Non-Lucrative vs Digital Nomad: which Spain visa fits your life?
One question sorts almost everybody: does your money arrive because you work for it? If it does, the Digital Nomad Visa is your route. If it arrives whether you work or not, the Non-Lucrative Visa is.
How much you have to show and where you file both follow from that split. The table below sets the two side by side, with the article behind each rule.
What actually differs between the two?
Seven rows, and the last one is a tie. Work rights and the kind of income you hold are where the decision is really made; the rest is procedure.
| What you are comparing | Non-Lucrative Visa | Digital Nomad Visa |
|---|---|---|
| Work rights | None. The authorization is granted to live in Spain without carrying out work or professional activity, and that binds your family too. Remote work for a foreign employer is still work. After a year of residence you can ask to change the authorization into one that permits work (RD 1155/2024, arts. 61.1 and 191.4). | Remote work for a foreign employer or clients. Freelancers may also serve Spanish companies up to 20% of their total professional activity, keeping the foreign relationship (Ley 14/2013, arts. 74 bis and 74 ter). Family residence permits allow employment and self-employment (UGE FAQ, question 18). |
| Income you have to show | €2,400 a month. That is 400% of IPREM, the index Spain measures benefits against, and it has not moved since 2023 (Ley 31/2022). It has to be passive: pensions, rent, dividends, savings. | €2,849 a month gross is our conservative planning amount, using annual minimum wage divided by twelve. The UGE checklist gives the 200% rule, but does not specify that division. Check your filing office’s published amount. |
| Each family member adds | €600 a month for every person on the application, however many there are, which is 100% of IPREM each (Ministry of Inclusion, Hoja 6). | €1,068.38 for the first, €356.13 for each one after in our planning calculation. Your office may publish lower amounts or round them differently. |
| Where you file it | In person, at the Spanish consulate with jurisdiction over where you legally live. The consular route cannot be started from inside Spain. If you are already living in Spain legally, the filing goes to an Oficina de Extranjería instead, and we take those on, so tell us your situation. | Two doors. From abroad: the consulate with jurisdiction over where you legally live. From inside Spain, while your stay is still legal: electronically, to the Large Companies Unit, which resolves in about 20 working days and grants by silence if it does not answer (Ley 14/2013, arts. 74 quinquies and 76.1). |
| How long the first grant runs | A year, and the money you show has to cover that whole year, not just the month you file in (RD 1155/2024, art. 62.2). | The consular visa runs a year at most. The Large Companies Unit route skips that and grants the residence authorization directly for up to three (Ley 14/2013, arts. 74 quater.1 and 74 quinquies.1). |
| Renewal | Two years at a time. The monthly bar does not rise, it is the same figure as at the start, and you have to have spent more than 183 days in Spain during the calendar year (RD 1155/2024, arts. 62.1, 64.2.f and 64.7). | Two-year periods. If you arrived on the consular visa, you apply inside Spain for the three-year authorization during the 60 days before that visa expires (Ley 14/2013, arts. 74 quater.3 and 76.3). |
| Path to long-term residence | This one is the same on both. Five years of legal, continuous residence opens long-term residence, national or EU, and with it the right to live and work in Spain on the same terms as a Spanish national. Absences are allowed within limits (RD 1155/2024, arts. 176.a and 183.1). Neither visa is a shortcut past the other. | |
Figures for 2026, last reviewed 2026-08-26 against the BOE and ministry pages linked in each row. The eligibility check runs your own household size against them.
Which one is you?
Three people, three answers.
None of these is you exactly. Find the one whose money works like yours and the rest of the page reads differently.
Retired, or living on what you built
A teacher who has finished thirty years in the classroom in Nairobi. The pension lands every month whether she gets out of bed or not, and she wants a flat near Valencia.
Nothing she lives on depends on her working, so the income test is one she already passes. The catch is the one she has to accept: no work in Spain, not even a few remote hours for her old school.
Non-Lucrative Visa
Employed, and allowed to work from anywhere
A product manager in São Paulo, on the payroll of a company with no Spanish office, whose contract has been running for two years and whose manager has already said yes to Madrid.
His salary is earned income, which the Non-Lucrative Visa will not count. The Digital Nomad Visa was written for exactly this: the job is the qualification, and the letter from his employer is the document that carries the file.
Digital Nomad Visa
Freelancing, as a couple
Two designers in Seoul invoicing four clients between them, none in Spain, all of them on the books for more than a year. One of them wants to keep working; the other is happy to stop.
One of them applies as the main applicant on the Digital Nomad Visa and the other joins as family, which is cheaper than two separate files. The bar to clear is the main applicant's income plus the first family member's add-on, and three months of invoices behind it.
Digital Nomad Visa
Still torn, because you have an early pension and a couple of consulting clients, or a job you are about to leave? That is the case the six questions were written for. Run the eligibility check