Last reviewed 5 August 2026. I review this page annually and correct it in place whenever a government moves a threshold or a fee schedule.
Five Eastern Caribbean countries grant citizenship in exchange for a qualifying investment: St. Kitts & Nevis, Antigua & Barbuda, Grenada, Dominica and St. Lucia. They have been doing it since 1984. What follows is the reference version — every threshold, every published fee, every holding period, every family rule, and the parts the marketing leaves out. I acquired my own second citizenship in 2022 and advise on all five from the Eastern Caribbean.
The short answer
Since 1 July 2024 all five observe a US$200,000 regional price floor, so any lower figure still online is out of date. Contributions run from US$200,000 (Dominica, single applicant) to US$250,000 (St. Kitts & Nevis); approved real estate from US$200,000 in Dominica, plus government fees from US$75,000, to US$350,000 for a sole buyer in Grenada. Holding periods run from three years in Dominica to seven in St. Kitts & Nevis, and realistic processing from about 5.1 months to about 18. Only Antigua & Barbuda asks for time on the ground — 30 days across the first five years. And none of the five changes anything about a US citizen's federal tax position. The decision is rarely settled by price: it turns on family size, how long you can leave the capital alone, and whether you would want the property anyway.
The five programs: money
Read every figure as a qualifying investment, not a wire amount: fees sit on top, and the property routes add developer deposits, closing and carrying costs.
| Program | Contribution from | What the contribution covers | Approved real estate from | Real-estate hold |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| St. Kitts & Nevis | US$250,000 (Sustainable Island State Contribution) | Main applicant or a family of up to four | US$325,000 developer share · US$600,000 private home | 7 years — the longest in the region |
| Antigua & Barbuda | US$230,000 (National Development Fund) | Main applicant or a family of up to four, at one price | A flat US$300,000, however many buyers stand behind it | Fixed at application and written into the purchase documents |
| Grenada | US$235,000 (National Transformation Fund) | Main applicant plus up to three dependants | US$350,000 sole, or US$270,000 per share on a qualifying joint purchase totalling US$540,000+ | 5 years |
| Dominica | US$200,000 single · US$250,000 family of up to four (Economic Diversification Fund) | Priced by family size | US$200,000, plus government fees from US$75,000 | 3 years, or 5 on a sale to another applicant |
| St. Lucia | US$240,000 (National Economic Fund) | Main applicant alone, or with up to three dependants | US$300,000 approved property · US$300,000 National Action Bond plus a fixed US$50,000 fee · enterprise project from US$250,000 | 5 years on property; the bond redeems at five |
Grenada's US$270,000 is not a price. It is a per-share minimum available only where two or more buyers jointly purchase a qualifying unit totalling US$540,000 or more, under S.R.O. 15 of 2024; a sole buyer needs US$350,000. A separate, non-refundable US$50,000 government contribution for a family of up to four sits on top of either, putting Grenada's realistic floor at US$320,000.
St. Kitts & Nevis has four routes, not two: the Sustainable Island State Contribution, a Public Benefit Option at the same US$250,000 directed into a named approved project, developer real estate from US$325,000, and a private home from US$600,000. Both property thresholds came down on 25 October 2024, from US$400,000 and US$800,000.
The five programs: process
| Program | Official window | Agent-reported average | Presence required | Visa-free | Established |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| St. Kitts & Nevis | 120–180 days | ~5.1 months — the fastest of the five | None | 155 | 1984 |
| Antigua & Barbuda | 8–12 months; realistically 12–16 | ~14.2 months | 30 days across the first five years | 154 | 2013 |
| Grenada | 4–6 months | ~7 months | None, before or after | 147 | 2013 |
| Dominica | Marketed at 4–6 months | ~9.3 months | None | 145 | 1993 |
| St. Lucia | Statutory target of 90 days | ~18 months — the slowest, with cases past two years | None today | 145 | 2015 |
Counts are visa-free or visa-on-arrival per the Henley Passport Index, 2026, quoted per country rather than blended — the five passports genuinely differ, and every count is perishable. Ireland withdrew visa-free entry for St. Kitts & Nevis nationals in June 2026; the United Kingdom revoked Dominica's visa-free access on 19 July 2023 and introduced a visa requirement for St. Lucian nationals on 5 March 2026. Grenada retains both UK visa-free and Schengen access. The agent-reported column is the one I quote.
What stacks on top: government and due-diligence fees
| Program | Government fee | Due diligence | Interview fee |
|---|---|---|---|
| St. Kitts & Nevis | None on the contribution route. On the property route, post-approval: US$25,000 main applicant, US$15,000 spouse, US$10,000–15,000 per dependant by age | US$10,000 main applicant; US$7,500 per dependant aged 16+ | Not published separately. Biometric enrolment and passport: US$2,500 first adult, US$2,000 second adult, US$1,300 per child under 16 |
| Antigua & Barbuda | US$10,000–20,000+ processing | No standard schedule published | Not published separately |
| Grenada | US$50,000 non-refundable contribution on the property route, covering a family of up to four | Charged per adult applicant; confirmed per file | Not published separately |
| Dominica | From US$75,000 on the property route for a single applicant; higher for a family | US$7,500 main applicant; US$4,000 per dependant aged 16+ | US$1,000 per applicant aged 16+ |
| St. Lucia | Processing and passport fees on every route; Alien Landholding Licence on the property route, tiered by acreage from roughly US$2,500 to about US$20,000 | Charged per adult applicant; confirmed per file | Not published separately |
What that does to a headline number: on the St. Kitts & Nevis contribution route, published fees total US$262,500 single and US$274,600 for a family of four, against US$409,600 to US$419,600 for the same family on the developer route. On Dominica, the published stack is US$208,500 single on the fund route and US$263,500 for a family of four; on the property route, US$283,500 single and from US$288,500 for a family. The commonest costing error I correct is bolting a property fee schedule onto a contribution file — on St. Kitts, roughly US$60,000 of fees that do not exist there. Legal and agent fees are the layer no government publishes, because your law firm and licensed agent set them; the mechanics sit on the costs, timelines and due-diligence page.
The real-estate route, and how approved projects work
"Approved" is a formal designation, not a marketing adjective. Each government keeps its own list; approvals are granted, occasionally paused, and sometimes withdrawn. A purchase outside the list does not qualify however good the property is, and an established resale is not automatically approved the way a designated new project is.
Three consequences follow. Eligibility is checked unit by unit, because within an approved development some inventory qualifies and some does not. The structures behave differently once you own them: a designated share or fractional interest satisfies the program cleanly and resells after the hold without disturbing the citizenship it secured, but into a thin, specialised market, where freehold title is a deed you sell into the open one. And resale is genuinely thin — few comparable sales, largely cash buyers because local mortgage lending to non-residents is limited, and a pool that at the end of a hold is realistically the next applicant. Underwrite the purchase as an asset you would want with no passport attached; the arithmetic is in donation versus real estate.
Holding periods
- Dominica — 3 years, or five if you sell on to another citizenship applicant. The shortest in the region.
- Grenada — 5 years.
- St. Lucia — 5 years on approved property; the National Action Bond redeems at five.
- Antigua & Barbuda — fixed at application and written into the purchase documents. My Antigua & Barbuda program page records five years as the figure recently in force; confirm the position applying to your file, then read the project's own resale conditions, which are often tighter than the program's.
- St. Kitts & Nevis — 7 years, the longest anywhere in the region.
Seven years is a market cycle. If there is any prospect of needing that capital back inside a decade, read this section before the price table.
Who counts as a dependant
| Program | How the family price works | Beyond the covered household |
|---|---|---|
| St. Kitts & Nevis | US$250,000 covers a main applicant or a family of up to four | US$25,000 per additional dependant under 18; US$50,000 per additional dependant aged 18 or over |
| Antigua & Barbuda | US$230,000 covers one applicant or four, identically | Roughly US$15,000 per additional dependant; about US$245,000 for a family of five. A University of the West Indies Fund route at US$260,000, inclusive of processing, is open to families of six or more, adds roughly US$10,000 per further dependant, and includes a year of tuition-only study for one family member |
| Grenada | US$235,000 covers the main applicant plus up to three dependants; the US$50,000 property-route contribution likewise covers four | Priced separately per additional dependant, against the schedule in force |
| Dominica | US$200,000 single, US$250,000 for a family of up to four | Priced above the family-of-four band |
| St. Lucia | US$240,000 covers the main applicant alone or with up to three dependants | A fifth family member prices above the threshold |
The categories are broadly consistent: a spouse; dependent children; children in full-time tertiary education who are fully supported; disabled adult children; and parents, in most cases above a qualifying age and where they live with and are supported by the main applicant. Siblings qualify under several programs subject to criteria. St. Kitts & Nevis publishes the tightest version — children aged 18 to 25 in full-time education and fully supported, parents 55 or over and living with the applicant — and the broader pre-2023 rule still circulating online no longer applies anywhere.
Fully supported and living with are evidentiary requirements, not formalities, and documents must agree with one another: a name change without the matching court order, or a maiden name on one certificate and a married name on another, slows a file badly. Retrofitting a dependant is dearer than including them from day one — and because Antigua prices four people at what a single applicant pays, the ranking inverts around the fourth dependant.
Due diligence, and what actually disqualifies an applicant
All five run substantially the same file: identity and biometrics; source of funds and source of wealth with documentary support; criminal-record checks across every country of residence; sanctions and adverse-media screening; and disclosure of every prior visa refusal, for every family member. Since 2023 every applicant aged 16 and over also sits a mandatory interview, a legacy of the Six CBI Principles agreed with the US State Department in February 2023. Grenada's own published position sets that threshold at 17 and over; Dominica charges roughly US$1,000 for it.
Now the part answered badly everywhere else. What disqualifies an applicant is almost never the underlying fact. It is the concealment of it. Incomplete source-of-funds documentation is the commonest cause of delay across all five — not fraud, just an unevidenced chain between the money and its origin. Undisclosed prior visa refusals come second, dependants left off the file third. None is fatal on its own. Undisclosed, they are.
What does end an application is what you would expect a serious vetting regime to end: a sanctions listing, a criminal record that surfaces on a national check, adverse media a unit cannot get comfortable with, or a source of wealth that cannot be evidenced at all. Vetting is tightening rather than loosening — Grenada, the only one of the five publishing quarterly statistics, took more than 5,400 new citizens in 2024 and just 191 applications in the first half of 2025.
Presence requirements
Only Antigua & Barbuda asks for time on the ground today. The requirement is 30 days across the first five years after citizenship is granted — six days a year — raised from five days under the 2026 Citizenship by Investment (Amendment) Bill presented to Parliament on 14 July 2026. It is applied administratively while that Bill awaits passage; I have not been able to confirm it has passed. Applicants also take an Oath of Allegiance.
The other four ask nothing today, and Grenada requires neither a visit before citizenship nor after. That is the position now, not a permanent one: a 30-day post-citizenship standard has been working through all five under the Eastern Caribbean Citizenship by Investment Regulatory Authority, created by treaty in September 2025. Rollout has slipped past its original mid-2026 target, and in St. Lucia's case the window for applications filed before 30 June 2026 to bypass it has closed. The ECCIRA explainer covers what the regulator changes for buyers.
What the passport does — and does not do
What it does. Visa-free or visa-on-arrival access to between 145 and 155 destinations, typically including the Schengen area and, for most of the five, the United Kingdom, Singapore, Hong Kong and Brazil. Grenada adds visa-free China, held since 2015, and the region's only US E-2 investor treaty, in force since 1989.
The access that does not move is regional, and almost nobody markets it. All five are protocol states under the Revised Treaty of Basseterre, so a citizen of any one can land in any of the other six and receive an indefinite-stay stamp on arrival, with the right to live and work. Dominica goes further: on 1 October 2025 it joined Barbados, Belize and St Vincent & the Grenadines in full CARICOM free movement, the only citizenship-by-investment country in that group. Citizenship also passes to the next generation and does not lapse for want of days on the ground.
What it does not do. It does not shorten anyone's route into the United States: none of the five participates in the US Visa Waiver Program, so holders still need a standard B-1/B-2 visitor visa. It does not create tax residency anywhere — that is decided by presence and centre of life, not by a naturalisation certificate. And it does not on its own deliver Grenada's E-2 visa: a domicile provision in the FY2023 National Defense Authorization Act requires anyone who acquired treaty-country citizenship through investment to demonstrate a continuous period of domicile of at least three years before qualifying. Domicile is a legal-ties concept rather than a residency clock, the statute does not define it, and as of early 2026 immigration attorneys reported no confirmed case of it being used to deny an application — so neither "instant E-2" nor "three years straight" is accurate. The careful version is in how the E-2 route via Grenada works.
One further distinction: "no tax on worldwide income" describes the jurisdiction, not you. Only St. Kitts & Nevis and Antigua & Barbuda levy no personal income tax on residents at all; Dominica taxes residents at up to 35%, St. Lucia up to 30% and Grenada up to 28%.
If a US passport is anywhere in the family
Roughly 95% of my clients are American, so this is not a footnote. The United States taxes its citizens on worldwide income wherever they live — one of only two countries on earth that does — and no Caribbean passport changes that. None of the five holds a US income tax treaty, and FATCA follows the person rather than the travel document, so the day a naturalisation certificate is issued the federal filing position is exactly what it was the day before. All five jurisdictions levy no tax on worldwide income, capital gains or inheritance; that is true of them and false of a US person's global position, and the gap between those two sentences is where most of the bad advice in this industry lives.
Two further facts belong here. Grenada's E-2 treaty is worth nothing to someone who already holds US citizenship. And the December 2025 proclamation restricted entry for nationals of Antigua & Barbuda and Dominica — those two and no others — from January 2026; none of it restricts an American's own travel on a US passport.
What it does buy is insurance and optionality: a permanent right to live and work across the Eastern Caribbean, diversification outside US politics, and exposure to markets American buyers have barely touched. Buy it for that, or don't buy it — the argument sits on second citizenship for Americans.
What is moving underneath all of this
Three pressures are live. The regulator: ECCIRA is being phased in across all five, harmonising due-diligence standards. Washington: the December 2025 proclamation covers Antigua & Barbuda and Dominica only, so any claim of a blanket "Caribbean CBI ban" is wrong. Brussels: a revised EU visa-suspension mechanism in force since 30 December 2025 makes running a citizenship-by-investment program grounds for suspension in itself, and by letter dated 25 June 2026 the European Commission asked all five governments to phase theirs out by 1 June 2028. No Caribbean program has actually lost EU access — that is a demand, not an action.
Because this is the fastest-moving fact in the industry, I keep one canonical status page for it: the regulatory-status section of my audit. If this page and that section disagree, that section is correct.
How to choose
Three fields settle it, and price is the last. How many people are on the file — Antigua and Grenada both cover a household of up to four at one price, where Dominica moves from US$200,000 to US$250,000. The date you would need the capital back — that picks the hold, and the hold picks the country. Whether you would want the property with no passport attached — approved real estate leaves you holding something, but only if it is something you would have bought anyway.
The tie-breakers after that are specific. Speed and the deepest resale market: St. Kitts & Nevis. A US business objective, with specialist immigration advice first: Grenada. The shortest exit: Dominica. Route flexibility, including the only quasi-refundable bond: St. Lucia. Best economics for a large household: Antigua & Barbuda. And if you intend to spend real time there, pick the island rather than the program.
The condensed grid, alongside eleven residency routes, is on the Caribbean program comparison; the hub is Caribbean citizenship by investment. Before any of it, it is worth being honest about whether you need this at all — see who should actually buy a second citizenship.
Key takeaways
- Five programs — St. Kitts & Nevis (1984), Dominica (1993), Antigua & Barbuda (2013), Grenada (2013), St. Lucia (2015) — all observing a US$200,000 floor since 1 July 2024.
- Contributions run US$200,000 to US$250,000; approved real estate US$200,000 to US$350,000 sole. Grenada's US$270,000 is a per-share minimum on a qualifying joint purchase totalling US$540,000 or more, and a US$50,000 government contribution puts its real floor at US$320,000.
- Due diligence is charged per person and by age; government processing exists on some routes and not others. Holds run three to seven years, and resale is thin everywhere.
- Realistic processing runs about 5.1 months to about 18, against much shorter marketed windows.
- Only Antigua & Barbuda requires presence — 30 days across five years, applied administratively while the 2026 amendment bill awaits passage.
- What disqualifies an applicant is concealment, not the underlying fact.
- The United States taxes its citizens on worldwide income wherever they live, and no Caribbean passport changes that.
Frequently asked questions
Which Caribbean citizenship program is cheapest? For a single applicant, Dominica at US$200,000 through the Economic Diversification Fund. For a family of four the ranking changes: Antigua & Barbuda at US$230,000 and Grenada at US$235,000 both cover four at one price, against US$250,000 in Dominica and US$240,000 in St. Lucia.
Which program is fastest? St. Kitts & Nevis: a stated window of 120 to 180 days and an agent-reported average near 5.1 months. Grenada publishes four to six months and runs near seven; St. Lucia averages about 18 months and Antigua & Barbuda about 14.2.
Do any of these programs require me to live there? Only Antigua & Barbuda: 30 days across the first five years after citizenship is granted, applied administratively while the 2026 amendment bill awaits passage. The other four ask nothing today, though a 30-day standard has been working through the regional ECCIRA framework.
What actually disqualifies an applicant? A sanctions listing, a criminal record that surfaces on a national check, adverse media a unit cannot get comfortable with, or a source of wealth that cannot be evidenced. Incomplete source-of-funds documentation, an old visa refusal and a dependant left off the file are the commonest delays — none fatal alone, all fatal undisclosed.
Is Grenada really US$270,000? Only on a qualifying joint purchase. US$270,000 is a per-share minimum where the total purchase reaches US$540,000 or more under S.R.O. 15 of 2024; a sole buyer needs US$350,000. A separate non-refundable US$50,000 government contribution for a family of up to four sits on top of either, putting the realistic floor at US$320,000.
Will any of this lower my US tax bill? No. The United States taxes its citizens on worldwide income wherever they live, none of the five holds a US income tax treaty, and FATCA follows the person rather than the travel document. The zero-tax lines describe each jurisdiction's own system, not an American's global position.
What is not included in the prices on this page? Due diligence charged per applicant and by age, government processing where the route carries it, and legal and authorised-agent fees, which no government publishes. On the property routes, add developer deposits, closing costs, landholding licences where they apply, and the cost of running the property for the length of the hold.
Send me your family size and the date you would need the capital back, and I can usually cut this to the two or three programs worth your time. Book a private call.
