Compare Caribbean Citizenship & Residency Programs

Read every number above as a floor. Due diligence is charged per person and by age, not per family: St. Kitts & Nevis runs US$10,000 for the main applicant and US$7,500 for each dependent aged 16 and over, and Dominica roughly US$7,500 and US$4,000 on the same split, plus a US$1,000 interview fee for every applicant of 16 or over. Antigua publishes no standard due-diligence schedule at all. A household with two teenagers therefore costs materially more than one with two toddlers at the identical contribution.

Government processing is separate and behaves differently by route. On the St. Kitts real-estate route it lands post-approval at US$25,000 for the main applicant, US$15,000 for a spouse and US$10,000 to US$15,000 per dependent by age; on the contribution route it does not exist. That is the most common costing error in the market: the US$327,500-plus totals circulating for a St. Kitts family of four bolt the real-estate schedule onto a donation file, roughly US$60,000 of fees that do not apply.

Legal and authorized-agent fees are the third layer, and no government publishes a schedule for them — your law firm and licensed agent set them, not the citizenship unit. Real-estate routes carry a fourth the donation routes never do: developer deposits, closing costs, landholding licenses, and the cost of running a house for the length of the hold. The mechanics sit on the costs, timelines and due diligence page and the trade itself on donation versus real estate; the all-in figure for a specific file is confirmed in writing before anything is signed.

Three fields settle it: how many people are on the file, how long you can leave the money alone, and whether you would still want the property if the passport were taken out of the deal.

Family size decides more than price does, because two of the five charge the same figure for one person as for four — Antigua at US$230,000 and Grenada at US$235,000 both cover a household of up to four, while Dominica moves from US$200,000 to US$250,000 between a single applicant and a family. Lock-up decides the rest, and it is the column buyers skip: Dominica releases the asset after three years, Grenada and St. Lucia after five, St. Kitts & Nevis after seven, a full market cycle. A donation is spent the day it clears; approved real estate leaves you holding an asset, but only one worth owning on its own merits. A qualifying property nobody would otherwise want is an expensive way to buy a passport, which is why the property is underwritten before the threshold is checked. Where the practice represents a development directly, that is disclosed.

Then the objective, and almost nothing here does two of the three well. If it is mobility, only the citizenship tab is relevant: a residency certificate is permission to live somewhere, not a travel document. Cayman, The Bahamas, Bermuda, Anguilla, Turks & Caicos and the British Virgin Islands run no citizenship program at all, and Barbados never has — Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley has said publicly that Barbadian citizenship will never be sold.

If it is a tax base, the citizenship tab is close to irrelevant. Caribbean citizenship carries no residency requirement, so on its own it creates tax residency nowhere; that is decided by presence and center of life, which is why the day-count column exists — ninety days a year in Bermuda eliminates more shortlists than the US$2.5 million does. And “no tax on worldwide income” is not “no tax”: only St. Kitts & Nevis and Antigua & Barbuda levy no personal income tax on residents at all, while Dominica taxes residents at up to 35%, St. Lucia up to 30% and Grenada up to 28%. That touches nobody who never becomes resident, but a family actually moving should know the rate first.

If it is somewhere to live, residency usually wins, and on price too: Costa Rica’s inversionista route at US$150,000 and Panama’s Friendly Nations Visa at US$200,000 sit at or below every citizenship program here. Citizenship wins on speed, permanence and inheritance — it passes to the next generation and cannot lapse for want of days on the ground. The wider maps sit on the residency by investment overview and the citizenship by investment hub. All five citizenship countries are also 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 with the right to live and work.

The United States taxes its citizens on worldwide income wherever they live — one of only two countries on earth that does. None of the five Caribbean citizenship programs holds a US income tax treaty, and FATCA attaches to US-person status rather than to the passport you present. The zero-tax column describes each jurisdiction’s own system and changes nothing about a federal filing.

That is not an argument against a second citizenship, only for buying one as insurance and optionality rather than as a tax play — the case set out in second citizenship for Americans is insurance, not a tax play and across the American buyer’s page. Two facts belong beside it: none of the five participates in the US Visa Waiver Program, so these passports do not shorten anyone’s route into the United States, and Grenada’s E-2 treaty, the one genuine immigration lever in the region, is worth nothing to someone who already holds US citizenship.

The single route here that moves an American’s number is Puerto Rico’s Act 60, because it works inside the US system rather than around it, with no expatriation at all; the rates, deadlines and residency tests sit in the residency tab of the table above. It reaches only gains arising after the move, which is why timing a liquidity event badly wastes the exercise. Above Act 60 there is only renunciation, and the exit is the harder half. The expatriation tax reaches only a covered expatriate: net worth of US$2 million or more, average annual net US income tax above US$211,000 over the prior five years on the 2026 threshold, or an inability to certify five years of clean filings on Form 8854. A family that leaves while keeping the American house also meets FIRPTA withholding on the eventual sale. All of it belongs in an international tax plan settled before a move date is fixed.

Three pressures are live, and any advisor quoting the tables above as fixed for a decade is overselling. A regional regulator, the Eastern Caribbean Citizenship by Investment Regulatory Authority, was created by treaty in September 2025 and is being phased in from headquarters in Grenada; St. Kitts & Nevis passed enabling legislation first, in October 2025. The 30-day post-citizenship presence standard moving through that framework has already slipped past its original target, which is why the presence column separates what is in force from what is proposed. From Washington, a December 2025 proclamation placed partial entry restrictions on Antigua & Barbuda and Dominica — those two of the five and no others — suspending immigrant visas and several nonimmigrant categories for their nationals from January 2026, with visitor-visa validity cut from ten years to three months. From Brussels, the European Commission wrote to all five governments on 25 June 2026 demanding a phase-out by 1 June 2028; no program has lost EU access, and that remains a demand rather than an action. Budget the dollars without assuming the mobility map holds for ten years. What the new regulator changes and the objective audit of every Caribbean program go further than a comparison table can.

Approved lists are not static, so eligibility is confirmed unit by unit before an offer is written — the practice is based in the Eastern Caribbean and walks the inventory rather than forwarding a brochure. Current stock sits in the listings marketplace and across the approved developments, with the market-by-market read on the Caribbean real estate overview.