How Much Does It Cost to Set Up an FDI Company in Vietnam?

Updated 2026-09-24

There is no single sticker price for setting up a foreign-invested (FDI) company in Vietnam — the total depends on your sector, your capital, and how many of your documents need legalising. Rather than quote a number that would not fit your case, we break the cost into the parts that actually make it up, so you can see where your money goes before you commit.

Capital: how much you must commit

Capital is not a fee you pay to anyone — it is your own money that goes into the company and stays there to fund the business. But it is the first cost you need to plan for, because the amount is not entirely your choice.

Vietnam sets no general minimum charter capital across sectors. What it does require is that your capital match the scale and nature of your project — a small consultancy and a manufacturing plant are judged very differently. Some conditional sectors also carry their own rules on minimum capital or on how much a foreign investor may own.

Once the company is licensed, the charter capital must be contributed within 90 days, and it must move through the direct investment capital account (DICA) — the dedicated bank account that records foreign investment flowing in and out.

Registration and state fees

These are the official charges for getting the two core licences: the IRC — the Investment Registration Certificate, and the ERC — the Enterprise Registration Certificate. Since 1 July 2025 the provincial Department of Finance (Sở Tài chính) has taken over both functions from the former Department of Planning and Investment. For a project inside an industrial zone, export-processing zone, hi-tech park or economic zone, the IRC is issued by the zone management board instead (Investment Law 143/2025/QH15 Art. 27(1), except the cases in Art. 27(3)); a company whose address is in a hi-tech park gets its ERC from the hi-tech park board (Decree 168/2025/ND-CP Art. 20(1)).

The state fees themselves are modest and can vary by province and by how your business is structured. They also include small mandatory items such as publishing the company's registration information. We set these out line by line so nothing is a surprise.

Document legalisation and translation

This is often the most variable cost, and it depends almost entirely on your own situation. Investor documents issued abroad — your passport, corporate records if the investor is a company, bank confirmations — usually need consular legalisation and certified Vietnamese translation before they can be filed.

The cost therefore scales with how many documents you have, which country issued them, and whether an individual or a corporate investor is behind the project. A single individual investor has far less to legalise than an overseas parent company setting up a subsidiary.

Office, seal and post-licensing set-up

An FDI company needs a real registered address in Vietnam, so a lease or a serviced-office arrangement is part of the picture. On top of that come the steps that turn a licence into a working company:

• A company seal
• Tax code registration and initial tax set-up, including e-invoicing under Decree 70/2025
• A corporate bank account and the direct investment capital account (DICA)
• Any sub-licences your specific sector requires before it can trade

Timeline — and why it affects cost

By law, the IRC is issued within 10 working days of a complete, valid dossier for a project that needs no in-principle approval and meets the conditions of Decree 96/2026/ND-CP Art. 39(3) (5 working days after the in-principle approval decision where one is needed; 15 working days under the special investment procedure), and the ERC within 3 working days of a valid dossier (Enterprise Law 59/2020/QH14 as amended by Law 76/2025/QH15, Art. 26(5)). In practice, from first document to a fully operational company, expect anywhere from a few weeks to more than a month — a practical estimate, not a legal time limit.

Delays usually come from legalisation and rounds of supplementary requests — and each round can add translation and administrative cost. Getting the paperwork right the first time is the single biggest way to keep both the timeline and the bill down.

How we quote it

Because every case is different, we do not publish a fixed price. We review your sector, your investor profile and your documents first, then give you one fixed quote that lays out each component above. You see the full picture before anything begins, and you only pay once you accept.