Visa information

Finland's guide is unusually blunt about who can move: the routes are work, specialist, graduate and self-employment permits, and it states twice that there is no passive-income or nomad visa. The guide scores Finland just 48/100 for visa and bureaucracy — one of its lowest dimensions — so read these routes as selective by design, with the one bright spot a fast track for specialists.

The routes the guide names

Residence permit for an employed person — the standard work route; the guide pairs it with a Specialist permit for high earners in the same line.

EU Blue Card — listed alongside a job-seeking permit for graduates.

Self-employed permit — listed, and the same line closes the door many movers look for first: no passive-income or nomad visa.

The guide's schemes list adds the one processing promise it makes: fast-track permits for specialists (2 weeks).

The route that does not exist: no nomad or passive-income visa

There is none in the guide, for either route-type. Its remote-work section states it in full: “No nomad visa; remote work for a foreign employer needs a residence permit.” The site data carries the identical line, and its nomad count for Finland is zero.

Likewise there is no passive-income visa — which is also why the guide's retiring text says there is no retirement visa (see the Retirement page). If your plan is to live in Finland on foreign remote income or on savings and a pension alone, the guide's position is that no route in its list covers that; the routes it does name are employment, specialist, graduate job-seeking and self-employment.

The income tests — what the sources actually say

For every route, the position is the same: the guide gives no salary or income figure at all. The Specialist permit is described only as “for high earners”; the EU Blue Card, job-seeking and self-employed permits are named with no test attached; and neither source prints a euro threshold, a savings requirement, or a graduate deadline. This page does not invent them.

What the guide does give for scale is its cost context: ongoing living runs about $1,400/month on its Affordable tier and $2,450/month on Mid-range, plus utilities around $210, and at the guide's exchange rate of $1 ≈ €0.86 any euro figure you are quoted converts at roughly that rate for planning.

What the paperwork costs — plan budgets, not government fees

The guide does not list individual government permit fees. What it gives is a bundled “Visa, permits & translations” budget line in each move plan, described in the plan notes as government fees, apostilles and translations, with the luxury tier adding an immigration lawyer. Those lines are plan budgets, not a published fee schedule:

• $1,150 — Affordable plan (you file yourself)
• $1,600 — Mid-range and Retirement plans
• $3,900 — Luxury plan (the plan notes the luxury tier adds an immigration lawyer)

Application steps and timelines, by tier

The guide builds the application into each plan's timeline rather than printing a single step list. The common sequence across the plans and checklists is:

• Choose the route first and print its requirements; the Affordable checklist starts with “Visa route chosen and requirements printed.”
• Gather and legalise documents — apostilles and translations are named in every tier.
• Check your passport — the Affordable checklist requires a passport valid 18+ months.
• Arrange health insurance before you file (see the Hospitals page for the guide's first-year insurance budgets).
• File — yourself on the Affordable tier, or with a lawyer or agent on the Mid-range and Luxury tiers.

Paperwork-stage durations in the guide: ~10 weeks filing yourself (Affordable), ~8 weeks with a lawyer or agent filing (Mid-range), ~6 weeks with a lawyer filing everything (Luxury), and ~14 weeks for the Retirement paperwork stage. The only permit-processing figure in either source is the specialists' 2-week fast track in the schemes list; the guide gives no decision times for the other routes, and its paperwork stages above are preparation time, not decision time. After the move, the settle stage includes registering your address and opening a bank account.

Frequently asked questions