The Vietnam e-visa, explained

A Vietnam visa for a tourist means the e-visa: 25 USD, one sitting at a laptop, issued by the Immigration Department through a government website.

The official pages tell you the rules but not what to expect. The agency sites that fill the gap charge three to four times the fee to type the same form.

What follows is the portal itself: the two genuinely official addresses, what the timing depends on, and the mistakes that get an application refused. The fee is not refunded when that happens.

How much does the Vietnam e-visa actually cost?

The Vietnam e-visa costs 25 USD for a single-entry visa and 50 USD for a multiple-entry visa, paid by card on the government portal. That is the whole fee. The Immigration Department states it plainly: the payment is non-refundable if the visa is not granted. Ten minutes spent checking the form is worth more than any expedite service.

Agency sites quote 60 to 120 USD for the same application. They are not fraudulent — they fill in the form on your behalf — but they are typing, not influence. No agency can approve your visa faster, and none has a channel the portal does not. They rarely outrank the government on this query; they reach you through ads and through the blog posts that answer the questions the portal leaves alone.

Which website is the official Vietnam e-visa site?

Two addresses are official: evisa.gov.vn and thithucdientu.gov.vn. Both belong to the Immigration Department under the Ministry of Public Security. The portal's own FAQ tells applicants to use them specifically "to avoid accessing unofficial electronic information pages, which may result in unauthorized fees".

The warning is the single most valuable line on the whole site, and almost nobody reads it. Search results for this query are held by the government portals and by embassy pages. The agencies sit above them, in the ad slots, where a warning about unauthorised fees does not appear.

Check the address bar before you type a passport number into anything.

How long does the Vietnam e-visa take to approve?

Plan for several working days. Take the timing question off the table entirely by applying early: the Immigration Department allows applications up to one year before your planned entry date. Agencies commonly advertise three to five working days, and that matches most travellers' experience, but it is their number rather than a published government commitment.

Applying a month out costs nothing extra and turns a nervous wait into a non-event. Applying three days before a flight is where people start paying agencies for "urgent" processing that the portal does not actually sell.

What photo does the Vietnam e-visa need?

The portal wants a recent 4 × 6 cm photo in JPG or JPEG format, under 2 MB. Take it face-on against a white background, no hat, no glasses, in formal attire. It uploads separately from a scan of your passport data page — two images, two fields.

Three details cause most of the trouble here:

• Glasses are not allowed at all. Not "no glare" — no glasses.
• The crop is 4 × 6 cm, a 2:3 portrait. A square crop from a US or Indian visa application cuts off the shoulders and fails.
• The passport scan has to be readable, including the two machine-readable lines at the bottom. Glare across them is a common refusal even when the portrait is perfect.

The portal validates the passport image on upload and refuses an invalid one. A rejected file at that stage is helpful rather than fatal. The portrait is checked later, by a person.

Why do Vietnam e-visa applications get refused?

Applications are refused for mismatched details far more often than for anything dramatic. The name you type must match the machine-readable line at the bottom of your passport data page, in uppercase, including your middle name. The portal's FAQ says exactly that. It is also the error travellers make most. The name printed in the visual zone and the name in the machine-readable line are not always formatted the same way.

Three more that come straight from the official FAQ:

1. Your passport must outlast the visa by at least 30 days. The rule is stated as a comparison, not a fixed date: the e-visa's validity must be at least 30 days shorter than the passport's.
2. Undeclared history. The form asks about previous trips and previous violations. Omitting a past violation is itself grounds for refusal.
3. Applying from inside Vietnam. The e-visa is for people who want to enter. If you are already in the country, you cannot apply for one.

Do I need to enter and leave through the same border gate?

No. An e-visa holder may leave through a different international border gate than the one they entered through. An open-jaw trip, in through Hanoi and out through Ho Chi Minh City, is perfectly ordinary. The one constraint is that both gates must be on the government's list of designated international border gates.

Before you fly, the Immigration Department also recommends completing the pre-arrival form at prearrival.immigration.gov.vn. It is not the visa and it does not replace it; it is a declaration that shortens the queue at the counter.

Is the e-visa the same as a visa on arrival?

No. The e-visa is issued online before you travel. A visa on arrival is stamped into your passport at the airport. It works only if you already hold a pre-approval letter arranged before the flight.

The pre-approval letter is not something the government portal sells, which is why visa on arrival has always been an agency product in practice. What happens when an e-visa runs out is a separate and messier question — see staying longer.

The visa on arrival page sets out the letter, the counter and the two fees in full. The e-visa also reaches border gates that visa on arrival never did.

Visa on arrival is collected at an airport counter. It is useless if you cross from Cambodia by road. The e-visa is valid at the land and sea gates on the government's designated list. For a tourist deciding between them in 2026, the e-visa is cheaper, works at more gates, and involves no counter.

What the e-visa does not cover

The e-visa is a 90-day permission, single or multiple entry, and it is not a work permit. Vietnamese law requires foreigners working in Vietnam to hold a work permit or a written confirmation that they are exempt from one.

Arriving on a tourist e-visa and taking a job is a different legal problem from a visa question, and the visa will not solve it. The remote work guide is honest about where that leaves someone working for a foreign employer, and a layover needs the same permission as any other entry.

Nor does it cover everyone. Clauses 1 to 4 of Article 8 of the Law on Entry, Exit, Transit and Residence of Foreigners bar some applicants from this route entirely. They must apply through an inviting organisation instead.