How Rankings
Are Decided
Some countries make eating vegan effortless. Others make it a full-time job. The ranking tells you which is which. This page tells you how.
scored
ranked
Not where to eat, but how hard it is
Most vegan travel content asks where the best restaurants are. This site asks a harder question: how much effort does eating vegan actually take once you're there? Some of that is fixed before you land. The rest depends on how well you prepare. Both matter, but they're different problems, so we score them separately.
Rankings are updated as new evidence comes in. If something looks wrong, the contact page is there for exactly that.
What goes into a ranking
Four things are fixed before you arrive. Seven depend on how well you prepare.
Is veganism understood?
Does the person taking your order know what vegan means? Not in the capital, not in the tourist zone, across the whole destination. "No meat" consistently getting you fish scores a destination down regardless of what's available in the city.
How deeply are animal products embedded?
Fish sauce in the broth. Dashi in the stock. Ghee used automatically, invisibly. You can't negotiate these out of a dish. Speaking perfect Thai doesn't remove the fish sauce from a pad see ew that was made with it that morning. We score how deep the problem goes, not whether a workaround exists.
Does the destination help you navigate it?
Is the cuisine modular?
Some cuisines are built from components you can pick and subtract. Others bake the animal product into the method. That difference matters more than almost anything else on the ground, and it's separate from how deep animal products run (02) or whether workarounds exist (03). Scored from 1 (fully method-based) to 5 (fully component-based).
Can you eat vegan by accident?
Parts of South Asia, the Middle East, and West Africa have deep traditions of plant-based cooking that contain no animal products by default. When those staples are easy to spot, daily friction drops without any negotiation. Dishes that look vegan but routinely contain hidden stock don't count here.
Supermarket and self-catering
For most vegan travellers, the local supermarket is the real safety net. Scored on how reliably you can find plant milks, tofu, legumes, and clearly labelled snacks in a mainstream shop. Strong supermarket access can offset a difficult restaurant culture, especially outside major cities.
How reliable are food labels?
Whether reading a packet means anything. Strong mandatory labelling, like EU regulations, means you can read an ingredients list and know what you're eating. But allergen safety and vegan safety are not the same thing. Weak or inconsistent labelling means even careful reading is largely a guess.
HappyCow listing density
Total vegan and vegan-friendly venues listed on HappyCow across all 270 destinations. Adjusted for tourist numbers rather than population, and grouped into tiers so a small island and a large city can both get a fair score.
Language and communication
A high language barrier needs preparation: phrasebook work, printed cards, translation apps. Unlike deep cultural problems, preparation can largely solve this one. Where a visual ID system exists, it matters less that you don't speak the language. Our phrasebook handles most of it.
Visual identification systems
The European V-Label, Thailand's jay symbol, Taiwan's su-shi character, India's green dot. Visual markers a prepared traveller can learn in minutes and use everywhere. Where widely adopted, they reduce daily friction more reliably than any phrasebook.
Proven vegan hotspot
Destinations that contain a city or zone featured in our Best 50 ranking get a boost. This rewards places where vegan travel actually works on the ground, not just places that look good on paper because of strong labelling law. Where a standout city or region sits well above the national average, it's called out on the destination page so you can see where the ceiling is.
Where this system works well, and where it doesn't
270 destinations, one score each. That's useful, but here's what it can't tell you.
The averaging problem
Every country score is a composite. A destination with an exceptional vegan city and a hostile rural food culture gets averaged somewhere in the middle. The United States is the obvious case: New York or Los Angeles can feel extraordinary; parts of rural America can feel close to impossible. Both are true at the same time. Destination pages flag standout hotspots wherever the gap is significant enough to matter.
Capital versus the rest
In large countries, the distance between what's available in the capital and what exists two hundred kilometres away can be enormous. If you're travelling off the main routes in any Level 3+ destination, treat the ranking as an average, not a guarantee. The destination page tells you where the ceiling is. Your actual experience may land anywhere between the floor and it.
The judgement calls
Allergen legislation and HappyCow listings are verifiable. Cultural embeddedness and vegan understanding are not. Those rely on research, traveller feedback, and editorial judgement. If something looks wrong, submit it via the contact page. Consistent feedback from multiple sources shifts rankings. That's the whole point of keeping this open.
Think a ranking is wrong?
Tell us
Rankings are reviewed twice a year. If enough travellers report the same thing, the ranking moves. One strong opinion won't do it on its own, but consistent feedback from several sources will.
Report an error or share experienceWhat each level actually means
Vegan is understood in restaurants and shops. Labelling is clear, dedicated options are plentiful. You can eat well without preparation or negotiation.
Explore Level 1Vegan is broadly understood, though sometimes confused with vegetarian. Animal products don't run deep in the food culture. Labelling and supermarket access are reliable. Light preparation is enough.
Explore Level 2Hidden ingredients are common and vegan isn't always understood. Cities usually have workable infrastructure; rural areas much less so. Self-catering is a reliable fallback and preparation pays off here.
Explore Level 3Animal products appear in places you wouldn't expect and vegan is poorly understood outside specialist restaurants. Workaround infrastructure is thin. Self-catering is often more reliable than eating out.
Explore Level 4Animal products run through most of the food culture and no meaningful workaround infrastructure exists. Even a well-prepared traveller will face consistent friction. Self-catering from local markets is the primary strategy.
Explore Level 5The difficulty here isn't the food culture, it's access and supply. Remote locations, fragile supply chains, and very limited retail infrastructure mean vegan food may simply not be available. Packing supplies before arrival isn't optional. It is the plan.
Explore Level 6Meat and dairy run through almost every part of how people eat, with no meaningful workaround infrastructure in place. Supply isn't the problem; the food culture is. Full self-sufficiency is required. These destinations can be visited, but eating vegan will be the defining challenge of the trip.
A safety and access ranking, not a food ranking. These destinations are here because travel itself is currently unsafe or severely restricted. A destination can have outstanding vegan coverage and still be Level 8. The food is not the issue.
Want the detail?
Where the data comes from, what we checked, and why we built it this way.
Site launched. The first version leaned on public signals and real-world vegan friendliness rather than deep on-the-ground scoring.
Why it existsGlobal map launched and tested with real vegans. The feedback was blunt and useful, so we rewired the scoring and tightened the wording across the site.
Map detailsMethodology expanded to nine criteria. Three new criteria added: navigation workaround infrastructure, visual identification systems, and the ecosystem bonus. HappyCow density normalisation updated from population to tourist arrivals. Most Vegan-Friendly Places list expanded to 35 cities and 15 non-city hotspots. Rankings are being reviewed level by level against the full framework.
Disagree with a ranking?Three methodology changes from the same audit finding: regulatory infrastructure and food culture had roughly equal weight, creating a measurable bias toward destinations with strong labelling frameworks but weak vegan food cultures. Criterion weights rebalanced so food culture criteria now carry more weight than regulatory criteria. Two new criteria added: cuisine modularity (whether a food culture is component-based or method-based) and proven vegan hotspot (additional credit for destinations containing a Best 50 city or zone). Several destinations moved between levels as a result.
See the Best 50