Bureaucratic Timeline Predictor
A free naturalization timeline predictor for the Netherlands, built because no one else had.
Founded in 2026
PassportTracker.nl is a free public tool for anyone going through the Dutch naturalization process. Enter your gemeente and your current stage intake, document submission, IND review, Royal Decree, ceremony and the tool returns optimistic, likely, and pessimistic timelines drawn from real cases other applicants have shared. The more people use it and update their progress, the better the predictions get for everyone behind them. Built and operated by Ten8.City, free to use, and one of the things we make because we live here too.
Problem
Becoming Dutch takes years, and the people going through it are flying blind. The IND publishes a legal maximum decision period, one year, extendable to two, but no realistic estimate of how long your case will actually take. Each gemeente runs its own intake, ceremony cadence, and document review at its own pace. Two applicants with identical paperwork can be six months apart based on which city they live in.
The official tools tell you almost nothing. My IND shows whether your application is "in progress" but not how long it has left, and not how that compares to anyone else's. Forums and Reddit threads fill the gap with anecdotes, one person waited eight months in Amsterdam, another fourteen months in Rotterdam, but anecdotes aren't predictions, and most are out of date by the time you find them. For people whose lives, jobs, and travel plans depend on knowing when their passport will arrive, that information vacuum is a real cost.
Solution
Passport Tracker is the tool we wanted to exist. Users select their gemeente and their current stage, intake appointment, document submission, IND review, Royal Decree, ceremony invitation, oath, passport collection, and the tool returns three timelines: optimistic, likely, and pessimistic, calculated from real cases at every stage in every municipality. As applicants move through the process, they update their own progress, and that data feeds back into the prediction model for everyone behind them. The more people use it, the more accurate it becomes. The data flywheel is the product.
The tool is free and stays free. It collects only what's needed to make the predictions better, gemeente, stage, dates, and nothing tied to the person. Ten8.City built it, runs it, and pays for it because the people using it are our neighbours. Civic infrastructure the state didn't build, given back to the people who need it.
Today the model is trained on data from 700+ users and growing. Every applicant who shares their progress makes the next applicant's wait a little less opaque.
700+
Users feeding the model
Crowdsourced from real applicants
Free
For every applicant
And staying that way