Indian e-Tourist Visa: the 30-day, 1-year and 5-year options compared, with fees by nationality

There are three Indian tourist e-Visas, not one, and the cheapest of them costs either $10 or $25 depending on nothing more than the month you land. Arrive on 28 June and the 30-day visa is $10. Arrive on 2 July and the same visa, with the same paperwork, is $25.

Which of the three you should buy depends on your passport more than on your trip. The gaps between nationalities are far wider than the gaps between the visas: a five-year tourist visa is $200 for most people, $160 for Americans, $25 for Japanese nationals and $484 for British ones. This guide covers what each option costs, what the visa lets you do, how long you can stay, and what actually gets applications refused. Figures come from the Government of India country-wise e-Tourist fee chart effective 9 July 2026, with a 3% bank charge added on top of whatever you pay.

The three options

They differ in more than length, and the 30-day one is the odd one out.

• The 30-day visa allows two entries and runs for 30 days from the date you arrive, not the date it is issued.
• The 1-year visa allows unlimited entries and runs for 365 days from the date it is granted.
• The 5-year visa allows unlimited entries and runs for five years from the date it is granted.

That distinction matters when you apply. On the 1-year and 5-year visas the clock starts when the government approves it, so applying three months ahead of a trip quietly burns three months of validity. On the 30-day visa it does not, because the clock starts at the airport.

What each one costs

For 138 of the 174 eligible nationalities the schedule is identical: $10 or $25 for 30 days depending on season, $40 for a year, $200 for five years. That covers most of Europe, Canada, Australia, Brazil, Mexico, South Korea, the Gulf states and almost everywhere else.

The other 36 are where it gets interesting:

Those 22 free nationalities are getting a full e-Visa. The government fee is simply nil, and the 3% bank charge on nil is also nil. You can check any passport against the schedule in our fee calculator or the full table by nationality.

If you hold two passports, compare them before you apply. A British and Irish dual national pays $484 for a five-year visa on the British passport and $200 on the Irish one. The visa that arrives is the same visa.

Is the five-year visa worth it?

A five-year visa is really five one-year visas you do not have to reapply for, so the honest test is whether the five-year price beats buying the one-year five times. Run that against the actual schedule and the answer flips completely depending on your passport.

The comparison is not perfectly like for like, and it is worth saying so. Each one-year visa runs 365 days from the day it is granted, so five of them only cover five continuous years if you time the renewals well. You also repeat the application five times, and the fee schedule can change between renewals.

Still, the practical readings are clear enough. For a Japanese, Sri Lankan or South African passport the five-year visa costs the same as the one-year, so there is no reason to buy the shorter one. At the standard rate it is a wash on money, which makes it worth buying if you expect more than a couple of trips and not worth the outlay if you do not. For a British passport the five-year visa is genuinely hard to justify. Three separate one-year visas cost $120 against $484, and you would need to be going to India most years before the convenience earns that back.

If you only want the cost side in more depth, we have a fuller breakdown in how much an Indian e-Visa costs.

The seasonal price on the 30-day visa

This one catches people because it appears nowhere obvious on the application. The 30-day e-Tourist Visa is $10 for arrivals between April and June and $25 for arrivals from July through March. It is keyed to when you land, not when you apply, so booking a late-June arrival instead of an early-July one is a real $15.

It is a small sum, and nobody should reschedule a holiday over it. But if your dates are already flexible and you are travelling as a family of four, the difference is $60 for changing the flight by a week.

How long you can actually stay

Two separate numbers get confused here: how long the visa lasts, and how long any one visit can be.

On the 1-year and 5-year visas, a continuous stay is capped at 90 days per visit for most nationalities. Holders of US, UK, Canadian and Japanese passports get 180 days per visit. You can leave and come back as often as you like within the validity period, and each visit gets its own allowance.

The 30-day visa is simpler and stricter. Thirty days from arrival, two entries, and that is the whole thing. None of the three can be extended once you are in India, and none can be converted into another visa category. If you need longer or a different purpose, you exit and apply again.

What the tourist visa covers

Sightseeing and recreation, visiting friends or relatives, short-term yoga programmes, and short-duration medical treatment including treatment under Indian systems of medicine.

Not covered: employment of any kind, journalism or filming assignments, research, missionary or NGO work, studying for a qualification, mountaineering, or entering protected and restricted areas without the separate permit those require.

The government's own description of the e-Tourist Visa includes the phrase "casual business visit", which causes a fair amount of confusion. Read it narrowly. It stretches to dropping into a supplier's office while you happen to be in the country on holiday. It does not stretch to a trip whose reason for existing is commercial. If that is your trip, the business e-Visa is the right category, and the question gets asked at immigration rather than during the application.

Documents

• Passport valid at least six months from your arrival date, with two blank pages
• Colour scan of the bio page, sharp enough that the machine-readable zone along the bottom is legible
• Photograph: square, plain white background, JPEG, between 10 KB and 1 MB
• A working email address, because the approved authorisation arrives there

Everyone travelling needs their own passport and their own e-Visa. Infants and children are not covered by a parent's application, and families are often surprised by this at the point of booking.

The photo specification is responsible for more rejections than any other single requirement. Too dark, slightly blurred, cropped wrong, or a background that reads as cream rather than white will all fail. Our free photo tool crops and checks against the exact specification.

Who cannot apply online

Four passports are absent from the government's e-Visa schedule and cannot use the online system at all: China, Hong Kong SAR, Macau SAR and Pakistan. Holders apply for a regular sticker visa through an Indian mission or authorised visa centre instead. Diplomatic and official passport holders are also outside the e-Visa scheme.

Eligibility follows your passport, not where you live. Permanent residence in an eligible country does not make an ineligible passport eligible, and this comes up constantly.

Arrival

The e-Tourist Visa works at 31 designated international airports and 5 seaports. You cannot enter India on it at a land border, which is the single most common planning mistake on overland routes from Nepal. Departure is less restricted: you may leave from any authorised immigration check post.

Print the approved authorisation and carry it with your passport. Officers ask for it routinely even though the visa is electronic. Biometrics are taken on arrival and a physical stamp goes into the passport. If you are arriving from a country where yellow fever is endemic, bring the vaccination certificate.

Why applications get refused

Roughly in order of how often each one bites:

1. Name not matching the passport exactly. Dropping a middle name is enough, and so is entering a married name that the passport has not caught up with.
2. Photograph failing the specification.
3. Passport with under six months of validity from the arrival date.
4. A passport scan that is blurred or crops the machine-readable zone, so the data cannot be matched against what you typed.
5. Wrong category. Tourist when the trip is commercial, or tourist when the trip is a planned course of medical treatment.
6. An arrival date that falls outside the window the visa can cover, usually from applying too far ahead.

The government fee is not refundable once the application is submitted, whatever the outcome. A refusal means paying it again, which is the whole argument for slowing down over the passport scan and the photograph.

Fees are taken from the Government of India country-wise e-Tourist Visa fee chart effective 9 July 2026 and can change. Confirm the current figure when you apply. Rules on validity, permitted activity and ports of entry are set by the Indian Ministry of Home Affairs. Apply eVisa India is an independent visa assistance service. We are not affiliated with the Government of India, and the official portal is indianvisaonline.gov.in.