offical website
links, visa application link and fee links along with document checklist. You
can always cross check with the official site. As next step, i'm planning to
add crowdsource validation, so the data is most accurate and upto date.

~~~
hideo
If you plan to crowdsource information, please make it abundantly clear that
the info is crowdsourced, and maybe even make it slightly harder to get! There
is a lot of inaccurate information about visas.

Part of the problem is that border agents in most countries have A LOT of
discretion in who is not allowed in, even if the laws explicitly say
otherwise. To a lesser extent, they also make exceptions in the other
direction (I've been granted a visa-on-arrival for a country that did not
allow people with my passport to get visas on arrival :).

Folks often mistake their personal experience as "the law", which is often
wrong.

------
hellofunk
This is rather basic -- what if your home country is different than the
country you live in? Your flexibility to travel, for example in Europe, is
quite different if you have a European ID card even if you are not from there.
You still need visas to some countries but not others, depending on _both_
your ID card as well as your home country.

~~~
pcl
Can you expand on that a bit? I'm a US citizen living in Norway (a member of
the EEA but not the EU). I know that I can use the EEA immigration lines at
many (but not necessarily all) checkpoints in EEA countries if I present them
with my Norwegian residence card at the window.

Are there other travel optimizations, either in-region or elsewhere, that I
should look into? Are they all dependent on a residence card, or does a
Norwegian driver license or other documentation confer additional rights?

~~~
hellofunk
Consider someone from a country with poor passport freedoms. Normally, if they
lived in their home country, they'd need visas for lots of places. But now
they live in Europe. Thus, the places that require visas depends on:

1) The home country. 2) The destination country. 3) The holding of other
residence permits.

That person does not need a visa if they live in Germany and want to travel to
Belgium, but they do if they want to visit London. And the only way to know
that is by considering all of the above points, not just their home country.

------
kenneth
Great website! I travel a ton (50+ countries in the last few years) and
usually use Wikipedia to check visa requirements. I'll be switching to this.

Where did you import all this data from in a structured manner? How do you
plan on keeping it up to date?

Are you associated with a commercial enterprise in the space (e.g. travel
startup)?

~~~
1hakr
So i collected this manually. My plan is to add crowdsource data, so the data
is maintained by the travel community. No, i'm just a digital nomad, coding
his way thrugh life :)

~~~
swimfar
If the data is coming from an official web page, you could make something that
notifies you when the web page changes. Then you can check to see if you need
to update the requirements.

~~~
1hakr
Thats a great idea!

------
fergbrain
How is this different/better than using your country’s equivalent to
Department of State site to check, e.g.
[https://travel.state.gov/content/travel.html](https://travel.state.gov/content/travel.html)
?

~~~
1hakr
So except few countries, most of the other countries dont have these sites.
Even these sites point to the offical website of the traveling country. More
over the visa application link, fee link, document checklist are not present.
Visalist tries to aggreate all this information and show it an simple and
useful way.

------
quanto
Great website.

How do you ensure that all visa information is up to date? Do you
automatically parse visa policy changes on official government web pages?

I made a single spot check (USA -> VNM), and the website seems to conflate
e-visa with visa on arrival (they are different for Vietnam).

~~~
Holybeds
> Do you automatically parse visa policy changes on official government web
> pages?

Lol. That won't work well.

~~~
jarofgreen
No it won't.

But you could watch for any changes on certain webpages and then flag those
webpages to a human for them to check.

~~~
Holybeds
Glhf with that.

Honestly, relying on any such work flow to find something as critical as visa
requirements is insane. At least I wouldn't want to rely on some service which
failed to detect that some Russian government page updated their web page and
considers the page outdated. The page could still exist while incoming links
are removed or similar.

~~~
jarofgreen
I'm not saying this is perfect or it's all you need, but it's something.

To be honest, as someone who's done crowd sourced projects before this entire
project sounds .... very difficult.

If it was my project, I'd have worked on these "crowd sourced" elements from
the start, not as a "planning to do" \- because I think the only way this will
work long term is to get those right. And getting them right will be very
difficult to do.

Also, I'd link to source material much more prominently. As a reader, I'm not
inclined to trust a random unofficial page on the internet - especially on
anything as important as Visas - so providing lots of links I can spent 10
minutes following up on to reassure myself would be great.

Oh, and big timestamps showing when a piece of info was last checked/updated.

To the creator - sorry to be down. Good luck!

------
gopalakrishnans
Is there a way for US/Canadian long term visa holders to check their visa
requirements? E.g. Indian citizens are normally required to get visa for
Mexico/Philippines. But with a H1B visa from USA they can travel visa free /
visa on arrival.

~~~
1hakr
Not currently but that in my plan. Stay tuned!

------
LorenPechtel
I checked one combination for which I am fairly aware of the details and I
find multiple errors:

USA, visiting China.

It tells me 30 day stay, 90 day visa validity--but down in "tips" it correctly
says I would get a 10 year visa. (In practice--I hold a 60 day stay visa, my
(China-born) wife has a 90 day stay. These are by no means our first visas,
though.)

It also says registration is required within 24 hours--this is the rule for
urban areas, in rural ones it's 72 hours. Also, in practice this normally does
not matter as the hotel does it for you--you just need to do it yourself if
you're not in a hotel.

It also lists financial document requirements that AFIAK are not expected of
Americans.

------
fsniper
Great job. If you can keep it uptodate, this would be the first stop before
travel. One thing that it can be improved is showing transit Visa
requirements. Multiple stop flights are cheaper , but transit visa information
is hard to gather.

~~~
1hakr
Wonderful feedback. I'm just trying to validate the idea. once there is
traction, then i will add more visas. I want to make visalist one stop shop
for all visa requirement needs

~~~
bergerjac
Selecting USA, many countries are showing "13 to 11 hours ahead" for the time
difference. I expect it to be "11 to 13 hours ahead" (numbers of ranges going
smaller to larger)

------
legostormtroopr
I'm helping with a conference and this would be massively useful... except I
need to define there relationship by the destination country, not the origin.

Can this show me all of the conditions for people wanting to visit a country?

~~~
jpatokal
Wikipedia's "Visa policy of X" articles should hit the spot:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_policy_of_Thailand](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_policy_of_Thailand)

------
nzealand
Small note: New Zealand is not part of Australia, and has eGates not Smart
Gates.

~~~
1hakr
Can you point which page are you referring to?

~~~
nzealand
[https://visalist.io/new-zealand/visa-requirements/united-
sta...](https://visalist.io/new-zealand/visa-requirements/united-states-of-
america)

------
mikface
Good job! Nice UI. But little but very important note for people from those
countries: Add region called "Central Europe". Czechs, Slovaks, Poles,
Hungarians... they hate being marked as eastern europeans ;)

~~~
bergerjac
As an American who visited all those countries and conversed with multiple
citizens from each of those countries, they do remind you of the "Central
Europe" thing..

However, they don't understand that for Americans, "Eastern Europe" isn't
geographic; it's geopolitical... essentially, Europe _east_ of the former
Berlin Wall

There's South America the continent, but for some Spanish people (and possibly
other peoples), "South America" is everything south of America (starting with
Mexico)

~~~
tremendo
I am from México, and came here to comment because the posted website says
"Mexico is part of Central America", and well, No. México is definitely,
absolutely, unequivocally in North America.

------
mlacks
Over this project - while interesting and excellently executed - I use
passportindex.org [0].

I can't validate its sources directly, but its backed by Arton Capital, which
after a few minutes of research seems to have a pretty decent reputation in
this field.

Its also been validated by some respectable sources: WSJ, CNN, MSN, WaPo,
HuffPo, and more [1].

[0]
[https://www.passportindex.org/byRank.php](https://www.passportindex.org/byRank.php)

[1]
[https://www.passportindex.org/about.php](https://www.passportindex.org/about.php)

------
widforss
Good work! Just something I reacted to as a Swede is that the Åland Islands,
the Faroe Islands and Greenland are listed as separate countries. Citizens of
these areas hold Finnish or Danish passports respectively.

~~~
Zijj
Not sure about the Åland Islands, but at least Faroe and Greenland have a
different visa regime than Denmark (they are both not in Schengen. Also Danish
citizen residing e.g. in the Faroe are not seen as Schengen citizen, or
something like that).

Generally a hard edge case are all those autonomous or semiautonomous
territories. Like all the islands of UK and France (some French territories
are part of the EU, some are not). It's often a lot harder to get info on the
visa requirements for those.

------
Jedd
One oddness - home country is AU, attempting to determine status for Croatia.
On the map it comes up as visa-free. Filtering 'croatia' shows it as visa-
free. But even after scrolling all the way to the bottom, Croatia only shows
up as as one of the languages spoken in Montenegro and Bosnia & Herzegovina.
Might be a browser artefact - I'm on Chrome - and/or after-effect of page
load, but it's not ideal. (It's always faster to type ctrl-f than to mouse-
navigate to on-page search / filter dialogs.)

------
iiioooiiiooo
Feature request: Show visa-free destinations of intersection of two or more
citizenships: Eg French and Ukrainian couple can only travel visa-free to a
few places together. Which are these places?

Otherwise well done!

------
forthwall
Super cool!

I'd suggest for when you're on the page that shows you the list of countries
-> fix everything besides the list, so when you scroll down all the menus and
context stay in view.

~~~
1hakr
Nice suggestion. Thanks!

------
akuji1993
I'm in Germany and France shows up as 11 to 11 hours behind me. That's not
quite right, just wanted to let you know that something about the time
differences seems fishy.

------
riantogo
Impressive. I tested it for a case where Visa was required except for some
edge case. And indeed the exception (which applies to me) was shown
prominently in a "tips" card.

~~~
1hakr
Awesome. Glad its useful.

------
digianarchist
Missing some of the more complex edge cases. Holding permanent residency in
Canada allows access to more countries. Cuba for example:

"However, they are eligible to travel to Cuba with a tourist card if they also
hold a valid visa or permanent residence permit issued by Canada, the United
States or an EU member state."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_policy_of_Cuba#Visa_requi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_policy_of_Cuba#Visa_required)

------
MagicPropmaker
You won't know for sure, however, until you check with an official Government
source. I don't know what the utility of a 3rd party version of this is.
Usually people only go to a limited set of countries on every trip, so it's
not a big burden to go.

And I found an error on the first country I checked USA -> Belarus.

You don't need a Visa only if you're entering through the Airport and staying
less than 5 days. If you're crossing the border from Lithuania by car, you do
need one.

------
redindian75
which country passport you hold is what makes the difference, not your home
country (residency).

Example: One can hold Srilankan Passport, but home country now is USA (Perm
Residency Greencard)

------
sneakware
Good job! Also reminds me of
[https://www.markuslerner.com/travelscope](https://www.markuslerner.com/travelscope)

~~~
1hakr
Yes, useful but doesnt have official embassy link, visa application link, fees
link and document checklist, which i think are super useful for many.

------
mricordeau
Correction : For Canada from most Europe Schengen countries you need an Eta
visa, it’s not visa free. Same for US green card holders.

~~~
desdiv
Sorry, but this is incorrect. The European Travel Information and
Authorisation System has not even been developed yet, much less deployed. It
will only come online in 2021. Until then, Schengen is visa-free for Canadians
and Americans.

>On July 5th, the European Parliament has given its final agreement to
implement the European Travel Information and Authorisation System, ETIAS.
European authorities have decided to establish the electronic visa waiver
system in the year 2021 to improve security across the Schengen Area.

[https://www.etiasvisa.com/etias-news/how-will-the-etias-
syst...](https://www.etiasvisa.com/etias-news/how-will-the-etias-system-work)

~~~
mricordeau
I'm talking about the opposite way: FROM Schengen Europe countries TO Canada.
My first comment was not really clear to be honest.

~~~
desdiv
My apologies, I misread.

------
ElCampesino
Searched from Canada and Brazil was not listed at all. Tried also from US and
not listed. Tried from Brazil and Canada not listed.

------
hkolk
I noticed Hong Kong is missing (one of the SAR's in China). They have specific
visa rules compared to mainland China

Overall pretty useful site!

------
mattlondon
Suggestion: The green colours picked for "visa free" and "visa on arrival" is
very close. I would recommend that you change the colours to be more obviously
different.

I personally found it a bit difficult to tell the difference between green and
slightly-darker-green.

Otherwise, very nice apart from the funky scrolling glitching up all over the
place.

------
biztos
Well done! I like it as a potential way to brainstorm travel.

However I would not use it as a definitive resource simply because there is no
authoritative central source for the data, and the official sources are
sometimes very messy (I assume you're scraping consular websites to keep
current).

Feature suggestion: show the name of the country when hovering on the map.

------
amelius
Shouldn't it really be called "visamatrix", because you can lookup based on
home and destination countries?

~~~
1hakr
So basically for every person, its a list of countries they can travel based
on their home country, hence the name. But yes it can be called that aswell!

------
Tunabrain
Checked for my home country (Switzerland), and it doesn't seem to be correct -
travel to Canada requires an eTA, but the site lists Canada as being visa
free. Could get you in for an unpleasant surprise when your airline won't let
you board (they check for eTA at check-in).

------
golemotron
I use travisa for visas. Their website has the visa requirements for all
countries free of charge.

~~~
1hakr
Visalist is also completely free

------
hackerm0nkey
[https://www.iatatravelcentre.com](https://www.iatatravelcentre.com) is my
goto when it comes to visas. Not sure though if they provide this data over an
API. and I heard that this is what airlines usually use.

------
Bonge
When I entered a search for my country, the site informed me that the search
input is my home country.

I am currently not in my home country. This is also my first time using the
site. What background information is the site using to identify this?

------
datpuz
Cool! If I were more bored, I'd be interested to see how correlated these two
data points are: GDP per capita, number of countries that allow no visa or
visa on arrival

Just playing with the input, I suspect there would be a strong correlation.

------
crumbshot
A non-authoritative source of information that is riddled with adverts. No
thank you.

~~~
1hakr
ads are the only ways to maintain such a traffic while keeping it completely
free. Do you have any other suggestions?

~~~
crumbshot
My only suggestion is for everyone to use an adblocker and starve such
parasitic websites out of existence.

------
fickleycurious
Why don't add a second column under the map to use the extra white space ?

~~~
1hakr
i was thinking of adding useful tips / content in the future

~~~
fickleycurious
Makes sense. It would be nice if the results refresh as I zoom in the map.

------
purpleidea
The most helpful addition to this site would be a list of biometrics that the
country collects. Eg: fingerprints, photo on arrival, etc... That way we can
avoid the fascist, fingerprint hoarding countries!

------
dorian-graph
> Australia is part of Australia and New Zealand, Oceania with capital at
> Canberra.

Somewhat concerning to have a mistake of this type on a website like this—or
I'm just behind in the news.

~~~
1hakr
So the format is

<country> part of <sub region>, <region> woth cpaital at <captial>

------
seeadot
This is great...will be using it quite a bit! Thanks for making it

~~~
1hakr
I'm glad you found it useful

------
amelius
Perhaps you could add relevant links, for example where a user can apply for
an e-Visa. Or addresses of consulates, etc. Example visa application letters,
and stuff like that.

------
sombremesa
Personally, I prefer to use
[https://www.passportindex.org](https://www.passportindex.org) \- how does
this compare?

------
known
Just in time. I was planning for a vacation. Thanks.

~~~
1hakr
Happy to help.

------
runxel
Looks nice! Sadly some countries like USA doesn't have any information
currently on your site, you might want to improve that. ;)

------
complex1314
Nice! Like the map with colors. For Schengen it is not accurate though, e.g.
from Iceland and Norway all of EU is visa free.

------
djhworld
The time zone offsets are incorrect

For example if I put "United Kingdom" as my home country, it says Ireland is
8-6 hours ahead.

------
golergka
Where do I specify my second citizenship?

~~~
dewey
Why does it matter? You can only enter with one passport anyway so just try
the two? There's no "combine passports to level up" in the visa world.

~~~
amelius
Does having more passports work "additively" or "subtractively"?

For example I can imagine that a person with only a UK passport can enter the
US more freely than a person with both a UK and Iraqi passport.

~~~
dewey
Countries usually don't know which passports you have (If you enter for the
first time and they don't have some kind of data-sharing agreement) so you'd
just enter with the one that's easier not by showing all of yours.

~~~
amelius
There is no question about other nationalities on the visa application form?

~~~
pandapower2
I'm not the person you are responding to.

I don't recall every being asked about other nationalities. Countries will ask
if you have previously entered under a different name but presumably you are
using the same name world wide.

If you have multiple passports you can just use whichever one gets you through
immigration the fasted. some caveats:

1) if you have a passport from the country you are entering/leaving they want
you to use it ie if you have a US passport you should use it when entering or
leaving the US. If you then arrive in the UK and have a UK passport you should
use your UK passport at the UK end of your flight.

2) if you entered a country with passport A use that same passport to leave.
If you don't they wont automatically match up your entry and departure. On one
hand you will have appeared to have overstayed your visa, on the other you are
now exiting the country with no record of you having entered. At a minimum
there will be questions and your just trying to just get through immigration
painlessly.

------
html5web
Uzbekistan has E-visa for all countries. Also, it has visa free for 5 days
option if you are using a transit.

------
uwagan
nice, but it would be so useful to display for how many days u can stay visa
free in a visa-free country.

~~~
1hakr
Thanks, I will be adding that soon

------
shopables
This is great one stop solution to check visa requirements. Great idea. Hope
it will grow.

------
patja
Tough problem, but it seems incomplete without covering long term visas for
example 6 months

------
pard68
I am amazed by the number of places which I (USA citizen) can travel to
without a visa.

~~~
Cyph0n
It's something many of us don't really think about, but it ends up being quite
convenient.

For example, citizens of most countries cannot book a multi-leg trip (not
single booking) without a visa, simply because that would require going
through passport control to board the next leg.

------
ziont
If you have a Republic of Korea or Singaporean passport, you can get into any
country.

~~~
raverbashing
I would be very careful with such statements because it's easy to miss a
crucial detail.

E.g. the limits of ESTA

~~~
ziont
[https://www.passportindex.org/byRank.php](https://www.passportindex.org/byRank.php)

------
Torakfirenze
Looks like it drew a lot of inspiration from Pieter Levels' stuff. Nice work
:)

------
donohoe
Feature Request: Ability to provide more than one passport (for us dual-
citizens)

~~~
1hakr
Point noted. Thanks!

------
worldexplorer
Adding a reference source in requirements details might be helpful and
assuring.

------
1hakr
I spent the last 6 months trying to build
[Visalist]([https://visalist.io](https://visalist.io)). Now your quest for
tension free visa requirements research is over.

Here's why I made this web app: A year back I became a digital nomad and
started traveling. I wanted to visit all the countries that I fancied. Soon I
realized that you need a visa to most of these countries, few have VOA(Visa on
Arrival) and for others, you have to get it through their embassy in your home
country(in my case India). So now I wanted to see the countries I could go
without waiting for 3 weeks to get a visa, did some research. After few blogs
and websites finally got the list. Traveled to a new country. After few months
I wanted to go to another country. I had to do the same search, couldn't find
the old one, found a new site which had more countries offering VOA. One of my
friends told me that when he researching for Vietnam visa, he found almost 10
websites with .gov and it was really confusing. Many blogs don't have links to
official websites of embassies.

To summarize the problems: * No aggregated info of visa related info shown in
a useful way. * Most of the existing blogs and website has very less info and
are usually outdated. * Lot of research is needed even to go to a single
country and this needs to be done every single time. * Difficult to find the
official website and data on many websites is outdated. * Pay more than
required money to visa agent's

So I took the matter into my own hands and decided to aggregate this info,
organize and present it in a useful way to the user and so VisaList was born.
While I was talking to my friends about this, I realized many people wanted
something similar from a long time. So what this has is * A simple way to find
the basic requirements for all the countries you want to travel * Simplified
visa requirements like visa-free, visa on arrival, visa not required, evisa,
visa required and visa refused (Yes! For North Korea) * A simple map color-
coded with visa requirements across the world so you can easily see which
countries around you can easily travel to * Visa Requirement details like
duration, documents checklist and other requirements for the stay * Which is
the official website for that information

I coded, designed and built Visa List using VueJS with NuxtJS for the
frontend, MySQL for backend using Golang. I was originally an android
developer and learned these just to build Visa List.

I believe every person who wants to explore the world around them and would
have faced the problem I faced, so could find value in what I have built. So I
would love to know what you think of this and would be more than happy to hear
your suggestions and feature requests. Let me know what you want to be added
or removed or do I need to build something entirely!

Thanks

------
abhishek0318
"Choose your home country" doesn't work on Firefox 63.

~~~
1hakr
Sorry to hear that. I just tried on firefox 63 and it works. Which OS?

------
QuantumToaster
There are some missing entries. e.g. Travel from Australia to Taiwan

------
priitmaxx
Turks and Caicos missing. Very good resource if it is complete.

------
jbverschoor
Awesome site. Do lots of seo, and you'll be good

~~~
1hakr
Thanks, thats one things i'm not very good at. still learning!

------
sashavingardt2
Indonesia is visa on arrival for US citizens

------
LouisSayers
Nice one! It'd be really cool to be able to sort by Visa length as well.
That'd be a handy feature for digital nomads.

You could solve any issues with info being out of date by sourcing from the
community, allowing people to flag or comment on specific pages.

Also, it's useful in the nomad community to know how easy it is to do visa
runs etc as well, so that's perhaps some insider info - maybe you could put
this behind a paywall.

------
rmlibby
Nice map work.

