If a foreign institution pays you a pension for life, the jubilado visa is your route, and it is the cheapest and most durable one on this page. If your money comes from rent, investments or a remote salary instead, you are looking at the rentista or the remote-work rentista, which cost the same and ask for different paper. If you hold a university degree and not much income, the professional visa exists and is the one route where the hard part happens somewhere other than the visa office. If you have $48,200 sitting idle, the investor visa will take it, and you should still read the section on why that is rarely the answer.
And if your plan is to leave Ecuador every ninety days and come back, that is not a route. It is a countdown, and the law counts it in a way most people get wrong on the first try.
Everything below ranks the routes by what they actually cost you — the fee, the paperwork, the mornings, and the risk of being told no — rather than by how they read on a law firm’s page. Every figure here was checked on 2 September 2026 against the government’s own sources, each named where it is used.
The one mechanism that explains every number on this page
Almost every income threshold and several of the fees in Ecuador are defined as a multiple of the Salario Básico Unificado — the unified basic salary — and the SBU is reset once a year, in December, for the year that follows.
For 2026 the Ministerio del Trabajo set the SBU at $482 a month, through Acuerdo Ministerial MDT-2025-195 of 15 December 2025, effective 1 January 2026. That is a $12 rise over 2025.
So when the Cancillería’s own trámite pages say a pensioner must show three unified basic salaries in monthly income, the number for 2026 is $1,446 a month. It was $1,410 in 2025. It will be something else in 2027, and nobody knows what until December.
This is why every page on this site quotes the multiple first and the dollar figure second, stamped with a date. Three times the SBU stays true. $1,446 has a known expiry date, and any page still showing you last year’s number — there are many — is telling you to prepare the wrong bank letter.
The same mechanism sets the tourist extension fee at one third of the SBU, and the investor visa minimum at one hundred times it. Learn the multiple, not the number.
Four things true of every residency route
Before the ranking. Get these wrong and the choice of route does not matter.
One: the application is online, and only online. Residency visa applications go through
the Cancillería’s e-Visa platform at serviciosdigitales.cancilleria.gob.ec. The trámite
pages for the pensioner, rentista, remote-work and investor visas all list exactly one
channel — en línea — and the platform is open around the clock, though payment depends on
banking hours. There is no counter in Cuenca where you can hand someone a folder and have
them start your application. The portal has its own post, because the portal is where applications actually die.
Two: your police certificate has a 180-day clock on it. The criminal record certificate has to come from your country of origin, or from any country you have lived in during the last five years, and it must be translated and apostilled or legalised. The Cancillería gives it a validity of 180 days from issuance. People order it first, because it feels like the hard one, and then spend four months assembling everything else and find it has gone stale. Order it late, not early.
Three: the paperwork step that delays everyone is not the visa. It is the apostille and the translation, which are two separate procedures done in two different places, one of them usually in your home country. That is its own post, and it is the one to read before you book anything.
Four: the visa is not the card. After the visa is granted you get an orden de
cedulación from the Cancillería — a $10 administrative act, by appointment at
citas.cancilleria.gob.ec — and that order is what the Registro Civil wants before it will
issue your cédula. The order is valid for 15 business days. That is the shortest clock
in the whole process and the one nobody warns you about. The cédula has its own post in a later week; for now, know that the order expires and the card does not
issue itself.
The Cuenca end of this is handled by the Coordinación Zonal that covers Azuay, Cañar and
Morona Santiago. Appointments go through citas.cancilleria.gob.ec. I am not printing an
address here because offices move and a wrong address costs you a morning; take the address
the appointment system gives you when it gives you the appointment.
The ranking
1. The pensioner (jubilado) visa — the cheapest route with the least to go wrong
Who it fits: anyone with a pension paid by a foreign institution for retirement purposes, at three times the SBU a month or more. In 2026 that is $1,446, checked 2 September 2026.
What it costs: $50 to apply, $270 on grant, per the Cancillería’s published tariff. If you are 65 or over, both are halved — that is a 50% reduction written into the trámite page itself, and it is the single most under-mentioned fact about this route. A person with a ≥30% disability card from the Ministerio de Salud Pública is exempt from the fee entirely.
What it asks for that the others do not: an official document from the paying institution certifying your retiree status and the monthly amount, apostilled. For an American that is a Social Security benefit verification letter; the letter has to be apostilled, which is the part that takes the weeks.
Validity: two years.
I paid a lawyer for this visa and I do not regret it, though I would probably not do it again — there is a post about exactly that decision. It ranks first because the income document is a single letter from one institution that issues that letter as routine, and because of the age discount. The detail is here, including what counts as lifetime income and what does not.
2. The rentista and the remote-work rentista — same price, different folder
Who it fits: the rentista route is for income from rental contracts, investment instruments and similar sources, at the same three times the SBU. The remote-work version — the one everyone calls the digital nomad visa, formally a visa de residencia temporal rentista para trabajo remoto — is for income from a foreign employer or foreign clients, where you work remotely from Ecuador.
What it costs: identical to the pensioner visa. $50 application, $270 grant, same age and disability reductions.
What it asks for: the rentista wants the instruments themselves — lease contracts, investment titles, “y otros similares” in the Cancillería’s own phrasing. The remote-work version wants documentation that you work for a foreign employer or foreign clients, plus income at three SBU averaged over the prior three months, or 36 SBU across the year. That annual alternative matters if your income is lumpy, and it is easy to miss on the page.
Validity: two years.
I have held neither of these. Everything in this section is from the Cancillería’s trámite pages, read 2 September 2026, and the comparison post goes through which income actually satisfies which one — because the commonest failure here is a reader whose income is genuinely sufficient and genuinely documented, in the wrong shape for the category they picked.
3. The professional visa — cheap, if the hard part goes your way
Who it fits: holders of a university degree, technical qualification or recognised trade certification, who can show lawful means of support.
Why it ranks third despite being attractive: the visa is not the obstacle. The obstacle is registering your foreign degree with SENESCYT, Ecuador’s higher-education authority, which is a separate procedure with its own paperwork, its own fee — $25 to register a foreign degree — and its own clock. SENESCYT has 30 business days to decide, extendable by 15 in exceptional cases. Your diploma has to be apostilled, and depending on the institution you may be asked for transcripts and a letter from the university describing how the degree was earned.
So this route front-loads a bureaucratic project in a body that has nothing to do with immigration, before you can start the immigration part. If your degree is from a large, still-operating university with a functioning registrar, that is an inconvenience. If it is from an institution that has merged, closed or lost its records, it can be the end of the route.
Validity: two years, renewable.
4. The investor visa — priced, not recommended
Who it fits: somebody who was going to move that money to Ecuador anyway.
What it asks: the Cancillería’s page expresses the minimum as 100 SBU or more, which for 2026 is $48,200 — checked 2 September 2026 — held as a bank deposit, policy or certificate with a minimum term of 730 days, or as titled real estate registered in the cantonal property registry, or as shares in an Ecuadorian company. There are further routes through state investment contracts.
What it costs: the same $50 and $270 as the others. The fee is not the cost. The cost is that you have parked $48,200 in a foreign financial instrument for two years to obtain a residency permission that three other routes grant for a letter about your income.
I am not going to tell you it is a bad investment, because that is not a call this site makes and I am not qualified to make it. I will tell you the immigration arithmetic: if you qualify on income by any other route, this one is more money at more risk for the same two-year visa. It is priced fully in its own post. It is the route the sites paid by the move like most, and that ought to tell you something.
5. Permanent residency — not a starting route, but the one you are aiming at
You cannot start here. Permanent residency is granted on the basis of temporary residence, and the Cancillería requires you to show at least 21 continuous months of it, with the application filed before your current status expires. That last clause is the whole game. Let a temporary visa lapse while you are assembling the permanent application and you are not applying from the position you thought you were.
What it costs: $50 to apply and $225 on grant — less than the temporary visas — with the same 50% reduction at 65 and the same disability exemption.
Validity: indefinite.
I did this conversion myself at month 21, without a lawyer, and it is the point in the process where the DIY route genuinely works: by then you have the cédula, you have an Ecuadorian police record instead of a foreign one, and you have a documented history the system can see. The step-by-step is here.
The one that is not a route: rolling ninety-day entries
The Ley Orgánica de Movilidad Humana gives a tourist up to ninety days in the period of one year, counted from first entry. Not ninety days per visit. Not ninety days per calendar year. Ninety days inside a rolling twelve months that starts the day you first arrive.
You can extend once, by up to ninety more continuous days, through the migration authority. The fee is one third of the SBU — about $160 at the 2026 SBU of $482, checked 2 September 2026. Note what that means: every page quoting you “$150” for this extension is quoting the 2025 SBU of $450, and has not been updated since.
That gets you to roughly six months. Then it stops. There is no third extension, the year is counted from your first entry rather than your last exit, and a border run does not reset it. Nationals of 46 countries under Ecuador’s special regime need an approved tourist visa before they arrive at all; everyone else arrives visa-free into that same ninety-day allowance.
The counting is worth its own post because the arithmetic is where people go wrong, not the rule.
Do not build a life on it. Not for a legal reason I am qualified to argue, but a practical one: without a residency visa there is no cédula, and without a cédula you will find the bank, the health system and the lease registration all quietly close to you. The visa is not the point. The card is the point.
What each route actually costs, side by side
Fees as published in the Cancillería’s tariff, checked 2 September 2026. Halve the application and grant figures if you are 65 or over.
| Route | Apply | Grant | Income asked | Valid |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pensioner (jubilado) | $50 | $270 | 3 × SBU, as pension | 2 years |
| Rentista | $50 | $270 | 3 × SBU, from instruments | 2 years |
| Rentista, remote work | $50 | $270 | 3 × SBU, foreign source | 2 years |
| Professional | $50 | $270 | Lawful means of support | 2 years |
| Investor | $50 | $270 | 100 × SBU invested | 2 years |
| Permanent residency | $50 | $225 | 21 months’ temporary residence | Indefinite |
| Orden de cedulación | — | $10 | — | 15 business days |
Add $250 a month of additional income for each dependent you bring, on the income-based routes. That figure is stated in dollars on the trámite pages rather than as an SBU multiple, which means it does not move with the SBU — and also that it is the figure most likely to be changed without anyone noticing.
What this table does not include is the money that actually adds up: the apostilles, the translations, the courier costs, the police certificate, the insurance policy you must hold before you apply, and, if you use one, the lawyer. On my own pensioner application the government fees were the smallest line.
The order of operations
This is the part that costs people months, and it is not on any government page because no single body owns the sequence.
- Decide the route, on the shape of your income, not on which sounds best.
- Get the health insurance. National or foreign, valid for the visa’s duration, and if foreign it must state that it covers Ecuador. The application wants it; it is not something you sort out after arrival.
- Order the apostilles. Everything foreign and public — the police certificate, the pension letter, the diploma — gets apostilled in the country that issued it.
- Get the translations, which are a separate procedure from the apostille and are done after it.
- Order the police certificate last of the foreign documents, because of the 180-day clock.
- Apply on the portal. Pay. Wait.
- Get the orden de cedulación by appointment, then take it to the Registro Civil inside 15 business days.
- Then the bank, the lease registration, and everything else that wants a cédula.
Steps 2 and 3 are the ones people invert, and inverting them is what turns a two-month process into a five-month one.
What changed, and what will change
Nothing structural has changed in the routes since the 2023 human mobility regulations, but two things moved this year and one is about to.
The SBU moved to $482 on 1 January 2026, so every threshold on this page is higher than it was last year: the pensioner and rentista income at $1,446, the investor minimum at $48,200, the tourist extension at about $160.
The Acuerdo Ministerial No. 70 of 28 June 2024 governs what counts as lawful means of livelihood, and it is cited on every one of these trámite pages. If somebody is quoting you income rules from before mid-2024, they are quoting a superseded instrument.
And the SBU for 2027 will be published in December 2026, at which point every dollar figure on this page is wrong and every multiple is still right. That is the pattern to plan around: budget on the ratio, verify the absolute in January.
Where this stops being something you do yourself
I am not a lawyer, this is not immigration advice, and nothing here tells you what the law entitles you to — only what applicants are asked for, as published, on the date given.
Pay an abogada when your documents are irregular in a way a form cannot express: a pension paid by an institution that will not issue the letter in the shape asked for, a name that differs across your passport and your birth certificate, a prior refusal, a criminal record entry, a dependent whose relationship is documented unusually, or a degree from an institution that no longer exists. Those are judgement problems, and judgement is what the fee buys.
Do not pay one to upload a PDF for you. That post draws the line as precisely as I can draw it, with what I paid on both sides of it.
Each step, in its own post
Sources
- Ministerio del Trabajo, Acuerdo Ministerial MDT-2025-195 of 15 December 2025, setting the 2026 SBU at $482.
- Cancillería (Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores y Movilidad Humana), trámite pages on gob.ec for the temporary residence visas — jubilado, rentista, rentista for remote work, investor — and for permanent residency after 21 months, and for the orden de cedulación. Fees per Acuerdo Ministerial No. 0000026, the 2023 consular and diplomatic tariff.
- Ley Orgánica de Movilidad Humana and its regulations, as cited on each trámite page, for the ninety-day tourist period and the residency categories.
- Ministerio de Gobierno / Migración, for the tourist extension and its fee of one third of the SBU.
- SENESCYT, for foreign degree registration.
All read on 2 September 2026. Where a figure derives from the SBU, the multiple is given so that you can recompute it yourself in January, when the SBU moves and this page does not yet.