Visa Status Check by Passport Number: Real-Time Application Trackers

How to Check Visa Status by Passport Number

Anyone checking visa status by passport number usually has the passport to hand but not the receipt. The passport number identifies you, not your file, so official trackers match it against the reference number issued when your application was submitted. Three private operators handle most of these checks — BLS International, TLScontact and VFS Global — each with its own portal for its corridors.

Step by step:

1. Find your acknowledgement receipt — the centre name, reference number and date of birth you supplied are printed on it.
2. Open that centre's portal from the table and type the reference number exactly as printed, including any prefix.
3. Add the second identifier the form asks for: date of birth, last name or passport number.
4. Read the status and its date, then wait rather than refresh: VFS Global asks applicants to allow 72 business hours after submission.

Why a passport number alone is usually not enough: a passport can hold several applications at once, and centres match records on the reference number first, so portals ask for a second detail such as your date of birth. Treat that combination as personal data: use only the official portal printed on your receipt, never a third-party status-check service or an agent who promises updates.

What common statuses mean: "received" or "submitted" means the centre has logged your file. "Under processing" or "under review" means the consulate holds it and is assessing it. "Transferred" means your passport has moved between the centre and the mission, or is on its way back. "Ready for pickup" or "dispatched" means a decision has been made and your passport is available or couriered. Statuses update in batches, so a quiet week is normal.

Work Visa Trackers

Track H1B, L1, and E2 work visa petitions through the official USCIS Case Tracker using your I-797 receipt number.

Green Card & Permanent Residency Trackers

Track your green card application through USCIS and the State Department visa bulletin.

Student Visa Trackers

Track your F1 or J1 visa status through the State Department's CEAC tracking portal.

Travel Visa Trackers

Track your B1/B2 tourist visa or ESTA application status.

Canada Visa Trackers

Track your Canadian visa, work permit, study permit, or permanent residence application through the official IRCC status tools.

UK Visa Trackers

The UK does not have a public government case tracker like USCIS. Track your application through the visa application centre that handled it.

Schengen Visa Trackers

There is no single public Schengen visa tracker. Track your application through the visa application centre (VFS Global or TLScontact) that processed it.

Australia Visa Trackers

Track your Australian visa application through the official ImmiAccount portal from the Department of Home Affairs.

New Zealand Visa Trackers

Track your New Zealand visa application through Immigration Online.

Citizenship, Visa and UK Status Checks

Three different things get called a "status tracker", and they work in completely different ways. One tracks an application you have already filed, one tracks a visa decision at a consulate, and one does not track an application at all — it proves status you already hold. Getting the wrong one wastes days of looking in the wrong place.

Citizenship status tracker (Canada, IRCC)

IRCC runs an application status tracker that covers citizenship grant applications, permanent residence applications and some sponsorship files. You create an account on the IRCC site and it shows the stage your file has reached rather than a decision date. It is the only official place to see citizenship progress, and it updates in steps rather than continuously, so checking daily produces nothing new.

Citizenship status tracker login

Logging in needs two identifiers: your unique client identifier (UCI) and the application number, both printed on the acknowledgement of receipt letter IRCC sends after accepting the file. If you applied on paper and never received that letter, the tracker cannot find you — and that is a document problem to solve with IRCC rather than a login problem.

Visa status tracker (United States, CEAC)

For a US visa, the tracker is the Consular Electronic Application Center, known as CEAC. You enter the DS-160 confirmation number, select the consulate where you interviewed, and it returns one of a small set of states: no status, application received, administrative processing, issued, or refused. The useful distinction is that "administrative processing" is not a refusal, and "issued" means the visa is printed and waiting for passport return rather than delivered.

Immigration status check, UK

The UK meaning of this phrase is unrelated to application tracking, and it is the one people get wrong most often. A UK immigration status check is a service on GOV.UK that lets you prove your right to work, rent or claim benefits to an employer or landlord without handing over physical documents. If you are searching for it expecting to see your visa application progress, you are looking at the wrong tool — UK visa applications are tracked separately and generally not in real time.

Immigration status check share code

The share code is how the UK service works in practice. You generate a short code on GOV.UK, give it to the employer or landlord along with your date of birth, and they check your status online. Two things catch people out: a code expires, so you generate a fresh one for each new check, and it proves the status attached to your identity — it does not create status, extend it, or replace an application. If your status has changed, the code reflects the new status, not the one you were expecting.

Immigration status check online

All three checks are free and none of them requires a paid intermediary. Canada uses the IRCC tracker, the US uses CEAC, and the UK uses the GOV.UK status service. Any site charging to reveal a status you can see for free is selling convenience, not access, and any site asking for your passport number to "check status" should be treated with suspicion.

Visa Trackers vs Official Embassy Tracking Pages

An official tracking page, meaning the embassy or consulate portal or the application centre that took your file such as BLS, VFS Global or TLScontact, is the source of truth. It reads the same database your case officer does, it is free, and any status it shows can be relied on when you plan a flight or chase a deadline.

Third-party tracker apps and paid services work differently: they re-display public information, add alerts, or in some cases submit enquiries on your behalf for a fee. They cannot see records the official portal does not expose, so their status is only ever as current as the last update they copied. Use them for convenience, notifications or several applications in one view, but never as the final word. When a third-party app disagrees with the official page, the official page is correct.

Can You Track an H-1B Approval or Extension?

H-1B tracking is the most-searched part of this section, and most of what circulates about it is either a crowd-sourced guess or a paid service selling something USCIS gives away free. Start by noting the receipt date on your Form I-797, because that is the only date that governs your clock. Here is what can genuinely be tracked, and what cannot.

H-1B approval tracker: what is actually trackable

USCIS does not publish a queue position, an estimated decision date or a percentage complete. What you can see with your receipt number is a status that moves through a fixed set of states: received, actively reviewing, request for evidence, approved. Nothing in that sequence tells you how far through the queue you are. Any site claiming to show your position is inferring it from other people's self-reported dates, and the inference is not reliable enough to plan around.

H-1B extension tracker and the 240-day rule

If the extension is ultimately refused after the 240-day window has run, you must stop working immediately — the protection covers a pending case, not a denied one. Extensions have one genuine timing lever. File before your current status expires and a timely-filed extension gives you continued employment authorisation for up to 240 days while it is pending, which is roughly eight months of cover. File late and that protection does not apply, so the practical advice is to file up to six months before the expiry date rather than waiting for a quiet month. Once filed, the case behaves like any other I-129.

Trackitt and other crowd-sourced trackers

Trackitt-style sites collect self-reported receipt dates and approval dates from volunteers. They are useful for sensing whether a service centre has slowed down this month, and they are unreliable for predicting an individual case. The sample is self-selected, approvals get reported more often than denials, and nobody verifies the dates. A crowd tracker costs nothing and is worth reading as sentiment; it cannot get you an official estimate, and no paid service can either.

What to track instead

1. Your receipt number and receipt date from Form I-797, the only date that governs your processing clock.
2. Your case status at egov.uscis.gov/casestatus, checked weekly rather than hourly, because updates arrive in steps rather than continuously.
3. The published processing time for your form, category and service centre, which USCIS refreshes quarterly.
4. The premium clock if you filed Form I-907, which runs fifteen business days from acceptance rather than from the day you posted it.
5. Your I-94 expiry and your 240-day window if you are on an extension, because those are the dates that put you out of status if they pass unnoticed.

When tracking turns into a case inquiry

Tracking is passive; an inquiry is an action. You become eligible to file one only when your receipt date is earlier than the published outer figure for your exact form, category and office. Filed earlier than that, it is closed as ineligible and changes nothing. Once you are past the range, submit a case inquiry at egov.uscis.gov/e-request, and if that produces nothing after roughly sixty days, escalate to the CIS Ombudsman on Form DHS-7001. If you are not eligible for a case inquiry yet, the honest answer is that there is nothing to chase and the published range is the only information that exists.

Before You File an Extension, Confirm Four Things

1. Your current I-94 expiry date, taken from the record rather than from a stamp in the passport.
2. That the petition will be filed before that date, because the 240-day protection depends on timely filing rather than on the decision date.
3. That the employer has the approved LCA for the period being requested, since a missing or expired LCA stalls the petition after filing.
4. Whether premium processing changes anything you actually need, because it shortens the decision clock but not the visa number queue behind it.

What does not change with the 2026 rules

Fee changes, premium-processing adjustments and filing-window rules move most years, but none of them create a public tracker. The structural position in 2026 is the same as it was in 2020: USCIS gives you a status, not a schedule, and the documents that matter are your receipt notice, your I-94 and your approval notice. Track those three and ignore anything promising more precision than the agency itself publishes.

Frequently Asked Questions

Related Tools & Processing Time Guides

Plan your application with these VisaGrade tools and processing time guides.