Instead of me choosing the country first, why not ask me about the passport I hold and then show all the countries that have visas that allow me to work remotely? I tried a few places and I only got Tourist Visa as available visa - gave up after a while.
You can go to "digital nomad visas" for e.g. and explore all countries with this kind of visa. Also in "country view" you can see and filter countries for the types of visas you are interested in. The origin country mapping is currently only done with tourist visas.
The first thing I did was check for Costa Rica's new digital nomad visa, which they don't list on this site yet because it just got signed into law a few days ago:
Highly suggested! This country is the best, I've been here for the better part of a decade now and can't recommend it enough. There's fibre to the home rollout in more of the country than I've seen in north america, I don't want to strangle anyone here and the people are so open and friendly, the weather is great as long as you can stand some 15-60 minutes of heavy rain every day during the rainy season. Bring battery backup for internet on a 4g modem and you're good to go for a couple of hours of power outages before the cell tower battery goes out too (Rare that it's out that long!)
Personally I'm up in the mountains instead of the beach because I prefer the climate but it's crazy how little I pay comparatively on rent and food in this part of the world. The most expensive thing here is honestly just electronics -- Bring them in from out of the country because they tax those like mad. People ask me if it's dangerous here, and whenever something bad happens to Puerto Rico my inbox gets flooded with people asking if I'm OK (haha check a map for once!) but pretty much as long as you stay the fuck away from the 10$ grams of cocaine you'll be fine. Don't do that shit in any country, they grind up the bones of narco victims into the cut and it's just a general bad karma magnet. It's my first bit of advice to anyone in the country asking me if it's safe because 95% of the problems I see people encounter have to do with them not being able to heed this type of advice.
Nice! I’ve actually read an article about Costa Rica recently saying that it’s a really good place to live. But that article actually pointed out that living costs are a bit high there and are more of a downside of the country. But you’re now saying they are low? Have to say that I’m from Germany, so depends what is the comparison. But Germany is not really cheap, and that article was from a German author.
Another thing that I'm always wondering about with tropic countries is: How about malaria and other diseases there? Is that a problem?
Because actually two weeks ago I had to kill seven mosquitoes in one single night here in my flat in Berlin/Germany. So I’m wondering how this would be if I lived in Costa Rica lol
I have been thinking about CR.. Does Spanish become a requirement for daily life? I am sure I can pick up a smattering of any language as long as I live there.. but I do want to get through the first few months :)
Edit: One other thing - How about international/English schools for middle school kids?
Yeah it's pretty good to learn the language of any foreign country while being there. It's not that hard to just power through a book or two and pick up pronunciation by making friends with people who barely speak English. If you REALLY want to accelerate it get into a relationship with someone who barely speaks your language, actually - I have a lot of fun dating girls who are trying to learn English but my Spanish is good enough to give me some better chances starting out
Response to edit: Yeah the international schools here are really good, I actually have a friend teaching at a German language one for kids which is well renowned so there's even options outside of English immersion
Yeah you're a family man, that's great, I've met a lot of people who have actually moved their families out this direction to do stuff like start businesses, and many of them are quite happy. Feel free to make some local friends though, really the best way to get to know the language in any case
Yeah for sure! You want to consider foreclosed properties purchased through the bank in order to mitigate risks that you might face if you just go through some shady real estate agnet or whatever:
Over the past few months I've been coding my first side project (Nuxt Frontend, Django Backend). It's been quite a learning experience tumbling down the rabbit hole of web development, as a data scientist.
Nomad Visa is a database of tourist visas and visas suitable for digital nomads, remote workers, founders and expats.
More and more countries issue special visas for digital nomads to stay in their country for an extended period of time though they often come with high income requirements or high fees. Therefore, Nomad Visa allows you to compare all types of visas that are eligible for remote workers.
I get the intention of the website. I also do like your design. I just don't think the information is helpful as it is represented right now as others has also commented already.
You are supposed to start by selecting a country. Let's say "Australia". Your website tells me:
Tourist Visa: Tourist Visa. With a general link to https://nomadvisa.io/australia
Working Holiday Visa: Working Holiday Visa.
Besides these two visas the whole Australia is filled with information that doesn't concern Visas at all, but the country itself.
Either I have not understood what information the website shows or the information isn't there. You state I "can compare all types of visas" - what comparison can I do by knowing "Tourist Visa" and "Working Holiday Visa". Can I compare these somehow to different countries?
In a recent Firefox on Windows there's no text visible. None at all. As if its color was set to 'transparent'.
The culprit appears to be "Atkinson-Hyperlegible" in font-family. If it is commented out, text becomes visible. The TTF [1] is recognized and rendered by Windows Font Viewer just fine (though in a dear need of hinting), though I'm not sure if Firefox uses Windows native font rendering engine or has its own.
Oh damn, thx. Found this font on a website of a nuxt-package and it's supposed to be a well readable font even for people with limited eyesight. Guess not if it's not shown at all... Suggestion? Use a regular font or adjust browser-specific?
Doesn't seem like there's any compelling reason to use a webfont at all for this; the default sans-serif would be fine.
Or you could use a font-family list that includes a few specific Windows and Mac fonts that you like, with the generic sans-serif as a fallback in case none of them are present.
Feedback: This looks very interesting but it's unclear what the site is really listing. For example I select Germany. How does it know whether I need a visa or not to work in Germany, it hasn't even asked for my country of origin?
Not sure if this is the feedback you were looking for but I noticed its a bit slow though. I would look at the GET to https://api.visum.so/api/country_data/
It returns all countries data which is slow and uncompressed. Either hit it once and keep it in memory so you can switch countries easily, or better yet break it up to api/country_data/<country> and just send back the info for that country
I would also get rid of stripe if you're not using it yet.
Yes, great feedback, thx! I really need to adjust the API, calls and cache. As this is the first website i have ever built, i still have a lot to learn.
This is still pretty good and incredible considering its your first site. You have a great design sense and concept. The rest you'll get. There's more or less a right way to do the eng stuff which you'll figure out.
Huh, something is blocked on my browser (even using incognito mode with no ad-blocking extensions) that all I see are empty rectangles, the text are all invisible...
Out of curiosity, where's your personal favorite places to be a digital nomad in? Also do you list places with a specific digital nomad visa like the new one in Costa Rica which lets you stay for an entire year? (Didn't see this yet!)
Depending on the country, you may be able to work remotely while on a tourist visa. This is true, for example, in Mexico. The tourist visa allows you to stay in the country for up to six months and you aren't allowed to work for a Mexican company but they have no issues with you working for a company in another country.
Many times they're actually "temporary visitor" visas or something like that. Which, as you say, typically prohibits working for a local company, otherwise use local resources, etc. But I've attended business events all over the world. With just a few exceptions, e.g. China, there's never been any question of getting some special visa--which usually requires letters of introduction and so forth--to do whatever combination of business and pleasure I'm there for.
That said, I'll note that e.g. Indonesia 30 day visa-on-arrival seems to theoretically be only for non-business purposes but when I've gone there's never been any question of using anything else.
Some tourist visas allow you to stay quite long in a country. Of course it's illegal to work in a foreign country on a tourist visa. I added a note in the bottom of the filter section on remote work with a tourist visa. Maybe make in more prominent? The issue is also mentioned in the FAQs.
Regarding Freelance visas, some countries (e.g. Germany [1]) require you to have local clients. So not an option for self-employed/indies. Would be nice to have similar info about countries that doesn't require you to work for someone else.
Actually, Germany only requires non-binding letters of intent from potential clients, upon which they extrapolate your income, which they want to be above the poverty line (1500 EUR a month in Germany, IIRC).
Sources: Many friends getting freelance visas, a visa lawyer.
The Germany Freelance Visa link lists you having an address in Germany as one of the requirements, though. I'm not sure if that's an existing address or just a general "you have to stay somewhere and not be homeless".
I wrote the guide linked above. You are right, but when it's time to renew your visa, they aren't so lenient. You can also get a shorter visa if your case isn't compelling enough.
I don't know about that exact rule (most of my clients are not German). Honestly in my experience of living here and freelancing on this visa a lot of these requirements seem to be up to the discretion of the person doing the interview / checking your documents.
I can confirm. I wrote the guide above and spend a lot of time dealing with the immigration office. They're a real box of chocolates, and some are filled with raisins.
This is to the best of my knowledge incorrect. I know more than one person that came to Germany as self employed without having customers prior to immigration.
I'm sure a lot of people look up their home countries or countries which they are familiar with. You may want to consider a simple form where people can issue corrections that get emailed to you. Essentially crowdsource data.
I think the European Union has great mobility rules, so one can now live anywhere, without needing papers to travel or move; now if it can manage to create nomadic visas that permit qualified workers from outside to join this system (like the US O-1 visa, but valid for all EU countries), it would be a great driver to innovation in Europe. (I will share that idea with the Commission.)
Can't speak to the legal elements other than suggest work with a specialized law firm to get through arcane rules for living in x working in y (as lawyers say when you ask them a question, "it depends") - it's expensive but perhaps you can bake it into your cost of contracting. Not just the visa and work permit questions are tricky, also taxation: the UK has something called IR35, which has recently made it harder for freelancer even in the country to do contract work.
PS: From November and May onward, I will likely need 1-2 data science researchers for 36 months, so if you are potentially interested in working in Germany and have a curious mind and a background in machine learning and NLP, e-mail me at leidner at acm dot org.
The EU lets EU citizens move around freely. But if you're a non-EU citizen on say, a German work visa, that wouldn't let you work in Spain. For truly free movement they would have to replace all the country specific visas with EU wide visas, so that once a foreigner has for example an EU wide work visa, they can use it in all EU countries.
First off, North Korea - really? Is anyone seriously considering being a digital nomad in North Korea? There doesn't seem to be any information of value on that page. Same with other places like Vatican City where one isn't realistically going to go as a digital nomad.
I also see US territories like Puerto Rico, Guam, USVI and American Samoa as their own countries, but they don't handle visas/immigration. They're just part of the USA. I suspect the same is true of the British Virgin Islands, Falkland Islands, etc as part of the UK.
Rather than have a long, noisy list that seems like it's probably dynamically generated from something like an ISO 3166 country list I think it'd be better to only create entries for countries where you have meaningful content.
Outside of those objections, I do think this idea has value - it certainly is a nice idea to have this information in one place, presented in a consistent way.
You also need to watch out for "false freelancer" laws in the EU, meant to protect workers who should receive full-time benefits from the company. It makes freelancing a gray area when you have a repeat long-term client.
In France, this is usually an issue for the client, because the contractor can then ask to be considered as a full-time employee [0]. As a freelancer yourself, if you don't involve the state, they won't come after you. The idea of the law is to protect the employee.
However, speaking of freelancing in France, legally, there isn't such a thing. You have to have some form of company. There is some paperwork, but all in all it's pretty easy and quite fast (by French standards).
Taxes are high, though, so it may not be the best place to incorporate. It should also be noted that anything above basic social security isn't free nor included in said high taxes, so you'll have to pay out of pocket either for a complementary insurance or for the hospital if you need it, although I think it may be cheaper than in the US.
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[0] Some criteria have to be met, but basically if you're working full time several years for the same client, you can ask to be considered a full-time employee with a full employment contract, etc.
> It should also be noted that anything above basic social security isn't free nor included in said high taxes, so you'll have to pay out of pocket either for a complementary insurance or for the hospital if you need it, although I think it may be cheaper than in the US.
Complementary insurance (mutuelle) isn’t all that expensive compared to the US. I cover myself and two kids for €118 a month - very reasonable considering I pay very little out of pocket for any care or medicine during the year.
Yeah that's a useful note, although that's not on EU level, I'm in a EU country and the tax authorities are extremely vague about this.
I know people who worked like this for a single client for >5 years, and the only cases I've heard of it being audited is when workers actually complained about these schemes denying them employee rights (it was never in IT).
And like the other sibling mentioned on international clients it's even more vague.
For US citizens, be really careful with freelancing overseas. You will probably need to file US self-employment tax statements quarterly, and face some scary penalties if you forget.
Important addition I'd like to add here is that you almost certainly won't owe any US tax. You just need to file the return. AFAIK You get a crazy high deduction and can also deduct all your local taxes, so it's almost always 0 or near 0 taxes owed. That said it can be expensive to actually prepare and file the return, as you need to find a tax specialist proficient in Local AND US tax law to prepare it for you and they charge higher than normal rates.
Another thing to know is that the US imposes worldwide reporting requirements on banking institutions for their US citizen customers. This problem is far less severe than it initially was, but depending where you go some banks/institutions may deny or restrict your access to financial products because they don't want to deal with the reporting requirements attached to you. Again, it's probably fine anywhere in Europe (nowadays anyway), but elsewhere in the world it may be extremely difficult to do something as simple as get a simple checking account.
Not zero for self-employed folks. Self-employment tax (Social Security and Medicare) is unaffected by the Foreign Tax Credit or the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion. Unless you're paying into a foreign social security plan in a treaty country, you'll owe that 15.3% tax.
Would be happy to contibute to something like that for France, though there are a couple of different ways of setting up a freelancer business that impact that number here.
Right, I think that's the problem. Things get complicated so I'm not sure there's a single answer. Usually the easiest way to do things is to just declare everything as normal individual income. Dealing with corporate taxes is a whole ball game.
The difference in Croatia can be >20% of gross and it isn't much more work than reporting your individual income, the only gotcha is shutting down the legal entity takes a very long time.
it often isn't so easy. In many jurisdictions, there needs to be a system to make sure the proper social taxes are paid.
In a 'normal' employment situation these are handled by the employer. As a freelancer, no. So the law requires some additional structure to make sure these taxes get paid.
If you simply declare your freelancing income as 'normal income', you are not paying these taxes, which probably makes you guilty of tax fraud.
Also, if you are freelancing, you may be required to charge sale tax or VAT or similar. In the EU, you need to be VAT registered to collect VAT. As an individual, only certain countries allow this, but only if you have a business license in that country. Otherwise you need a corporate form, or you are commiting tax fraud.
Just because you take the income personally doesn't mean you don't pay taxes or collect VAT. You absolutely do, the difference is that after the business is cconducted you pay income tax rather than a company paying a corporate tax rate. Taxes are paid in one spot, not multiple spots. It's not always the right answer, but it is definitely simpler.
If your income is high enough to be paying 5 figure taxes, check out Nomad Capitalist. They specialize in legal tax reduction through global residency.
If it is legal, why is it dodging taxes ? As an individual, I want to maximize retaining my hard earned earnings and nothing wrong with that in my opinion as long as you do it legally.
Tax-funded health care saved my brother, when in his early 20s a brain anuyrism required north of 100K in medical bills-- paid for by the State of MN because he didn't have health insurance at the time.
He would have been bankrupt for life without that. Or dead.
Tax funded health care has saved my wife's life twice.
I saw a similar project on HN before but I can't find it now. I'll make the same comment tho, and it builds on this comment:
Please provide links back to official information pages. For something as important as a visa, I'm just never going to trust a random third party source.
This is cool, but I feel like I should be able to select my country of origin immediately when I select the destination I’m interested in, rather than having to reselect each time I explore a visa.
One obvious way to 'fuck up' is to do work with or for a local company. I've also heard rumors that they sometimes check co-working spaces and pick up any 'tourists' that have been renting space there for an extended period of time.
But basically as long you work for a foreign company or clients and don't draw attention to yourself I doubt they care too much.
I've heard of people in Indonesia(Bali) getting caught because they post in public Facebook groups about the work they do, like "Hey guys I'm a yoga instructor/web designer/surf teacher/English teacher and I'm available for hire!"
Thats interesting. I would also find it interesting if they distinguished between e.g. yoga instructor/surf teacher since they are working locally (sounds pretty illegal to me) and remote work like web design. Has anyone further info?
I'm a digital nomad. I've been interested in a trip planner that takes into account both mine and a significant other's visa. (very high chance we dont' share citizenship to the same country)
Something that lets me plan for a multi month to a year long campaign while minimizing flight costs/living expenses or takes my budget into account would be amazing.
Nice site! However it did take me quite a long time to realize I could scroll down on the landing page to see more options. Perhaps you can add something to make that clearer.
Also, and this might just be me, I need a "Skiing" filter much more than I need a "Warm" filter.
around the topic of "Work Hours Overlap for Remote Teams"
Would be interesting to type in your current town, and then generate a list of the other countries (+major cities?) on the same time zone or like +/- 1-2 time zones away.
Is there any hard data about the benefits of a digital nomad type visa to the _host country_?
The obvious answer is that they have a similar impact as long term holidaymakers. But I'd like some sort of evidence, rather than my own uninformed gut feeling
'Working remote' visa options all look great till I start researching on how the job market is, in general. Because my spouse is going to have to do something too.
I’d suggest this site is practically useless if you care about following the laws of the countries you’re visiting.
I don’t know of many countries that allow regular work of any kind, on a tourist visa, regardless of where you’re technically employed.
Yeah sure if you’re on holiday and answer a work email no one cares. But rocking up and working from a cafe 5 days a week for 6 months is clearly a different case.
True! Tourist visas are crawled daily by wikipedia. Not a big thing. Open data. The other visa types are acquired manually from official resources. If Nomad Visa reaches at least some traction, i will build scripts that notify me when changes occur or built scraping scripts. Not sure if the effort is worth it, yet.
https://nomadvisa.io/united-states/eb-5-visa seems to have a bug (ReferenceError: chosenVisa is not defined) - not encountered this issue with any other countries yet but cool app!
I address that topic in the FAQ which is linked on the tourist visa page. Maybe i'll make it more prominent. Would love to hear other thoughts on that.
The note:
Disclaimer: This is not legal advice. Generally you'll need special visa or permit to enter a country and work there. That means, that a tourist visa would not be enough. But remote work means that you are not working there, but working from there? The problem is, that these clauses or exceptions are often not yet defined by the law which makes remote work on a tourist visa generally illegal or at least a grey zone. If you are not hired by a local company or interfere with local business, then remote work on a tourist visa seems to be sometimes tolerated (e.g. Thailand - https://e27.co/immigration-officers-raid-co-working-space-pu...). This is not the case with every country, so if you are planning to work remotely on a tourist visa, make sure to research specifically for the target country. The solution: Check out the special digital nomad visas or research work holiday visas. No visa runs needed.
You're almost universally not allowed to take local work.
But many (the vast majority in my personal experience which tends not to extend to countries with a lot of paperwork requirements) either explicitly allow business purposes like conferences and meeting with customers or don't care.
If you decide to remote work from someplace for a month or two, I might not get a co-working space or blog about it, but in most cases no one cares.
Businesses purposes usually has a strict definition that doesn't extend to operating a business from said country for extended periods of time. Nevermind the tax implications.
Other countries are far more explicit in law that any paid (or unpaid) remuneration is a visa violation. Thailand for example.
> don't care
That's the key phrase here. Personally I don't care that authorities don't enforce their immigration laws but it should be explicitly stated that you are violating your visa on sites such as this and Nomadlist.
But there's definitely legal grey areas. Like, if you're on vacation but have a job back home, are you prohibited from answering work emails? Sending a commit from your hotel room? When does it go from doing work on vacation to 'working'?
For that matter, even if I'm attending an event, meeting with customers, talking to press, etc. I think the only place I've ever needed to get a "business visa" is China. I'm guessing there were other cases where I was technically supposed to but no one does.
Thanks! I know about the issue and couldn't figure out how to really solve it, yet. Still a beginner in web development. If anyone has a link/info. Let me know.
I've done django. Can't say I've done nuxt, though I have done vue before. I think your design skills are great! I've always been a backend guy and that's the part I've found really hard.
Thank you! Sounds good! Well nuxt is a vue famework and yeah, vue is amazing. I use vuetify which makes it easy to "design" the frontend. You should check that out.
So you let company underpay you and then you move to a cheaper country in order to survive?
Bum-engineer visa sounds more appropriate. Why engineers don't value their skills?
Who said anything about letting a company underpay you?
Most do a digital nomad setup in order to have fewer living expenses and therefore more quickly save up and retire early. Nothing about working for less money while doing it.
I expect most digital nomads don't work for employers--though I've known limited time exceptions within the US. For employers, I imagine it would create tax and accounting headaches and, while people can and do have working vacations and such, that's different from heading to Thailand for three months to work remote.
For people who really do this, do you get paid in your home country dollars and home country bank account and just not tell your employer that you moved?
If you decide to become a digital nomad for a year and just hope your employer doesn't find out, you'll probably be sorry when they do. Have a working vacation somewhere for a month? Try to work it out with your manager. I effectively do it all the time around conferences.
But actually move? Lots of implications for visas, salary adjustments, and whether your company even has employees in a given country.
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nice concept, however when I select a country I am shown visas that are not available to me. the first step should be a list of where I hold passports, THEN I can select countries that then have their results filtered by my citizenships
Having a website whose whole purpose is to recommend stuff and then being paid for recommendations by the sellers is both a scam and a common marketing tactic. It's hard to tell when this happens. I'm not saying OP is doing this, I'm saying it's hard to tell and I'll err on the side of looking for better sources.
It's an affiliate link where i hope to earn a buck to pay at least for the server and domain cost, otherwise Nomad Visa is free of ads and has no paywall (yet). What do you prefer? :) Is NordVPN bad? I only found great reviews. Please share your opinion.
