File at the consulate that covers where you live, and stop looking for a cheaper one. The spread between consulates is real and it is worth money, but it is not reliable enough to plan a trip around, and the appointment you can actually get is worth more than the appointment with the friendlier table. That is the verdict, and the rest of this post is why — and how to find out what your consulate will ask for, before you book anything, when you are heading for Mérida, Yucatán and every page you read quotes a different dollar figure.

Checked on 2 September 2026.

Why one rule produces different numbers

There is one formula. The Lineamientos generales para la expedición de visas (DOF código 5763837) set the temporary-residency income test at 680 días de UMA a month and the savings test at 11,460 días de UMA averaged over twelve. INEGI sets the UMA — $117.31 pesos a day since 1 February 2026. That gives one peso figure, $79,770.80 a month, identical for every applicant on earth.

Then each consulate publishes the figure in the currency its applicants use. Nothing in the system forces those tables to be recomputed on the same day, at the same rate, or at all. So the divergence is not policy. It is maintenance.

Which means the useful question is not “which consulate is cheapest” but “when was this page last computed, and from which UMA?”

The division that tells you

Take the monthly income figure your consulate publishes and divide it by 680. You get the dollars-per-día-de-UMA that page is using. Compare it against $117.31 pesos and you have the implied exchange rate.

A worked example, checked on the day. The Consulate of Mexico in Tucson publishes a monthly income requirement of over $4,393 USD and an average balance of over $73,215 USD, on a page stamped Última actualización: 31 Diciembre 2025.

  • $4,393 ÷ 680 = $6.46 per día de UMA → implies about 18.2 pesos/USD against the 2026 UMA, or about 17.5 against the 2025 UMA of $113.14.
  • $73,215 ÷ 11,460 = $6.39 per día de UMA → a different implied rate again, on the same page.

The page’s own date is 31 December 2025 — before the 2026 UMA took effect on 1 February. You do not need to know what the consulate intended. You need to know that the figure is computed, dated, and testable, and that the consulate applies what it prints, not what the arithmetic says it should have printed.

That is the whole method. It takes two minutes and it is the only thing on this subject worth memorising.

What the spread is, and what it is not

Consulates publish materially different figures for the same federal rule. That is well-documented, and the relocation publishers who track it have found spreads north of 15% between posts.

What the spread is not is a menu. Three reasons:

Jurisdiction. Consulates serve a defined district and generally expect you to apply in the one covering your residence, with proof of that residence in the folder. Turning up in another district because its table is kinder invites the one question you do not want asked.

Timing. Appointment availability varies far more than the thresholds do, and a slot three weeks out at your own consulate beats a better number four months out somewhere else — that gap can be the difference between arriving in Mérida in the dry season and arriving in the middle of a hurricane-season August.

Volatility. A table computed at 17.5 pesos to the dollar can be recomputed at 19 the week after you build your plan around it. The multiple is stable; the printed number is not.

The four things to check before you book

Do all four on your own consulate’s site, on the same day, and write down the date you did it.

One — the two solvency figures. Income and average balance, as that consulate prints them. Run the division. Note the implied rate and the page’s update date.

Two — the document list, in that consulate’s own words. Consulates publish their own checklists, and they differ in the details that cost you an appointment: how many photographs and to what specification, whether statements must be original or may be electronic with a digital certificate, whether translations are required, whether an apostille is needed on anything.

Three — how the appointment is booked. Some posts run their own calendar, some use a central booking system, some take email requests. Find out which, and how far out it books, before you make any other plan.

Four — the fee and how it is paid. The visa fee is set by the Ley Federal de Derechos and each consulate publishes it in an annual derechos consulares table, in US dollars, payable on the day. Read your consulate’s own 2026 table. It is generally non-refundable if you are refused — which is the part that makes filing a marginal case expensive rather than merely disappointing.

When filing at a different consulate is genuinely worth it

Three cases, and only three.

You genuinely live in two places. If you have a real residential connection to a second district — a home, a lease, a licence — filing there is a fact about your life, not a tactic.

Your own consulate cannot give you an appointment inside your planning horizon. This is the common one. If the calendar at your post is empty for months and a neighbouring district you can legitimately use has slots, that is a real reason.

You are in the country as a visitor when the six-month window closes. Timing sometimes forces a hand. It is still your district’s rules that apply.

Outside those, the answer is your own consulate. Do not build a plan on somebody else’s screenshot of a third consulate’s page from last year. That is the failure mode this entire post exists to prevent.

What happens when the number moves under you

It happened to me, and it is worth stating plainly because it is the specific risk in filing close to the line. You assemble six months of statements against a figure, and between assembling them and sitting down at the window, the figure the consulate applies is not the one you prepared against.

There is no appeal to arithmetic at the counter. The mitigations are boring and they work:

  • File with margin, not at the line. Ten per cent is not much of a cushion when both the UMA and the rate can move.
  • Bring both tests. If your balance also clears 11,460 días de UMA over twelve months, bring those statements too. It costs paper.
  • Re-check the page the week of the appointment. If it changed, you find out before the window, not at it.
  • If you are refused, ask what for. A refusal is information, and it usually names a document rather than a verdict on you.

The full folder, in the order it gets asked for, is the consulate interview. The arithmetic behind the threshold itself is the UMA multiple.

After the consulate, the clock

Whichever consulate you file at, you get the same thing: a single-entry visa, valid 180 days, which is not residency. From the day you enter Mexico you have 30 calendar days to start the card trámite at INM — in this city, the office on Calle 31 in Col. México.

The consulate you chose stops mattering the moment you land. The canje does not care, and it is the part with the deadline.

Where to check this

  • The multiples: DOF código 5763837.
  • The UMA: INEGI, effective 1 February each year.
  • Your figures, your documents, your fee: your own consulate’s pages, on a date you write down.

Nothing here is immigration advice, and consular officers exercise discretion that no checklist overrides. Where a file stops being routine — an unusual income structure, a refusal to answer, a dependent with a complication — the gestor question is where that gets priced.