Every programme. A named official source. Almost no exceptions.
Every visa programme enters the database with a named, fetchable link to its official source. Country context is different, and we'll say so plainly: 82% of our cost-of-living data comes from Numbeo, a crowdsourced panel. Crowdsourced data is barred from ever supplying a visa or tax rule. Below: every source, by country, by pathway — including the gaps.
Americas · 35 countries
Asia & Pacific · 32 countries
The three rules for what enters the index.
Calibrated so this page is the receipt for every claim in every report.
Named, fetchable, official.
Every visa programme carries a link to its official source page — almost always the issuing authority's own site (canada.ca, migri.fi, ind.nl, migrationsverket.se, bamf.de), a national gazette, or an official programme portal. A tail of 75 programmes (2%) points instead to a UN, academic or NGO legal database — UNHCR Refworld, GLOBALCIT, ILO NATLEX — for the handful of countries that publish no usable page of their own. This rule governs visa rules only. Country context is a separate layer, held to a lower standard. Rule 02 says how much lower.
Crowdsourced data cannot touch your verdict.
Numbeo — a crowdsourced panel — supplies 82% of our cost-of-living facts. We'd rather tell you than have you assume otherwise. It is the de-facto reference for prices, and no statistics agency publishes rent and grocery data for 200+ countries. But it is barred by policy from supplying an immigration or tax rule: in our source registry it is flagged blocked for both. It shapes context. It can never move what we show as a programme's requirement — that runs on government sources alone.
Quarterly sweep + fast-tracked fixes.
Top-30 destinations re-verified each quarter. If a country gazettes a material change mid-quarter and it's flagged to us, we verify it against the source and ship the fix within 14 days — the diff appears at /changelog.
Found something out of date? Tell us.
Send the programme name and the official URL. We verify it within 72 hours and, once confirmed, fix the database within 14 days — crediting the contributor in the changelog.
hello@wheretoemigrate.ioLogged at /changelog · contributor credited by name (or anonymously)
Open data attributions
Where this site or our reports use third-party open datasets, attribution per their licences:
- The World Bank Open Data — 4,288 facts (GDP, GDP/capita, unemployment, demographics, purchasing-power conversion, some tax and quality-of-life indicators). Our largest single source. Released under CC BY 4.0. Attribution: "The World Bank, World Development Indicators." Source: data.worldbank.org.
- Numbeo — 2,477 facts (15% of all country data, second only to the World Bank) and 82% of all cost-of-living data: rent, groceries, utilities, transport and restaurant prices, plus some quality-of-life indices. Crowdsourced, not a statistics agency. Cited with attribution. Barred by policy from supplying any immigration or tax rule. Source: numbeo.com.
- PwC Worldwide Tax Summaries — 1,984 facts (income tax, capital gains, residency rules). A professional advisory firm, not a government. Cited with attribution under fair use.
- EF English Proficiency Index — 402 facts (English proficiency score and band).
- Our World in Data — 386 facts (health, safety, development indicators). Released under CC BY 4.0.
- EY Worldwide Tax & Immigration Guide — 330 facts (tax and immigration context). A professional advisory firm, not a government. Cited with attribution under fair use.
- ILOSTAT (International Labour Organization) — 322 facts (labour market, wages). Creative Commons Attribution.
- National tax authorities — 249 facts, taken directly from the issuing government. National statistics offices — 24 facts. These 273 are the whole of our directly-government-sourced country data: 1.7%.
- N26 (250) and Wise (250) — supported-country lists, used to determine whether a newcomer can realistically open an account. Published by the providers themselves.
- Cable.co.uk Broadband Speed League (229) · OpenAlex (200, released CC0 1.0) · Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index (199) · IQAir Air Quality Index (87) · Institute for Economics & Peace Global Peace Index (78) · Ookla Speedtest Global Index (5).
- Our own calculations — 422 facts derived from the sources above and from our own visa database. Marked as derived, never presented as a third party's finding.
- Carried over, verification pending — 300 facts (1.8%). Block-level fallbacks (207 tax, 76 economics) inherited from an earlier import whose per-field citation we have not re-established, plus 17 tax rates taken from a Wikipedia summary table. We are not going to quietly file these under a respectable name, or let any of them set a verdict.
- No source recorded — 3,791 facts (23%). Mostly immigration context (1,405), quality of life (1,041) and practical logistics (591). We show them because a named-but-unsourced figure beats a blank, but they are not evidence and we will not present them as such. They are the top of our repair queue, and none of them is ever shown as a programme's requirement. See /limitations.
Counts were measured against the country dataset we serve on 3 September 2026, and cover all 16,273 country-level facts across our 250-country reference table. The previous figure published here — 14,302, counted on 13 July 2026 — was not regenerated for seven weeks; it now is, from the data itself. Sources we monitor but which currently feed zero facts — OECD, Eurostat, WHO, UNDP, IMF, UNESCO — are deliberately not listed above. Naming a source we don't actually use would be the same lie in the opposite direction.
Per-field provenance
Every number in our reports should be defensible. The table below shows the current state per field across the 200+ countries in our reference data — including the brutal distinction between numbers we re-pull live from the source and numbers that carry a labeled source we haven't re-verified today.
Legend: ✓ Live = freshly pulled today from the cited source · ◐ Labeled = source name correct, value pre-existed (not re-verified today) · ◯ Pending = source NAMED as verification target; value still awaiting re-pull
| Field | Status | Coverage | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| gdp_per_capita | ✓ Live | 83.2% | World Bank · WDI NY.GDP.PCAP.CD (pulled today 2026-05-29) |
| unemployment | ✓ Live | 74.6% | World Bank · WDI SL.UEM.TOTL.ZS (pulled today 2026-05-29) |
| inflation | ✓ Live | 71.5% | World Bank · WDI FP.CPI.TOTL.ZG (pulled today 2026-05-29) |
| cost_of_living_index_wb | ✓ Live | ~86% | World Bank · WDI PA.NUS.PPP (pulled today 2026-05-29) — clean composite alternative |
| min_wage | ✓ Live | 53.1% | ILOSTAT (International Labour Organization) — 167 countries |
| gini_index | ✓ Live | 32.8% | World Bank · WDI SI.POV.GINI (pulled today 2026-05-29) — WB publishes irregularly per country, hard ceiling |
| personal_rate_top | ◐ Labeled | 83.6% | PwC Worldwide Tax Summaries — source named, value pre-existed (not re-pulled today) |
| special_regime | ◐ Labeled | 83.6% | PwC Worldwide Tax Summaries — value pre-existed |
| vat_rate_pct | ◐ Labeled | 82.0% | PwC Worldwide Tax Summaries — value pre-existed |
| effective_rate_90k | ◐ Labeled | 78.5% | PwC Worldwide Tax Summaries — value pre-existed |
| healthcare_index | ◐ Labeled | 85.9% | World Bank composite (122 countries) + Numbeo, crowdsourced (89 countries) |
| safety_index | ◐ Labeled | 80.1% | Numbeo, crowdsourced (89 countries) + Global Peace Index, IEP (78 countries) |
| cost_of_living_index | ◐ Labeled | 85.9% | Numbeo, crowdsourced (152 countries) + World Bank (62). WB-only alternative published as cost_of_living_index_wb |
| rent_1br / groceries / transport / utilities / dining | ◐ Labeled | ~78% | Numbeo — crowdsourced, 100% of these fields (rent_1br/groceries/transport/utilities 194 countries, dining 186). No statistics agency publishes these globally. |
| avg_salary | ◯ Pending | 80.9% | Eurostat (EU) / OECD / ILOSTAT regional — verification per top-30 destination still pending |
Coverage % = countries where the value carries a per-field _last_verified + _source stamp. The Status column is the honest truth about how recently we re-verified each value against its named source. Re-generated from reports/data-provenance/by-field.json per audit run. If a number you rely on isn't defensibly sourced, email us: hello@wheretoemigrate.io.
How we use your quiz answers
Your passport, the route you pick, and five questions about that route. Every one feeds a specific part of the match. Nothing decorative. Here's the map.
Passport
Your passport decides which programmes are open to you at all. We filter the 7,000+ programmes against the nationalities each route names. EU citizens also unlock intra-EU free-movement rules.
The route you are taking
Work, study, investment, ancestry and the rest are separate legal families with separate rules. Picking one decides which five questions you are asked and which programmes we compare you against.
Eligibility profile
Who you are for this route: your occupation, the level you would study at, where the money would come from. Most routes are open only to particular profiles.
The core route requirement
The one thing a route will not bend on — a job offer, a place at an institution, the asset you would invest in. It is the most common reason an application never starts.
Financial requirement
The salary, the proof of funds, or the sum you could invest. Nearly every route sets a number here, and that number is what your answer is read against.
Rights and restrictions
Who moves with you, whether you may work, whether you must actually live there. Two routes with identical requirements can differ completely on what they let you do afterwards.
Duration and long-term outcome
How long you want this to last, and whether you are aiming at permanent residence or citizenship. It separates a route that renews indefinitely from one that simply ends.
No question is decorative. If we ask it, it maps to one of the five factors we show you for every programme.