Vietnam entry reference
Applying for a Vietnam E-Visa Yourself
The whole application, field by field, on the government portal. About twenty minutes, twenty-five dollars, and no middleman anywhere in it.
- Updated
- 15 August 2026
- Reading time
- 4 minutes
- Purpose
- Independent reference
The short version
The Vietnamese e-visa application is one online form, two uploaded images, and a card payment made directly to the immigration department. It takes most people about twenty minutes. The government fee is 25 USD for single entry and 50 USD for multiple entry. There is no interview, no document courier, no agent, and nothing to post.
We are stating that plainly because almost every page competing for this search belongs to a company whose revenue depends on you concluding the opposite.
Where to apply
Applications are made on the national immigration portal, reachable at evisa.gov.vn and at thithucdientu.gov.vn. Both are the same system.
Before typing anything, check the address bar. A large number of near-identical sites exist that take a form, add a fee of their own on top of the government’s, and submit the same application you could have submitted directly. They are not illegal and some of them work, but they are not the government, whatever the domain name suggests. If a site is not on a gov.vn domain, it is a company.
What you need in front of you
Have these ready before you start, because the session can time out:
- Your passport, open at the photo page. Expiry must be at least six months after your intended entry date, with two blank pages.
- A digital scan of that photo page — the whole page, flat, all four corners visible, nothing cropped off.
- A portrait photo of yourself, taken in the last six months, plain white background, no glasses, no hat, face straight to camera.
- Your intended entry date and the border checkpoint you plan to arrive at.
- The address of your first night’s accommodation.
- A card that works for international payments.
Field by field
Personal details. These must match the passport exactly, in the same order the passport prints them. If your passport shows a middle name, include it. If it shows your surname first, follow that. A mismatch between the application and the passport is the single most common reason an otherwise fine application fails.
Passport number. Copy it character by character and then read it back from the passport, not from what you typed. Zero and the letter O are the usual casualty.
Intended date of entry. This is the date the visa becomes valid, not the date you apply. Standard processing is three working days, so give yourself a margin — pick a date at least a week out.
Entry and exit checkpoints. You name the border post you intend to arrive at. Choose the airport you actually fly into. Our page on entry ports covers which checkpoints accept e-visas and what happens if your plans change after the visa is issued.
Purpose of entry. Tourism, for a tourist. Do not overthink this field or invent a category that sounds more official.
The two uploads that fail most often
The portrait and the passport scan cause the majority of rejected applications, and both fail for mechanical reasons rather than judgement calls — wrong crop, wrong format, glare across the page, a photo that no longer looks like you. The requirements are specific enough that we gave them a page of their own; read it before uploading rather than after being refused.
Paying and waiting
Payment is taken at the end, by card, and the fee is not refunded if the application is refused. You receive a registration code on screen. Save it. It is what you use to retrieve the result, and the system does not reliably email it to you.
Standard processing is three working days, excluding weekends and Vietnamese public holidays. Plan for three to five in practice.
Collecting the result
You return to the portal and enter your registration code, date of birth and email. If approved, you download a PDF. Print it. Do not rely on a phone at the border — signal in an arrivals hall is unreliable and some airlines ask for it at check-in before you have left home.
Check the PDF against your passport the moment it arrives: name spelling, passport number, validity dates, number of entries. A mistake found now is fixable. A mistake found at a border counter is a cancelled trip.
Confirm before you book
Fees, processing times and portal addresses in this page were checked on 15 August 2026 and can change by decree without notice. This is a reference, not an authority — verify anything load-bearing on the government portal itself before booking flights.