,

List of Citizenship and Passport Indexes

Prabhu Balakrishnan Avatar
Prabhu Balakrishnan
Post Date Icon
Update Icon

How many citizenship and passport indexes are there? A citizenship index measures the strength of citizenship while a passport index measures the strength of passport in terms of travel freedom. A passport is merely a travel document issued to citizens and both citizenship and passport should not be confused with each other. A citizenship on the other hand is a legal bond between citizen and the sovereign state, affords citizen rights, freedom, equality and legal protections to all of its citizens. It is possible a person can have multiple citizenship or passports of more than one state.

The indexes primarily answer these fundamental questions taking into account several social and economic indicators.

  • Which country citizenship is the best in the world?
  • Which country passport is the most powerful?

There are 196 countries and 61 colonies are there in the world and to travel to most of these jurisdictions a passport is required.

 

Passport Indexes

Below you will find most popular and trusted passport ranking indexes.

1. Henley passport index (HPI)

The HPI global ranking of countries  according to the travel freedom for their citizens and probably the most accurate out there. It measures how many countries and  territories can be reached ‘visa-free’ with a passport. The index queries  IATA database for 199 passports for which the score is to be determined, is checked against every one of the 227 possible travel destinations. Only ordinary passports are considered and other categories of passports such as diplomatic passports are exempted.

These are the 2020 rankings for passports according to HPI

  • 1 Japan – 191
  • 2 Singapore – 190
  • 3 Germany / South Korea – 189
  • 4 Finland /Italy – 188
  • 5 Denmark  / Luxembourg / Spain – 187
  • 6 France / Sweden – 186
  • 7 Austria / Ireland / Netherlands / Portugal / Switzerland – 185
  • 8 Belgium / Greece / Norway / United Kingdom / United States – 184
  • 9 Australia / Canada Czech Republic Malta New Zealand – 183
  • 10 Hungary / Lithuania / Slovakia – 181

 

2. Passport Index

The Passport Index powered by Arton Capital ranks passports 199 countries in the world. The index is real-time global ranking of the world’s passports, updated as frequently as new visa waivers and changes are implemented.

To determine the individual rank of each passport, a three-tier method is applied:

    1. Mobility Score (MS) – includes visa-free (VF), visa on arrival (VOA), eTA and eVisa (if issued within 3 days)
    2. VF portion of their score vs VOA
    3. United Nations Development Program Human Development Index 2018 (UNDP HDI) is used as a tie breaker. The UNDP HDI is a significant measure on the country’s perception abroad.

These are the top 5 passport index rankings released for 2020

  1. United Arab Emirates
  2. Germany / Finland / Luxembourg / Spain
  3. Denmark / Italy / Netherlands / Austria / Portugal / Switzerland / Japan / South Korea/ Ireland / United States of America
  4. Sweden / France / Belgium / Malta / Greece / Norway
  5. Singapore / Czech Republic / Hungary / Poland / Lithuania / Slovakia / United Kingdom/ Canada / New Zealand

 

3. Best Passport Rankings (BPR)

The newly released BPR index for 2020 is a far superior ranking model for passports. It considers passports of 199 countries to 196 countries excluding colonies. This index looks beyond visas such as ability use more than one passport to maximum visa free travel freedom. Another important benefit for passport holders is consular protection abroad for passport holders in case of safety/emergencies.

The Passport based scoring (PBS) assigns full points to passports that have visa freedom without any hard visas, that is ability to board a plane with just a passport and travel. It then assigns reduced half point to soft visa categories (evisa, eta, voa etc)

Dual citizens using more than one passport to travel is considered as an important benefit in this index. As a result countries that restrict dual citizenship score low in the index. This is because dual nationality restrictions do not allow their citizens hold more than one passport

The index questions what good is a passport if it does not have visa free travel (without any hard visas) to these BIG-6 countries in the world (US/UK/Canada/EU/Russia/China). Passports that have access to these countries without any hard visas are given boosted points.

These are the top 10 strongest passports in the world according to BPI index.

  1. Denmark / Finland
  2. Italy / Sweden
  3. Belgium / Spain / Japan
  4. Greece / Norway / Portugal
  5. Singapore
  6. Hungary / Switzerland / United States / United Kingdom
  7. Poland
  8. France / Ireland
  9. Germany
  10.   Luxembourg / Netherlands

 

4. Nomad Passport Index (NPI)

The NPI index looks into personal freedom and financial prosperity in a changing world by more deeply analyzing the true value of each passport based on tax, live freely, comply with regulations, and avoid scrutiny when traveling.

This Index ranks passports on five factors:

1. Visa-Free Travel – 50%
2. Taxation of Citizens – 20%
3. Perception – 10%
4. Dual Citizenship – 10%
5. Personal Freedom – 10%

These are the top 10 countries in NPI for 2019

  1. Luxembourg
  2. Switzerland / Sweden
  3. Ireland / Belgium
  4. Portugal / Italy / Finland
  5. Spain / France
  6. Iceland / Singapore / Czech Republic / New Zealand
  7. Malta
  8. Netherlands / Denmark / South Korea
  9. Germany / Canada / Liechtenstein / Slovakia
  10. Austria / Norway

 

5. Sovereign Man Passport Index

The Sovereign Man Passport Rankings uses a very interesting metric that measures the quality of any passport as a travel document taking into importance of each destination country through an attractiveness score for 198 countries. For example Europe has attractiveness score of 82.4, Asia 58.04, Americas – 38.34, Middle East / North Africa – 11.3 and Oceania

A passport’s score is the sum of the attractiveness scores of all countries it grants access to and is dependent on its visa regime:

  • Visa-free and visa on arrival access – 100% of the destination country’s attractiveness score is added.
  • E-visa – 50% of destination country’s attractiveness score is added (more on that below.)
  • Home country – 100% of the passport’s own attractiveness score is added (i.e. Japan’s attractiveness score is added to Japan’s passport score).

These are the top 10 passports in the SM index

  1. Japan
  2. Singapore
  3. San Marino
  4. South Korea
  5. Brunei
  6. Germany
  7. Finland
  8. Spain
  9. Italy
  10. France

 

Citizenship Indexes

We now move on Citizenship indexes that out there

 

1. Quality of Nationality Index (QNI)

 

The Quality of Nationality Index (QNI) ranks the quality of nationalities based on internal and external factors. Each nationality receives an aggregated score based on their economic strength, human development, ease of travel, political stability and overseas employment opportunities for their citizens.

he QNI takes a quantitative approach to determine the value of a nationality based on seven parameters, comprising both internal value (40%) and external value (60%).

Three parameters reflect the internal value of a nationality: human development (15%), economic strength (15%), and peace and stability (10%).

Four parameters reflect the external value of a nationality: diversity of travel freedom (15%), weight of travel freedom (15%), diversity of settlement freedom (15%), and weight of settlement freedom (15%)

These countries have the best citizenships in the world

1 – France
2 – Netherlands / Germany
3 – Denmark
4 – Sweden / Norway
5 – Iceland
6 – Finland
7 – Italy

2. International Citizenship Index (ICI)

The International Citizenship Index ranks best citizenships around the world, considering factors such as passport mobility, human rights, women’s rights, parental leave, political democracy, equal marriage rights and healthcare performance.

These are the 10 best citizenships to have in the world according to ICI for 2020

  1. Iceland / Ireland
  2. Finland / Sweden / United Kingdom
  3. Netherlands / Denmark
  4. Norway
  5. Austria / Germany / Luxembourg / New Zealand
  6. Canada /Belgium / Portugal
  7. Estonia / Switzerland / Australia
  8. Slovenia / France
  9. Spain
  10. Italy / Israel

3. Best Citizenships Index (BCI)

The Best Citizenships Index considers 18 key metrics and mathematically measure and rank value of a citizenship 190 countries.

  • Dual Citizenship – 10 points
  • GDP (PPP) – 10 points
  • Human Development Index (HDI) – 10 points
  • Global Peace Index (GPI) – 10 points
  • Per Capita Income – 10 points
  • Strong currency – 10 points
  • Population – 10 points
  • Education – 10 points
  • Freedom – 10 points
  • Healthcare – 10 points
  • Naturalization time in years – 10 points
  • Citizenship by Marriage – 10 points
  • Birthright Citizenship – 10 points
  • Military Service (compulsory) – 5 points
  • Citizenship Renunciation – 5 points
  • Citizenship for economic interest – 5 points
  • Visa free countries – 10 points

These are the best citizenships to have in the world

Citizenship PBS score Rank
Germany 112.40 1
Ireland 112.03 2
Iceland 110.09 3
United Kingdom 109.83 4
Spain 108.96 5
United States 108.07 6
Portugal 107.69 7
Italy 107.08 8
France 106.24 9
Luxembourg 104.95 10