How do you compare the passport costs versus the visa waiver benefits offered by citizenship by investment programs? Here is how!
First we plotted a graph of 14 CBI passports comparing visa free countries on x-axis and the price of passport on Y axis in a two dimensional scatter graph. As you can visualize the graph, what the graph shows is pretty interesting.
First the trend line separates citizenship by investment (CBI) programs in to two categories
- High tier CBI programs (above $500K)
- Low tier CBI programs (below $500K)
The chart shows the three european passports (malta, cyprus and bulgaria) are very good passports in terms of visa free travel, but the downside is these are the most expensive ones. These passport reach a saturation point at 160 mark on the number of visa free countries
Source: Data from Best passport rankings. All the prices of CBI schemes normalized to US dollars
Sometimes, the most expensive passports are not always the best CBI passport.
How do you pick a best passport that has good balance passport power and low price?
Take a look on cluster on the 140 mark. You will see Caribbean passports of St Kitts, Antigua, Grenada, Dominica and Vanuatu forming the cluster. These are the best passports that offer good balance between passport power and value for money.
If you look more closely, St Kitts and Antigua are the best value passports that has good balance of passport power and price. Antigua is the cheapest valuable passport for family. If you are interested more on comparisons of CBI passports, please take a look on our indepth comparison on our study on Best CBI rankings
Below is the latest update pricing of CBI programs in US dollars running in 14 countries. Please note the prices in Euros are converted to US dollars at todays exchange rate. Moldova is excluded from this list as the scheme remains suspended
| CBI | Visa free | Price (USD) |
| Malta | 166 | 1,000,000 |
| Cyprus | 163 | 2,000,000 |
| Bulgaria | 162 | 1,100,000 |
| St Kitts | 142 | 150,000 |
| Antigua | 140 | 100,000 |
| Dominica | 134 | 100,000 |
| St Lucia | 135 | 100,000 |
| Grenada | 136 | 150,000 |
| Vanuatu | 127 | 130,000 |
| Turkey | 114 | 250,000 |
| Montenegro | 127 | 380,000 |
| Jordan | 64 | 1,500,000 |
| Egypt | 63 | 250,000 |
