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When thinking about travelling, I often have to think about a place to visit, and then look up visa rules for that particular country. This can be a fairly painful process because official government sites can often be hard to find, and advice on (say) guidebooks or Wikitravel tends to be generic.

Is there any resource where I can enter my nationality/residency, and then look up a list of visa rules for various countries?

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11 Answers 11

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A resource that I find useful:

  • IATA TravelCentre: A comprehensive listing of visa, health, customs (in its British English, not American English, definition) for different destinations compiled by IATA. I have found this is fairly accurate. The form, however, is cumbersome as it asks you to fill in far too many details than required.

On TSE itself, related questions include:

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  • IATA asks for the birthdate and has an annoying CAPTCHA. Timatic does not.
    – Dan Dascalescu
    Commented Jan 31, 2020 at 23:22
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IATA provides just such a resource.

It is incredibly thorough, and takes care of transit visa requirements as well as cases where you live in a country different from your citizenship (this may affect visa requirements for third countries).

The information provided is based on IATA's Timatic database which is used by nearly every airline in the world for determining passenger travel document requirements.

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One of the most reliable options is to query the Timatic database:

enter image description here

You enter your nationality, your destination and (optionally) other details such as your transit airports and duration of stay. The next page will then show if you need a visa or not, as well as additional requirements:

enter image description here

Airline agents will use the same information to decide if you can be allowed on-board, so if the Timatic website says you're okay to go, you can also be sure the airline won't have any issues.

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  • I'm getting an "Internal Server Error" on that page now
    – Dan Dascalescu
    Commented Jun 1, 2023 at 16:01
  • @DanDascalescu updated link
    – JonathanReez ♦
    Commented Jun 1, 2023 at 16:02
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Yes! I found projectvisa.com relatively recently.

Seems pretty accurate. It links to duration of landing visas by country, as well as general info.

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For the UK, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office retains a page on traveller advice, including entry requirements. This is obviously not as broadly useful as the IATA site, but helpful for those with British passports.

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  • This is the appropriate answer - your government would have up to date information about the visa agreements they hold with everyone else; so no need to look up the destination country websites as you can find once where the appropriate information is published for you, and that's it.
    – Peteris
    Commented Jan 9, 2017 at 11:05
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Wikipedia has extensive updated information on this. However make sure to double-check their information as all of it is sourced by volunteers.

Here is the page for visa requirements for Indian passport holders.

Also, other users may want to check the visa requirements for most nationalities and visa policy by country.

A bonus is their visual maps, such as this one for visa requirements for Australian nationals:

Countries and territories with visa-free entries or visas on arrival for holders of regular Australian passports.

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    I would not trust Wikipedia on an issue as critical as visas. Timatic is what airlines will use to decide whether you can board the plane or not, so it's what you need to use as well.
    – lambshaanxy
    Commented Jan 23, 2013 at 22:27
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    @jpatokal but the maps and lists are a great resource for deciding where to go in the initial stages of travel planning.
    – phoog
    Commented Apr 6, 2019 at 16:36
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    The problem with the wikipedia maps is that they have become increasingly misleading as an increasing number of countries introduce "travel authorisation" schemes which their governments insist are not Visas.
    – Peter Green
    Commented Oct 26, 2022 at 17:40
  • Wikipedia also loses some nuance. For example, on this map, Jordan is light green, indicating a visa-on-arrival. What the map doesn't tell you is that Jordan doesn't issue VOAs at all points of entry. If you try to get a visa-on-arrival at King Hussein Bridge, you will be denied entry. (This is because Jordan considers the West Bank on the other side of the bridge to be part of Jordan and thus you are not arriving in Jordan when you cross the bridge.)
    – OpenAI was the last straw
    Commented Jun 1, 2023 at 20:49
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Beyond the websites listed already, of which IATA Travel Centre seems to be the most useful, I am aware of two airline websites that allow indirect access to the Timatic:

and

as well as one very detailed interface (shared by @MichaelHampton in chat)

Copa Airlines also allows indirect access to Timatic

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VisaHQ is the best website I have found for that. Go to the "Visas" part, select your destination, then choose your citizenship and country of residence. Or just go to their "citizens" page and youl'll have a list of every country and if it requires a visa or not based on your citizenship.

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    I'm not particularly happy with VisaHQ. It works quite well for citizens of countries they can make money out of (US, UK?) and for others it simply lists the local embassy. Not particularly helpful.
    – Ankur Banerjee
    Commented Aug 25, 2011 at 10:02
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I think it depends. If your nationality is from a big country like US, Canada, Australia, Germany, etc. then there are quite a few good sites.

But I always have the problem that I can't find any resource at all, even if I check the homepage of each country to see if a Visa is required. Small countries are often just not mentioned.

So I think the answer to this question really depends on your nationality.

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    That's correct, it does depend. I hold an Indian passport and I like to believe we're a fairly big country, yeah, but it's still not particularly easy to find visa rules that apply to me!
    – Ankur Banerjee
    Commented Aug 26, 2011 at 10:15
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Traveldoc has uptodate information, including covid related restrictions and additional documents.

https://www.traveldoc.aero/

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Following a link on the delta page you gave, I found visacentral.com, and I tried some examples and it told me correctly if I need or not a visa regarding my nationality and the target country (I didn't go further).

Otherwise, you should look for info on the website of embassies of your country in the country you want to visit.

What is your nationality?

(In France we have a governmental website which give info about every country.)

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    VisaCentral is owned by a company called GBTA (also known as CIBT). On more than one occasion, I have found that it claims a visa is required when it isn't actually, or it omits out visa-on-arrival information. It's all a part of their hard-sell for their paid visa application services.
    – Ankur Banerjee
    Commented Jan 23, 2013 at 19:45

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