If a foreign institution pays you a monthly retirement pension of three times the Salario Básico Unificado or more, and will put that in a letter you can have apostilled, the jubilado visa is the cleanest way to stay in Cuenca, Ecuador for two years at a time. If your retirement money exists as a balance you draw down rather than a pension an institution certifies, this is probably not your route, and the fix is a different category rather than a better argument.
That distinction — a certified monthly pension versus money you happen to live on — is the whole post. Everything else is fees and sequence.
Figures checked on 2 September 2026 against the Cancillería’s own trámite page and the Ministerio del Trabajo’s salary decree.
The number, and why I am giving you the multiple first
The Cancillería asks a jubilado applicant to certify a monthly pension equal to or greater than three unified basic salaries.
The SBU for 2026 is $482 a month, set by the Ministerio del Trabajo through Acuerdo Ministerial MDT-2025-195 of 15 December 2025, effective 1 January. Three times that is $1,446 a month.
In 2025 the same rule produced $1,410. In 2027 it will produce something else, published in December 2026 and effective the first of January, and every guide on the internet will be wrong about it for a few weeks including, briefly, this one.
So: plan against three times the SBU. If your pension is $1,500 you have been comfortably over the line for years and will stay there. If it is $1,460 you are $14 above a threshold that rises every January, and you should assume you will fall under it eventually and think now about what you would do — a dependent’s income does not help you here, and the rentista route asks for a different kind of proof.
Add $250 a month per dependent on top. That figure is published in dollars, not as an SBU multiple, so it does not drift upward with the salary — for now.
What “lifetime income” actually means to the counter
The trámite page asks for an official document, issued by the competent foreign institution, certifying your status as a retiree and the monthly payment of a retirement pension at or above the threshold, apostilled or legalised.
Read that as three separate tests, because that is how it gets read:
- An institution issues it. Not you, not your accountant, not a screenshot of a bank balance. A body that administers pensions.
- It certifies a pension for retirement, as a monthly payment, in an amount.
- It is apostilled.
Income that passes easily: a national social security retirement benefit, a defined-benefit employer or public-service pension, a military pension. These come from institutions whose routine business is issuing exactly this letter. For an American it is the Social Security benefit verification letter; for a Canadian, the CPP and OAS statements; a teacher’s pension like mine comes from the state retirement system on its own letterhead.
Income that does not fit the shape: a 401(k) or an IRA balance, a brokerage account, rental income, dividends, a business that pays you. None of that is a defect in your finances. It is simply not a pension certified by an institution, and pushing it through this category is how people collect a rejection. That money is exactly what the rentista route is built to document — the comparison is here.
The genuinely uncertain case is the commercial annuity: an insurer paying you monthly for life is doing something a great deal like a pension, and whether a given insurer’s letter satisfies a given reviewer is not something I can tell you, and not something any page quoting a flat yes or no can tell you either. That is the case where you pay an abogada before you pay the application fee, not after the refusal. That call is worth its own post.
I held a teacher’s pension and a Social Security entitlement when I applied, and the pension letter alone cleared the threshold. I have not applied on an annuity and will not pretend to know how one lands.
The discount nobody puts in the headline
The fees, as published in the consular tariff:
- Application: $50
- Grant of the visa: $270
- No IVA on either.
And then the line that belongs at the top of every page about this visa and is at the bottom of most: applicants aged 65 and over pay half. A person holding a disability card from the Ministerio de Salud Pública showing 30% or more is exempt from the fee entirely.
This is a retirement visa. A large share of the people applying for it are over 65. That the government halves the fee for them, and that the agencies whose pages rank for this query mention it in passing if at all, is a reasonable summary of why this site exists.
The reduction applies to the published government fees. It does not apply to an agency’s service charge, which is quoted separately and by them.
The folder, in the order the portal asks for it
General requirements first, then the ones specific to the jubilado category. This is the order on the trámite page as of 2 September 2026:
- A colour photograph — JPG, maximum 1 MB, 5×5 cm, white background, neutral expression. It sounds trivial. It is the single most common thing to get bounced, because phone photos come off the camera far over 1 MB and people upload them unresized.
- Your passport, valid, with at least six months left on it.
- A criminal record certificate, original, from your country of origin or from any country you have lived in during the last five years — translated, and apostilled or legalised. Valid 180 days from issue.
- Payment of the fee.
- Proof of lawful means of livelihood, per Acuerdo Ministerial No. 70 of 28 June 2024.
- The pension certification from the foreign institution, apostilled — the specific requirement for this category.
- Health insurance, national or foreign, valid for the duration of the visa. If it is a foreign policy it has to state that it covers Ecuador.
Number 3 is the one with the clock, and it is the one people order first because it feels like the hard one. Order it last. Assemble the apostilles and translations for everything else, get the insurance in place, and then request the police certificate so its 180 days start when you are nearly ready to file rather than four months earlier.
Number 7 is the requirement that trips people who assume health cover is something you arrange once you have arrived. It is not. The application asks for it. And the insurance question is bound tightly to what happens after you land — which policy the application accepts is a post of its own, and the IESS clock that starts once you are resident is the other half of the same decision.
How it is filed, and where
Online, and only online, through the e-Visa platform at
serviciosdigitales.cancilleria.gob.ec. The trámite page lists that single channel. The
platform runs around the clock; the payment step depends on banking hours, which is worth
knowing before you start a session at eleven at night.
The visa is valid for two years.
The portal itself is where applications fail, for reasons that have very little to do with whether you qualify — file sizes, file formats, and a session that times out mid-upload.
After the grant: the fifteen-day clock
The visa is not the card, and the gap between them is where a well-run application still goes wrong.
Once the visa is granted you request an orden de cedulación from the Cancillería. It
costs $10, it is arranged by appointment through citas.cancilleria.gob.ec, and it is
valid for 15 business days. Inside that window you take it to the Registro Civil, which
issues the cédula.
Fifteen business days is three weeks. If the Registro Civil appointment you are offered falls outside it, you deal with that immediately rather than hoping. The cédula appointment has its own post.
Say this at the Cancillería counter when you arrive for the appointment:
“Vengo por la orden de cedulación. Mi visa ya fue otorgada.” — I’m here for the cedulation order. My visa has already been granted.
It is a short sentence and it puts you in the right queue, which on a busy morning is the whole benefit.
What I would do differently
I paid a lawyer for this visa. The fee was reasonable and the work was competent and I do not feel cheated. But looking back at what was actually done on my behalf: a document checklist I could have read on the trámite page, a set of uploads, and a follow-up call. The judgement I was really paying for — is my income the right shape for this category — took about four minutes, because a teacher’s pension is the textbook case.
Where the money would genuinely have been well spent is the case I did not have: an unusual income source, a name mismatch across documents, a dependent, or a prior refusal. If that is you, the fee is cheap. If your pension is a straightforward monthly payment from a national or public pension body, and you are comfortable resizing a photograph, this is a route you can run yourself.
The one thing I would not economise on is the apostille. It is the step that delays everyone, it happens in your home country, and it cannot be hurried from here.
Sources
- Cancillería (Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores y Movilidad Humana), Concesión de visa de residencia temporal jubilado, trámite page on gob.ec — requirements, fees, reductions, two-year validity, online-only channel. Fees per Acuerdo Ministerial No. 0000026.
- Cancillería, Emisión de orden de cedulación por primera vez y reemisión — the $10 fee and the 15-business-day validity.
- Ministerio del Trabajo, Acuerdo Ministerial MDT-2025-195 of 15 December 2025 — the 2026 SBU of $482.
- Acuerdo Ministerial No. 70 of 28 June 2024, on lawful means of livelihood, as cited on the trámite page.
Read on 2 September 2026. The threshold is three times the SBU; recompute it yourself each January rather than trusting any dollar figure, including this one.