How to Spot the Official Vietnam Visa Websites (and the Lookalikes)

Updated 2026-07-17

Vietnam has exactly two official eVisa websites — evisa.gov.vn and thithucdientu.gov.vn — both run by the Vietnam Immigration Department, and the government fee is US$25 for a single-entry eVisa or US$50 for multiple entry. Every other website that sells Vietnam visas is a private company, no matter how official its name sounds. This guide shows you how to verify a government site in seconds, the red-flag patterns dishonest sites share, and what an honest private agent looks like — including full disclosure of what we are, because InTimeVisa is itself a private agent, not the government.

Which Vietnam visa websites are actually official?

Since November 11, 2024, Vietnam's Electronic Visa Portal has run on two domains: evisa.gov.vn and thithucdientu.gov.vn. Both are operated by the Vietnam Immigration Department, part of the Ministry of Public Security, and both open the same application system. The department's earlier portal, evisa.xuatnhapcanh.gov.vn, still carries official notices, and xuatnhapcanh.gov.vn is its national information portal.

The pattern to memorize is the ending: .gov.vn is reserved for Vietnamese government agencies. No official Vietnam eVisa site ends in .com, .net, .org — or plain .vn without the .gov: the eVisa portal lives only on .gov.vn domains. (Vietnamese embassies abroad are the one government exception to the pattern — the Embassy in Washington uses vietnamembassy-usa.org — but no embassy sells the eVisa online.)

• evisa.gov.vn — the official eVisa portal: apply, pay, check status, download your visa
• thithucdientu.gov.vn — second official domain of the same portal (thi thuc dien tu is Vietnamese for electronic visa)
• evisa.xuatnhapcanh.gov.vn — the Immigration Department's earlier eVisa portal
• xuatnhapcanh.gov.vn — the National Portal on Immigration, for official information
• vietnam.travel — Vietnam's official tourism board site (information only, no applications)
• vn.usembassy.gov — the US Embassy in Vietnam, with entry guidance for US citizens

How can I tell a government site from a private visa website?

Price is the fastest test. On the official portal you pay exactly US$25 for a single-entry eVisa or US$50 for multiple entry, paid to the Vietnam Immigration Department — nothing more. Any site charging more is a private business adding a service fee on top. That is legal, and sometimes worth paying, but it is only honest when the site shows you the two numbers separately.

Behavior is the second test. The government portal does not advertise, run countdown timers, chat you up, or email you discounts. It quotes one price and one timeline — three working days from a complete application and paid fee, not counting weekends or Vietnamese public holidays — and it tells you plainly that the fee is not refunded if the application is refused. A site that is selling to you is a company.

There is also no paid fast lane on the portal itself. Careful preparation and legitimate escalation can save you days of avoidable delay, but nobody — including us — can force the Immigration Department to decide faster than it decides, and anyone who guarantees they can is bluffing.

What are the red flags of a visa website you shouldn't trust?

No single flag proves a site is dishonest, but the flags cluster. One means slow down; two or more mean close the tab. These are patterns, not names — the behaviors repeat across the industry, and the behaviors are what you need to recognize.

• The domain leans on words like official, embassy, gov, immigration, or evisa — but does not end in .gov.vn
• No named company, no owner, no physical address, no registration number: just a form and a card field
• One lump price, with no split between the US$25/US$50 government fee and the service fee
• Guaranteed approval — nobody can guarantee it; the decision belongs to the Vietnam Immigration Department, and a refusal has no appeal, only a fresh application and a fresh fee
• Manufactured urgency: countdown clocks, slots running out, pressure to pay in the next ten minutes
• Government cosplay: crests, seals, red-and-yellow ministry styling on a commercial site
• Promises that the government itself will process faster than its published three working days — a speed the government, not the seller, controls

What does an honest private visa agent look like?

Private visa agents are legal, and a good one earns its fee. The test is whether the site is honest about what it is — and concrete about what it can actually do.

In one line: an honest agent sells preparation and error-recovery. A dishonest one sells the illusion of influence.

• Says plainly that it is a private company, not the Vietnamese government — where you can see it, not buried in the terms
• Shows the US$25/US$50 government fee separately from its own service fee, before you enter card details
• Has a named legal entity, real people, and an address you could write to
• Tells you that you can apply yourself at evisa.gov.vn for US$25, and when that is all you need
• Describes its work concretely: pre-checking your dossier, fixing photo and passport-scan errors before submission, responding correctly when the portal returns an application for amendment, monitoring status, escalating through legitimate channels
• Warns you that the government fee is non-refundable even if the visa is refused, instead of hiding it

When is paying an agent worth it — and when should you just DIY for US$25?

If your case is simple — a clean passport scan, a compliant photo, names and dates that fit the form — apply yourself at evisa.gov.vn. That is not reluctant advice: a clean, complete application does not need professional help to be approved, and any agent who implies otherwise is manufacturing a problem.

An agent starts earning its fee when the cost of an error is high. Your departure is close enough that a refusal or an amendment loop would sink the trip — and remember that airlines check for an approved eVisa at check-in, so a still-pending application is not enough to board. Your details are error-prone: long or reordered names, a previous refusal, old documents that do not quite match. The portal has already returned your application for amendment and you are not sure what it wants. Or you are filing for a family or group and want every dossier checked to the same standard.

What no agent can do, at any price: approve a visa, make the Immigration Department decide faster than it decides, or recover the US$25/US$50 government fee after a refusal.

Is it safe to give my passport details to a visa website?

A passport scan is one of the most valuable documents an identity thief can hold, and every eVisa application requires one. So the real question is not just whether a site's price is fair — it is who, exactly, ends up holding your passport data.

Only two kinds of sites should ever see it: the official government portal, or a private company you can actually identify — a legal name, an address, a privacy policy that says what is kept and for how long. If the site has no identity, your passport has no custodian, and no privacy law helps you against a counterparty you cannot name.

What should you check before typing your passport number into any site?

Run this check before you enter a passport number or card detail anywhere. It takes about a minute.

• Read the domain from the end: does it finish in .gov.vn? Then it is the Vietnamese government. Treat any other site selling Vietnam visas as a private company — the rare government exceptions, such as embassy websites like vietnamembassy-usa.org, never sell the eVisa online.
• Find the fee split: is the US$25/US$50 government fee shown separately from any service fee? A lump sum is hiding the markup.
• Find the company: legal name, address, people. If you cannot find who they are, do not upload who you are.
• Find the disclaimer: an honest private site says it is not the government, somewhere you can see it.
• Scan for guarantees: promised approval or promised government speed ends the conversation.
• When in doubt, type evisa.gov.vn into the address bar yourself instead of clicking an ad or a link.

Is InTimeVisa an official government website?

No. InTimeVisa is a private consulting firm — and if you landed on this article while checking up on us, good. That is exactly the check this guide is teaching, and we would rather pass it honestly than pass ourselves off as something we are not.

Here is our disclosure, in the same terms we asked you to demand from everyone else. We are not the Vietnamese government and not affiliated with it. We cannot approve visas, cannot guarantee approval, and cannot make the Immigration Department decide faster than it decides. If you hire us, you pay two separate amounts: the government's US$25 or US$50, which goes to Vietnam Immigration and is not refunded if the visa is refused, and our service fee, which pays for the work we actually control — pre-checking your dossier against the portal's real rejection patterns, submitting it correctly, monitoring the status, and handling amendments or a clean resubmission if something goes wrong.

And if your case is simple: apply yourself at evisa.gov.vn for US$25. You will probably be fine, and we would rather tell you that than be one more site hoping you never find the official one.