🇯🇵 Japan vs 🇬🇧 United Kingdom: Digital Nomad Visa Compared
Japan offers Designated Activities (Digital Nomad) - Notice No. 53. United Kingdom has no visa officially called a "digital nomad visa". Every figure below comes from each country's own sourced, dated fiche - compare income, duration, tax, family rules, fees and processing time before you decide.
- Minimum income
- 10,000,000 JPY / year
- TBD
- Visa duration
- 6 months
- 6 months
- Tax regime
- A stay of 6 months (under 183 days) generally does not make you a Japanese tax resident, so foreign income is not taxed by Japan under the visa.
- A visit that stays within the Standard Visitor visa's 6-month cap is not automatically outside UK tax residence: the Statutory Residence Test (SRT) can make you UK tax-resident from as few as 46 days a year if you have strong UK ties, or up to 183 days with none. Nomads working remotely from the UK should count SRT days, not just visa validity.
- Family (spouse / children)
- Spouse + children admitted
- Spouse + children admitted
- Application fees
- 15,000 JPY
- 135 GBP
- Health insurance
- Processing time
- Reported ~5 business days when applying with a Certificate of Eligibility (COE); 2 weeks to 1 month without one
- Typically around 3 weeks for standard processing
Attributed to MFA/ISA (pages not fetched directly). Income must be from outside Japan; work for Japan-based entities is not allowed.
source · verified 2026-07-05
The UK has no digital nomad visa and the Standard Visitor visa has no fixed income figure in the Immigration Rules. Appendix V requires only that applicants show 'sufficient funds to cover all reasonable costs in relation to their visit without working or accessing public funds' (accommodation, subsistence, and the return/onward journey). Informal guidance commonly benchmarks this around GBP 100-150/day after accommodation and travel are paid, but that is not an official figure, so it is left TBD rather than stated as fact - verify current expectations with UKVI before applying.
6 months, NON-renewable. A stay under 6 months generally keeps you a non-tax-resident of Japan.
source · verified 2026-07-05
Standard Visitor visa: up to 6 months per visit, not renewable/extendable in-country for this purpose - you must leave and can reapply for a new visit. Remote work must stay incidental to the visit, not its primary purpose, or the visit itself is out of category.
source · verified 2026-07-16
General rule tied to the 6-month cap; confirm your own residency position.
source · verified 2026-07-05
Figure is the Statutory Residence Test's day-count thresholds (46/91/183 depending on UK ties), not a visa rule - the visitor visa itself imposes no tax regime. Foreign income taxed only if UK tax-resident under the SRT; confirm your own tie count before relying on the automatic overseas test.
source · verified 2026-07-16
Spouse or child of a digital nomad may accompany under the same Designated Activities category.
source · verified 2026-07-05
Spouse and children can accompany as visitors on their own Standard Visitor visas (or visa-free if from a non-visa-national country); each family member is assessed and, where required, pays separately - there is no family/dependant visa tied to remote work under this route.
source · verified 2026-07-16
Japan's general visa issuance fee rose from JPY 3,000 to JPY 15,000 (single-entry) effective 2026-07-01 - the first revision since 1978. A consulate Digital Nomad checklist states the visa follows the general single-entry fee schedule. RE-CHECKED 2026-07-15: a search-indexed snippet of this exact MOFA fee page now corroborates "approximately 15,000 yen for a single-entry visa," but the live page still could not be fetched directly this pass either, so confidence stays "reported" pending an on-page read.
source · verified 2026-07-15
GBP 135 for a 6-month Standard Visitor visa, effective from the 8 April 2026 fee rise (up from GBP 127). Visa-national applicants pay this fee; non-visa-nationals (many nationalities, including most of the EU, US, Canada, Australia) do not need a visa at all for stays up to 6 months, but as of 2026 they do need a separate Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA) before travel - mandatory carrier-level enforcement for all visa-exempt nationalities went live 2026-02-25, and the ETA fee rose from GBP 16 to GBP 20 on 2026-04-08. So a visa-exempt remote worker doesn't pay a visa fee but does now pay GBP 20 for a mandatory pre-travel ETA (2-year multi-entry) - not "nothing" - and the same permitted-activities rules still apply either way.
source · verified 2026-07-17
No single canonical MOFA-stated figure found; based on convergent consulate guidance (Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles). Confirm with your consulate.
source · verified 2026-07-12
source · verified 2026-07-16
Figures marked TBD are not yet verified and are never shown as facts. Last full review: Japan 2026-07-12, United Kingdom 2026-07-17.