How every number here is worked out
Last updated: August 2026.
Any site can say “researched from official sources”. This page exists so you can check whether ours means anything. If something below does not hold up, that is a mistake and we want to know.
Where the visa rules come from
Each of the 59 visa routes in the diagnosis was read at the immigration authority of the country it belongs to, not at another blog. Every country guide carries a “Where to check” block at the bottom with the official links, so you can go to the same source we did. When a route depends on a rule that is published in the local language only, we read the local-language version, because English pages on government sites are often older.
Why there is a checked-on date, not just an updated-on date
They are different things and the site keeps them apart. “Updated” means the text changed. “Checked” means someone went back to the authority and confirmed the rule still stands. A page can be checked without a single word changing, and that is the more useful information for you. Both dates are in the page markup, so search engines see them too.
How city costs are built
Costs are built item by item, per city: housing, food, transport, internet and bills, health insurance, leisure. They are an estimate for one person at a comfortable standard, in US dollars per month, and they are stated as a range rather than a single figure, because a single figure would be false precision. The same numbers feed the site, the diagnosis and any material we publish, from one source file, so they cannot drift apart.
What we do not do
We do not scrape prices automatically, and we do not pull visa rules from any API, because no immigration authority publishes one. Everything here is manual reading, which is slower and is the reason the site can tell you when each rule was last confirmed. We also do not accept payment to include, rank or recommend a country, a city or a route.
Partner links
Some links to third parties are partner links, which means we may earn a commission if you hire the service. That is disclosed on the page where it happens. Partner links never change what the diagnosis recommends: the engine that matches you to a city and a route does not know which providers pay us. Links to government authorities are never partner links.
Where we can be wrong
Three places, honestly. Rules change without announcement, so a page checked in August can be out of date in October. Costs vary with exchange rate and neighbourhood, so your real number will differ. And the diagnosis works with the profile you type in: if the answer is approximate, the plan is approximate. This is why every page tells you to confirm at the official source before you act.
How to report a mistake
Write to [email protected] with the page and what is wrong. If you have the official link that proves it, even better, though it is not required. We check it, correct it, and update the checked-on date of that page. If the error changed a number people may have acted on, we say so on the page itself rather than fixing it quietly.
Who does this
The people behind the numbers, with what each one is responsible for.
- Davi GodinhoResearch and content, Rota ÁsiaReads visa rules straight from the immigration authorities and works out the cost of each city, item by item. His own move to Asia is set for 2027, so he researches this as someone who is going to use it.
- Thiago OliveiraFounder at QuantrexFounder of Quantrex, the studio behind Rota Ásia. Eleven years running an operation with over 1,500 delivered projects, now building the tools this site uses to work out every number.