Visa information

Singapore's routes in, as the guide names them, are employment-led: an Employment Pass for professionals above a salary floor, a ONE Pass for top-earning talent, and Dependant's and Long-Term Visit Passes for families. There is no nomad visa and no retirement visa. The country scores 74/100 for visa and bureaucracy, but the guide prints no salary figures for its own tests — the paperwork stage still runs to weeks on every plan tier.

The routes the guide names

Employment Pass — described in the guide as the route for professionals above a salary floor: the main employment route, tied to professional work in Singapore.

ONE Pass — the route for top-earning talent. The schemes list repeats it as “Tech.Pass and ONE Pass for high earners,” pairing it with the Tech.Pass as the second high-earner route the guide names.

Dependant's Pass and Long-Term Visit Pass — the guide's family routes, listed for families alongside the work passes.

Two absences are part of the picture, and the guide states both plainly: there is no dedicated retirement visa (see the Retirement page), and there is no nomad visa (see below).

The salary tests — what the sources actually say

For the Employment Pass, the guide gives the test in relative terms only: above a salary floor. It does not print a dollar figure for the floor, so this page does not invent one. For the ONE Pass, the test is likewise relative — top-earning talent, high earners — with no threshold printed in either source.

For remote workers the guide is blunt: “No nomad visa; remote work for a foreign employer on a visit pass is a grey area.” Neither source offers a lawful remote-work route as an alternative, so this page presents the position exactly as the guide states it: do not plan to work remotely from Singapore on a visit pass on the basis of this guide.

At the guide's exchange rate of $1 ≈ S$1.27, any Singapore-dollar 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 pass fees. What it gives is a bundled “Visa, permits & translations” budget line in each move plan, and those lines are the only sourced cost figures for the application itself:

• $1,200 — Affordable plan (you file yourself)
• $1,700 — Mid-range and Retirement plans
• $4,100 — Luxury plan (the plan notes the luxury tier adds an immigration lawyer)

The Retirement plan also carries a $3,200 “Retirement visa, lawyer & pension certification” line — a generic plan line the guide applies to every country, even though Singapore has no dedicated retirement visa; see the Retirement page for how that sits.

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,” and the Luxury timeline has a lawyer confirm the best visa route, including investor and talent options.
• 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), and ~6 weeks with a lawyer filing everything (Luxury). After the move, the settle stage includes registering your address and opening a bank account.

Renewals and the path to residency — the honest limit of the guide

Neither the guide nor the site data gives renewal intervals for the Employment Pass or ONE Pass, conditions for the family passes, or any path or timetable from a work pass to permanent residency or citizenship — so this page states none. The two status limits the sources do state are structural: no dedicated retirement visa exists for long-term retiree stays outside family passes or substantial investment, and remote work on a visit pass is a grey area, not a route. Treat pass renewals and any permanent-residency pathway as things to confirm with an immigration lawyer before you rely on them.

Frequently asked questions