File for permanent residency in Cuenca, Ecuador in month 21 or 22 of your temporary visa, do it yourself, and do it before anything else on your list. The Ecuador residency requirements for this conversion are lighter than for the visa you already hold, the fee is lower, and the one rule that can sink it is a date: the application has to go in before your current status expires. Everything below is in service of that sentence.
I did this conversion myself, from a laptop, at month 21. I had paid a lawyer for the original pensioner visa and I would not pay one for this unless the case were genuinely unusual — and I say below what unusual looks like.
Requirements and fees checked on 3 November 2026 against the Cancillería’s trámite page for Concesión de visa de residencia permanente por tiempo de permanencia mayor a 21 meses, last updated on gob.ec on 31 December 2024.
The rule in one paragraph
You qualify on at least 21 continuous months of temporary residence, and the Cancillería’s page says, in so many words, that the permanent application must be presented before the migratory status you currently hold expires. A temporary visa runs two years. So the window you actually have is roughly months 21 to 24 — three months, less whatever the folder takes to assemble.
That is the whole game. People treat month 21 as the day they become eligible and month 24 as a vague horizon. Month 24 is the cliff. A conversion filed after the temporary visa has lapsed is not a conversion; you are no longer applying from the position you thought you were.
What changed since this site last checked
Nothing in the rule or the fees has moved since 2 September 2026. What I would add, reading the page again: payment is now spelled out as same-day. If you file and do not pay by 23:55 Ecuador time that day, the platform deletes the application and you start again. Bank deposits at Banco del Pacífico are accepted 08:30 to 16:00. File in the morning.
Ecuador residency requirements for the conversion, in the order the page lists them
General requirements first, then the ones particular to this category:
- Colour photograph — JPG, maximum 1 MB, 5×5 cm, white background. The same photograph rule that bounced half the people you know the first time. Resize it.
- Passport, valid for at least six more months. Check the date on the document, not the one in your head; a passport renewal mid-conversion is a second project.
- Payment of the fee.
- Proof of lawful means of livelihood, under Acuerdo Ministerial No. 70 of 28 June 2024. For a pensioner that is the same kind of evidence you used before. The page does not say what form it must take for a conversion, so match it to Acuerdo 70’s own list rather than to what a friend uploaded.
- An Ecuadorian criminal record certificate, for anyone over 18. Not your home country’s. This is the single biggest saving of the conversion: no foreign police check, no apostille, no translation, no 180-day race. It comes from the Ministerio del Interior, online.
- A record of your temporary residence showing at least 21 continuous months.
- Documents supporting the facts that gave rise to your temporary visa — for me, the pension. For a rentista, the instruments. For a remote worker, the foreign employer or clients.
The page adds one line that is easy to skim past: the Zonal Directions or consulates may call you to an interview to verify information. I was not called. That is not a promise that you will not be.
Number 6 is where people get stuck, not because the record is hard to get but because they have not counted. “Continuous” is the word that matters, and how your trips abroad interact with it is the question I would not answer for you. Before you file, pull your movimiento migratorio and count. The absence count, done properly is its own post; do that evening’s work before you do this one.
The fees, and who pays half
| Line | Fee | At 65 or over |
|---|---|---|
| Application | $50 | $25 |
| Grant | $225 | $112.50 |
No IVA on either. A Ministerio de Salud Pública disability card at 30% or more exempts you entirely. The grant fee is lower than the $270 you paid for the temporary visa — this is one of very few places in Ecuadorian paperwork where the second step is cheaper than the first.
Then the card: a new orden de cedulación and a cédula reflecting the new status, on the same terms the cédula post sets out. Budget the morning, not the money.
How I did it, step by step
This is the sequence I would repeat. It took four evenings and one morning.
- Month 18: count. Pull the movimiento migratorio, count days out against the continuous-residence question, and write down the date your temporary visa expires. Put that date in a calendar with a warning four weeks before it.
- Month 19: request the Ecuadorian police certificate. It is quick, but you do not want to discover a problem with your name on it in month 23.
- Month 20: assemble the livelihood evidence. Bank statements showing the income landing, the pension letter if you still have a current one. One document, one PDF, named so a stranger knows what it is.
- Month 20: resize the photograph and check the passport date.
- Month 21, the first weekday morning after you reach 21 continuous months: file and pay. Same session. Do not leave an unpaid application overnight.
- Watch the platform and your email. After payment the file moves to Revisión de Información. Answer anything the reviewer asks for quickly; the cliff at month 24 has not moved just because you filed.
- On grant: the orden de cedulación, then the Registro Civil, inside the order’s fifteen business days.
At the Cancillería window for the cedulation order, this is the sentence:
“Vengo por la orden de cedulación. Me otorgaron la residencia permanente.” — I’m here for the cedulation order. I’ve been granted permanent residence.
The step people skip is 1. The step that costs people the visa is filing in month 23 with a folder that turns out to need something they do not have.
Where the lawyer earns the fee here, and where not
Do it yourself if your temporary residence has been ordinary: one category since the start, the same income source, the same name on everything, no long absences, no renewal in the middle. By month 21 you hold a cédula, your police record is Ecuadorian, and the state has a documented history of you. The paperwork is lighter than the first time and you have already done the harder version once.
Pay an abogada if any of these is true:
- Your absences are close to whatever the continuous-residence test turns out to be. That is a reading of the regulation against your movimiento migratorio, and it is judgement, not uploads.
- You changed category during temporary residence, or your income source changed shape.
- There is a gap — a lapsed visa, a late renewal, a period on a tourist stay in between.
- A dependent’s status hangs off yours and their dates do not line up with your own. Dependents have their own timetable.
- Anything on your Ecuadorian police certificate.
The general test for that decision is the same here: are you buying judgement or are you buying an upload.
What permanent residency does and does not change
It ends the two-year cycle. The trámite page’s validity field reads indefinida. No more re-proving the income threshold every time the SBU moves in January, which for a pensioner sitting close to three times the SBU is the real reason to do this on time rather than renew.
It does not end the absence question. Permanent residency carries its own limit on time out of the country, and its early years are the tighter ones. The conversion is the moment to start counting again, not to stop.
It does not sort out your health cover for you. Mine carried on through the conversion without my doing anything, but check yours the week the new cédula issues — the contribution and the debit are the two things to confirm, and a debit that silently stops is how cover lapses.
If you are in month 23 reading this
File what you have this week, and pay the same day. A complete folder submitted late is worse than a nearly complete folder submitted in time, because the page is explicit that the application must precede the expiry and says nothing generous about the reverse. If the folder is missing something you cannot get before the expiry date, that is the day to call an abogada — not the day after.
And if the status has already lapsed, stop reading guides, including this one, and take the dates to a lawyer. Renewal and what a refusal means each have their own post; a lapse is neither, and it is not a question a blog should answer for you.
Sources
- Cancillería (Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores y Movilidad Humana), Concesión de visa de residencia permanente por tiempo de permanencia mayor a 21 meses, trámite page on gob.ec, last updated 31 December 2024 — requirements, the 21-continuous-months rule and filing before expiry, the possible interview, $50 and $225 fees per Acuerdo Ministerial No. 0000026 art. 8.4.1, the 65+ reduction and disability exemption, online-only channel, same-day payment by 23:55, Banco del Pacífico deposit hours, indefinida validity.
- Acuerdo Ministerial No. 70 of 28 June 2024, on lawful means of livelihood.
- Cancillería, Emisión de orden de cedulación, as cited elsewhere on this site.
Read on 3 November 2026. The account of the conversion is my own, from doing it at month 21; the fees I paid were the published ones, before I was 65. This describes the process and what applicants are asked for; it is not legal advice, and no outcome is guaranteed.