How to read the Safe Trip Score
Every country on this site has a single 0 to 100 number called the Safe Trip Score. The score is a daily snapshot of how safe travel to that country looks today, synthesised from disease, conflict, disaster, crime, civil unrest, and infrastructure data. Higher is calmer.
Here is how to read one in 30 seconds.
The number
The score sits in five bands. The bands matter more than the exact number, a country at 86 versus 89 is not meaningfully different; a country at 86 versus 64 is.
| Band | Meaning | What to expect |
|---|---|---|
| 85 to 100 Very low risk | Calm, mature destinations | Plan as normal. Expected baseline for most of Europe, East Asia, Oceania, and the Gulf. |
| 65 to 84 Low risk · caution | Stable but with notable concerns | Read the active drivers and government advisories before booking; standard precautions apply. |
| 45 to 64 Heightened | Real risks worth planning around | Some regions of the country may carry advisories. Trip planning needs deliberate decisions about routing, timing, and insurance. |
| 25 to 44 High risk | Significant active concerns | Often safe in narrow tourist corridors, but the average traveller should reconsider unless purposefully informed. |
| 0 to 24 Extreme | Active conflict, large-scale disaster, or sustained instability | Government advisories typically reach “do not travel”. |
The sub-scores
Beneath the headline number sit six sub-scores: disease, conflict, disaster, crime, unrest,and infrastructure. Two countries can have the same overall score for very different reasons , one may have an active dengue surge dragging disease down; another may have peaceful unrest dragging infrastructure down via strikes. The sub-scores tell you which.
Read the row in two passes:
- Spot anything below the rest. That is the dominant story.
- Open the country page and scroll to Active drivers. The events behind the low number are listed there with sources and confidence tiers.
The 7 day trend
Each score also shows a 7 day delta. Positive (green ▲) means the score has improved, a crisis is fading, an advisory has been lifted, an outbreak is passing. Negative (rose ▼) means it has deteriorated.
Trends matter less than the level. A country that drops from 92 to 89 is still very safe. A country that drops from 60 to 52 in a week is one to read carefully.
What the score does not tell you
- Where, exactly. A country score is a country average. A coastal resort and an interior border region almost always have very different risk pictures. Use the country page’s “Active drivers” section and government advisories to localise.
- For whom. The score is a generalist baseline. Solo female travellers, immunocompromised travellers, journalists, and aid workers each have specific considerations the headline number does not encode.
- The future. Scores are recomputed daily from observed data. They do not predict whether a coup, outbreak, or earthquake is coming next week.
Where to go from here
- Methodology, the formal version
- How the Safe Trip Score is calculated, same methodology in plain language
- FCDO travel advisory levels, explained
- Data sources, everything we ingest, with refresh cadence