The fifteen days the law promises for a decision are not kept, and the indicator for time against the promise stands at zero. Access to entry, meanwhile, is 90 and family rights 100.
On paper Serbia is one of the most open countries in our sample. The 2024 reform cut the path to permanent residence from five years to three, permits run up to three years and applications are fully online. There are no mandatory integration courses or language tests for a residence permit, a spouse may work from the day of the first permit and children attend state school free of charge.
The weak spot is delivery. The agency does not meet the 15 days promised by law, and the state does not publish refusal statistics: the only known figures came through freedom-of-information requests and cover citizens of a single country (details in the passport section below).
The second dark spot is refusal on unexplained "security" grounds. A foreigner who had lived in Serbia for eight years was denied renewal and given 30 days to leave; anti-war activists were declared security threats and expelled. These are individual cases, not a pattern: we found no mass campaign against legal foreign residents.
Day to day, the friction is with banks: since July 2025 they ask for proof of ties to Serbia, such as a residence permit, a job, a sole-trader registration or property. There is no ban by nationality.
The index score ignores nationality. This is what changes for citizens of specific countries.
No visa for up to 90 days within six months of first entry. After that, the same residence permit procedure as for everyone.
No visa for up to 90 days within 180. Serbia is not in the EU, so the EU's temporary protection until 2028 does not apply here: Serbia runs its own temporary protection for people arriving from Ukraine, with a term set by the government. Check the current term with the Asylum Office of the Serbian Interior Ministry.
Visa-free entry for 30 days under a 2009 agreement, renewable by leaving and re-entering; up to 90 days in 180 for tourism. Police registration (the "white card") within 24 hours is mandatory. Figures obtained through freedom-of-information requests show refusals of temporary residence to Russian citizens rising from 245 in 2023 to 1,465 in 2024, six times more. In May 2026 the EU asked Serbia to halve residence permits and passports issued to Russian citizens; when we checked in August 2026 there was no decision. Only a few banks open sole-trader business accounts for Russian citizens without a permit or on a first permit.
Pay only the application fee, without the annual residence fee.
The place interval 18-28 shows where the country lands when the data is nudged and the index is recalculated. One place of difference in the table means nothing; a difference of a league means something.
The thin mark on each bar is the average across 97 countries
The strongest category here is Family rights: 100 out of 100, against a 97-state average of 72.2. The weakest is Agency processing: 42 against 48.7. Above the world average: 5 out of 7.
All 97 states are calculated for one applicant: 35 years old, income of $2,500 and $3,856 a month before tax, passport not counted, the most accessible route that is actually in use.
Your passport, your income and your family do not change the table. They change which of its lines apply to you. A different income makes entry read differently, a family makes the family category read differently, and your passport makes everything read differently.
By law the decision takes 15 calendar days from a complete application; in practice in 2026 it takes 1.5-2 months. If you file your renewal on time, you may keep living and working in Serbia until the decision.
Yes. The common routes are registering as a sole trader (preduzetnik) and the ground of remote work for a foreign client. Study and property ownership (no minimum value) are also grounds.
State fees for a year on the single permit are about 31,790 dinars (≈€271) per person. If the permit is issued for three years at once, the five-year total is roughly half.
After an employment contract ends you have 30 days to sign a new one. Renewals refused on unexplained "security" grounds do happen, but they are individual cases.
Permanent residence after three years of continuous residence. Citizenship three years after that, so about six years in total; as a rule you must give up your previous citizenship. The law asks for basic Serbian, not a B1 exam.
The state is broadly open: a low entry bar, a fast path to permanent residence, full family rights. The problems are slow agencies, unpublished refusal statistics and rare unexplained "security" refusals.
97 states, 26 indicators, seven categories, 2,522 scores. Every score has a source and a source class: primary means the texts of laws and government portals; reliable secondary means reports by international organisations, tax reviews by audit firms and specialist legal publications; weak means community posts and single secondary sources. The classes add up to a confidence level for the country, and a country with low confidence gets neither a score nor a place.
Every indicator is scored against a fixed ruler, not against its neighbours. Adding new countries therefore does not move the old ones, and a change in a score means a change in policy and nothing else.
A high place does not mean a good country. It means one thing: the state machine treats newcomers predictably and by the rules. Living there may be expensive, dull or hot; that is not our question.
Checked 01/10/2026. Facts come from the country's index card and official websites.
We make mistakes and we will go on making them: policy changes faster than any database. Our answer is not a pose of infallibility but a visible trail of corrections. Every correction is published: what it was, what it became, the source and the reason for the error. The corrections log opens with the second issue, together with the first block of changes.