Vietnam Work Permit Cost in 2026: The Full Fee Breakdown

Updated 2026-09-18

"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 apostille (or 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: apostille or consular legalisation

You need a clean criminal record certificate. If it was issued abroad it has to be authenticated before Vietnam will accept it — and since 11 September 2026 that is normally a single apostille, not the old consular-legalisation chain. Vietnam is now a party to the 1961 Hague Apostille Convention, and Decree 293/2026/NĐ-CP of 23 July 2026 (in force 11 September 2026) makes the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Vietnam's apostille authority. Under Article 25 of that Decree, a document carrying a valid apostille from a Convention state that the Convention operates with is exempt from consular legalisation, and the Vietnamese body receiving it may not require any further authentication step. If you have lived here long enough you can use a Vietnamese judicial record (Phiếu lý lịch tư pháp) instead and skip the question entirely.

Either way the cost has two parts: the fee the issuing country charges for the certificate itself, and the authentication fee on top. An apostille is one step at one authority, so for most nationalities this component is now clearly cheaper and faster than it was before September 2026. Consular legalisation is the multi-step version — issuing authority, then that country's foreign ministry, then a Vietnamese embassy or consulate — and where it still applies it remains the most variable and slowest item in the whole file. Either way, the number of overseas documents you need is what drives this figure.

A certificate that was already consular-legalised before 11 September 2026 keeps its validity in Vietnam. Under the transitional rules in Article 36 of Decree 293/2026/NĐ-CP, the authority receiving it cannot send you back to obtain an apostille for a document legalised under the old system.

Consular legalisation is still the route in these cases:

• Germany, Austria and Czechia — each objected to Vietnam's accession, so the Convention does not operate between them and Vietnam
• Thailand — it acceded in 2026, but the Convention only enters into force there on 28 February 2027
• Any country that is not a party to the Apostille Convention

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. An apostille does not remove this cost: under Article 27 of Decree 293/2026/NĐ-CP a document not drawn up in Vietnamese still has to be translated into Vietnamese and the translation notarised or certified — whether it arrived with an apostille or with consular legalisation.

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, apostille 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 an apostille or 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