What nomad visa applications actually cost to file

Application fees for every nomad visa in the dataset that publishes one, cheapest first, with the fee amortised over the visa's length.

The two fees that are actually decisive

Barbados, at $2000, and Bahamas, at $1025, are in a category of their own. Every other fee in the dataset is under $650. These two are priced as revenue, not as administration, and both belong to small island economies where the scheme is explicitly designed to attract high spenders rather than to be broadly accessible. If your budget is tight, the fee alone rules them out regardless of whether you clear the income floor.

Norway at $630 and Ecuador at $450 are the next tier, and both are high enough that a rejected application is a real financial loss rather than an annoyance. Fees are generally not refunded on refusal.

The genuinely cheap ones

Six countries charge under $65:

• Uruguay — $12 for 180 days
• Japan — $20 for 6 months (not renewable back-to-back)
• Seychelles — $50 for 1 month to 1 year (workcation program)
• Mexico — $53 for 1 year
• Cape Verde — $60 for 6 months
• Kazakhstan — $60 for 1 year (neo nomad visa)
• Latvia — $60 for 1 year
• Montenegro — $60 for up to 2 years

Japan's $20 is the standout. Japan is expensive to live in — Fukuoka, the cheapest Japanese city we track, is $1,900 a month — and the income floor of $5,600/mo is the second highest in the dataset, but the government is charging essentially nothing to process the paperwork. That tells you the scheme is being used to select, not to earn.

Countries with no published fee

Six entries in the dataset have no application fee recorded, mostly because the route is visa-free entry or a residence process priced differently rather than a single nomad visa with a sticker price: Armenia, Georgia, Mauritius, New Zealand, Philippines, Uzbekistan.