Vietnam e-Visa for Indian Citizens: Fees, Timing and Traps

If you hold an ordinary Indian passport, you need a visa to enter mainland Vietnam. There is no visa-free entry for Indian tourists, no matter how short the trip, and the e-visa is the route almost every traveller should take: it is applied for online before you fly, it costs US$25 for a single entry, and it allows a stay of up to 90 days.

That is the whole answer. The rest of this guide is about the things that actually go wrong — a visa exemption that does not apply to you, a processing time that is only sometimes three days, a result that never arrives by email, and a portal that changed address in 2024 and left a trail of convincing imitations behind it.

India is on Vietnam’s exemption list. It does not help you.

Vietnam’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs publishes the official visa exemption list, and India is on it — which is why so many blogs and forum posts tell Indian travellers they can enter visa-free. Read the columns and the picture changes completely. India’s row is ticked for diplomatic and official, service and special passports, at 90 days. The column for ordinary passports is blank.

So unless you are travelling on a government passport, the exemption is not yours. A weekend in Ho Chi Minh City, a week in Hanoi, a business meeting in Da Nang, arriving by air, land or sea — all of it requires a visa arranged before you travel.

What it costs

The fee schedule is set in law, not by the website you apply through. Vietnam’s Ministry of Finance fixed it in Circular 28/2026/TT-BTC: US$25 for a single-entry visa, and US$50 for a multiple-entry visa valid up to 90 days. The same schedule prices longer multiple-entry visas from US$95 upward, but those are not e-visas — 90 days is the e-visa ceiling.

Two things about that money are worth knowing before you part with it. It is paid by international credit or debit card on the government portal, and it is not refunded if your application is refused. A rejected application is US$25 gone, which is the practical reason to be slow and careful with the form rather than fast.

How long it takes, and when three days becomes fifteen

The law is specific. Under Article 16a of the Law on Entry, Exit, Transit and Residence of Foreigners in Viet Nam, the immigration authority responds within three working days of receiving both your complete information and the fee. Note what starts the clock: not the moment you submit the form, but the moment the payment lands. Official guidance warns that the payment status on the portal can take up to two hours to update.

The exception is the part commercial sites tend to leave out. If your application is referred to the Ministry of Public Security for further verification, the published range is three to 15 working days. There is no way to know in advance whether yours will be, which is why the sensible plan is to apply two to three weeks before you fly rather than three days.

Getting the application right

Most refusals and most panicked last-minute reapplications come from the same place: a detail that does not match the passport. The official requirements are specific, so treat them as specific.

• A passport valid for at least six months on the day you arrive.
• A photograph to the stated specification — a recent 4×6 cm image, JPG or JPEG, under 2 MB, facing forward on a white background, in formal attire, with no hat and no glasses.
• Your full name exactly as printed in the passport. No spelling errors are allowed; incorrect information makes the visa invalid, and an invalid visa means you are not boarding.
• Your date of birth in day/month/year order — the format the portal expects.
• An arrival date that is not earlier than the date the e-visa takes effect.

Use the right website

At 08:00 on 11 November 2024 the Vietnamese e-visa portal moved to two new addresses: evisa.gov.vn and thithucdientu.gov.vn. The older government address now shows nothing but a notice pointing at the new ones — and that gap is exactly what clone sites were built to fill. Many of them look more like a government portal than the real one does.

Two checks settle it, every time:

• The domain ends in .gov.vn. If it does not, it is not the Vietnamese government, whatever the page says about being official or authorised.
• The fee is US$25 or US$50. A higher figure described as the government fee is a markup wearing a costume.

The one place an Indian passport gets in visa-free: Phu Quoc

There is a genuine exception, and it is not nationality-based. Under Prime Ministerial Decision 80/2020/QĐ-TTg, holders of foreign passports are exempt from the visa requirement for entry into and exit from Phu Quoc island for stays of up to 30 days. Indian travellers qualify like everyone else.

Vietnamese missions state the conditions as follows:

• Phu Quoc is your destination — you arrive there from outside Vietnam, by air or by sea.
• You leave Phu Quoc within 30 days, and you can show proof of that onward or return travel.
• Your onward destination is outside Vietnam.
• Your passport is valid for at least six months on arrival.

One point deserves care, because official wording and practical advice pull in different directions. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs note says the exemption still applies to passengers who transit another Vietnamese international border gate before reaching Phu Quoc. Embassy guidance is stricter, framing the exemption around arriving with Phu Quoc as your route’s final destination. The safe booking is the unambiguous one: Phu Quoc as your first Vietnamese port of entry, and a departure straight out to another country.

Single entry or multiple?

Both cost the same to apply for and both allow up to 90 days; the difference is what happens when you leave. A single-entry e-visa is spent the moment you exit Vietnam, so a side trip to Cambodia, Laos or Thailand with a return leg through Vietnam needs the US$50 multiple-entry version. If Vietnam is one arrival and one departure, single entry is all you are paying for.