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This is the my first british passport application. I know there are lot of countries which allow UK Citizen visa free entry. Do these countries stamp the entry and exit record in the passport and so eventually end up using a page OR they just let UK Citizenship pass without using any pages of the passport.

If they do use up a page then frequent traveller should go for 48 page passport I suppose! Any thought?

There's no simple answer to that, because it varies from country to country. British citizen passports are not stamped in the EU/EEA or Switzerland. In my experience, most countries that allow visa-free access (to British passport holders or anyone else) don't use up anything like a full page with their stamps.

How often do you travel and where are you likely to be travelling to?

Christophe wrote:There's no simple answer to that, because it varies from country to country. British citizen passports are not stamped in the EU/EEA or Switzerland. In my experience, most countries that allow visa-free access (to British passport holders or anyone else) don't use up anything like a full page with their stamps.

How often do you travel and where are you likely to be travelling to?

Being working in IT industry I would expect to travel all over the world especially EU, India and Middle East.

gainvidya wrote: Being working in IT industry I would expect to travel all over the world especially EU, India and Middle East.

Well, as I say, there are no stamps in a British passport from other EU countries.

An Indian visa takes a full page; the standard one is valid for multiple entries for six months (though longer ones might be available). The Indian passport control people seem to be fairly tidy in their stamping of the passport on entry and exit.

Most Middle Eastern countries (though by no means all) require a visa before arrival, and I imagine that most of these would occupy pretty much a full page. I don't know how long they are valid for.

US stamps are disconcertingly small (disconcerting considering the general hoo-ha involved in entering the USA!) and are given on entry only; there is no exit stamp.

Now that Australia no longer requires paper visas, the stamps there are pretty small as well.

Most of the developed countries of East Asia don't require visas for British citizens and their stamps are small.

I guess if in doubt you'd be well advised to get the larger passport, since that would be easier, and cheaper, than renewing early if you run out of blank pages. The larger passport is of course slightly more cumbersome if you want to carry it in a shirt pocket or in a travel pouch of some sort, but I guess there's not much in it.

Not sure if this would also be true for other countries than the Schengen ones but some at least may actually ask for two empty pages for paper visas.