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.
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.
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.
I was confused by the order of countries and thought you were turned away by Lithuanians. Being turned away by Belorussians as a US citizen makes much more sense.
This is why you shouldn't rely on Timatic for overland travel. But Belarus border rules are really messy anyway. E.g. you can't go from Belarus to Russia overland, unless you're a citizen of either of them.
Just shows if i need visa or not after filling all that information. Visalist has this in just one click along with document checklist, official website, visa applicaiton.
Wikipedia doesnt have filters and sorting based on visa category or region / sub regions or even the maps where you can visaualize all the countries with different visa requirements. Also it deosnt have the links to official websites, visa application link , fee links and document checklist. Visalist tries has all this.
The information in the site should be used as a guide only. You are advised to contact your local official mission/consulate/embassy and ensure you have the latest information.
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.
There's a lot of basic grammar issues in the copy, which is killer for a domain where credibility is everything. I could list specifics but honestly you just need to get a native English speaker to go over the whole thing.
I too have noticed grammatically incorrect sentences like "The xxx passport holders can visit nnn countries with different visa". No fault on the author's part, who's probably not a native English speaker, but it's definitely an area for improvement.
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.
Also, the visa-free and e-visa on arrival should be of different color. If anything else, e-visa should be closer to yellow since it is still a visa, albeit applied online.
Visa-free countries should have its own distinctive color.
I suggest putting the source of information more prominently, and adding links to each piece of information. Especially in more tricky situations, e.g. a Bangladeshi traveling to Israel, it is much more helpful if the additionally mentioned Tip of "Confirmation from Israeli government required before visa is issued" would contain a link at least to the wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangladesh%E2%80%93Israel_rela...
Similarly, I am wondering how to deal with unofficial or temporary information, e.g. Saudi Arabia did not issue visas to Bangladeshi/Pakistani/Nepalese travelers for a while two years ago, without any reason stated or any official information as to why. Similarly there are restrictions which would be great to be included, e.g. an "unaccompanied" female traveler with a muslim sounding name may not receive a visa to Iran, again, without official documentation.
Then there are cases in which a US-visa with at least one entry stamp enables you to travel visa-free (e.g. Georgia) or makes you eligible for visa-on-arrival, similarly e.g. the coverage of an existing Schengen-visa would be great to show you eligibility across the map.
Would you care to put your source into Gitlab.com or Github.com or similar, to enable pull requests from travelers who run into updated information? That would make this a great, constantly updated source of information!
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 (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" ...
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?
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.
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)
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.
But if you come from a place with fickle travel relationships to other countries, then I could see the skepticism
For me, an American, this is just a better presented version of something I dont really have to care about it, except to briefly skim and see if I need to do something extra for some pointless automatic bureaucratic reason that doesnt really have any human discretion on whether I can enter a country or not
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.
I disagree with the GP comment, something like this is exactly what I needed about a month ago, due to possibly needing political asylum. Speaking of which, I'll take the time to suggest you, if you can, to add information whether a given country is a signatory of the 1967 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. Thank you for the great work!
I was also concerned about a similar issue so I selected my home country and a random visiting country that required a visa. The site indicates the source is wikipedia
No the information claims to be sourced from Wikipedia. On comparing the information with the official website, there are numerous places where the information on this website is incomplete or inaccurate.
For example, the visa requirements for India->Italy show no mention of photocopies of US, UK and Schengen visa pages. The requirements do not provide explicit specifications for the photograph (white background). There is no mention of a travel itinerary including a list of other countries that one is intending to visit, which is also a requirement.
The bottom line is that the information is of poor quality by virtue of not being accurate, and nobody takes responsibility for it, which makes it very risky to use when making important plans.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
Readit News
Wikipedia does crowdsource this info fairly effectively though, sample: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_requirements_for_Indian_c...
[1] https://www.belarus.by/rel_image/6400
I think all such sites are just useful for giving ideas of where to go on holiday or hold a business meeting.
Once the idea progresses, it's necessary to check with embassies or government websites on the current situation.
Tiamatic. Free for all, I guess maybe consider United for your travel needs if you find it useful.
https://www.skyteam.com/en/flights-and-destinations/visa-and...
https://www.iatatravelcentre.com/passport-visa-health-travel...
https://www.koreanair.com/global/en/traveling/airport-check-...
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.
Visa-free countries should have its own distinctive color.
Similarly, I am wondering how to deal with unofficial or temporary information, e.g. Saudi Arabia did not issue visas to Bangladeshi/Pakistani/Nepalese travelers for a while two years ago, without any reason stated or any official information as to why. Similarly there are restrictions which would be great to be included, e.g. an "unaccompanied" female traveler with a muslim sounding name may not receive a visa to Iran, again, without official documentation.
Then there are cases in which a US-visa with at least one entry stamp enables you to travel visa-free (e.g. Georgia) or makes you eligible for visa-on-arrival, similarly e.g. the coverage of an existing Schengen-visa would be great to show you eligibility across the map.
Would you care to put your source into Gitlab.com or Github.com or similar, to enable pull requests from travelers who run into updated information? That would make this a great, constantly updated source of information!
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 (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" ...
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?
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.
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/
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.
But if you come from a place with fickle travel relationships to other countries, then I could see the skepticism
For me, an American, this is just a better presented version of something I dont really have to care about it, except to briefly skim and see if I need to do something extra for some pointless automatic bureaucratic reason that doesnt really have any human discretion on whether I can enter a country or not
https://visalist.io/central-african-republic/visa-requiremen...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_requirements_for_Canadian...
Results for USA citizens is similar (citing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_requirements_for_American...) while the presentation is different the source isn't exactly official.
For example, the visa requirements for India->Italy show no mention of photocopies of US, UK and Schengen visa pages. The requirements do not provide explicit specifications for the photograph (white background). There is no mention of a travel itinerary including a list of other countries that one is intending to visit, which is also a requirement.
The bottom line is that the information is of poor quality by virtue of not being accurate, and nobody takes responsibility for it, which makes it very risky to use when making important plans.
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.
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.
This is what industry professionals use to check if you are eligible to board a flight.
With visa requirements there are a lot of details involved, it's not as simple as nationality -> visa requirements mapping.
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.
But great job with the app, regardless!
Dead Comment
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.
I second this. Came here just to say it. Far too similar.