Vietnam Work Permit Cost in 2026: The Full Fee Breakdown

Updated 2026-07-04

"How much does a Vietnam work permit cost?" is the first question most employers and foreign hires ask — and the honest answer is: it depends. There is no single sticker price, because the total is built from several separate components, and some of them are set province by province. Below we break the cost into its real parts so you can see what you are actually paying for and what pushes the number up or down. Rather than quote figures that would be wrong for your case, InTimeVisa prepares the whole file and gives you one fixed quote up front.

The cost is built from components, not one price

A work permit total is the sum of a handful of distinct line items. Some are official fees paid to the state, some are third-party costs (hospitals, notaries, consulates), and one is the service fee for preparing and lodging the file. Knowing the components is the only way to compare quotes honestly.

The main pieces are:

• State issuance fee (lệ phí cấp GPLĐ) — set by each province, so it varies
• Criminal record check, plus its consular legalisation
• Health check at an approved hospital in Vietnam
• Notarised Vietnamese translation of your degree and experience documents
• The agent service fee for preparing, lodging and tracking the file

The state issuance fee (set by each province)

The official fee to issue the work permit (lệ phí cấp giấy phép lao động) is not fixed nationwide. Each province's People's Council sets its own rate, so the same permit can cost a different official fee in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Da Nang, Binh Duong or Bac Ninh.

This is a government charge, paid to the state, and it is usually one of the smaller components of the total. Because it moves by province, we confirm the exact figure for the province where your sponsoring company is registered before we quote you.

Criminal record check and consular legalisation

You need a clean criminal record certificate. If it is issued abroad, it must go through consular legalisation (and often an apostille first, depending on the country) so Vietnam will accept it — or you can use a Vietnamese judicial record (Phiếu lý lịch tư pháp) if you have been resident here long enough.

The cost here has two parts: the fee the issuing country charges for the certificate itself, and the legalisation/apostille and consular fees on top. This is frequently the single most variable and time-consuming component, because it depends on your nationality, where the document is issued, and how many countries it has to pass through. The more overseas documents you have that need legalisation, the higher — and slower — this part becomes.

Health check and notarised translation

A health certificate confirming you are fit to work is mandatory, and it must come from a hospital or clinic approved for this purpose. The cost is the hospital's own fee, which varies between facilities; it is a fixed, predictable item once you know where the check is done.

Your degree and proof-of-experience documents also have to be translated into Vietnamese and notarised. That cost scales with how many documents you have and how long they are — one degree certificate is cheap; a stack of employment letters, contracts and reference letters adds up. Documents issued abroad usually need consular legalisation before translation, which ties this item back to the legalisation cost above.

The agent service fee — and what drives your total

The last component is the service fee for handling the case: reviewing your eligibility, assembling and checking the file, managing translation and legalisation, lodging it with the authority and tracking it to issuance. This is where the risk of a rejected or returned file is absorbed — a wrong or missing document can cost far more in lost time than the fee itself.

Three things mostly drive your final total:

• How many overseas documents need legalisation — the biggest and most variable cost
• Which province issues the permit — the state fee and local requirements vary
• The position and category (expert, manager, technical worker) — which changes the proof required