Vietnam Immigration has 3 working days by law to decide an eVisa, counted from the day it holds your complete application and fee, on Vietnam time, with weekends and public holidays skipped. Through Vietnam Visa by BDA, Normal takes 5 to 10 business days, Urgent 2 business days (+$45 per applicant) and Super Urgent 1 business day (+$85 per applicant), counted from when your application reaches Vietnam Immigration. Give yourself one to two weeks and the speed tiers stop mattering.
Those are three numbers doing three different jobs, which is why answers to "how long does it take to get a Vietnam visa?" rarely match. One is a legal deadline, one is what we sell and one is your own margin, and each has its own clock.
The Legal Clock: 3 Working Days From a Complete Application
The deadline sits in Article 16a of Vietnam's Law on Entry, Exit, Transit and Residence of Foreigners. It gives Vietnam Immigration 3 working days to consider and answer an eVisa application, counted from receipt of complete application information and the visa fee. Read that last part twice. The clock doesn't start when you open the form, or when you pay a service like ours. It starts when Immigration holds a complete, paid file. Real files run a little slower than the law. Three working days is the statutory standard, and 3 to 5 working days is what usually happens. Tet and public holidays push it further. Processing times are set by Vietnam Immigration, for every application, whoever sends it in. We can file, chase and correct; we can't move an approval up the line.
⚠️ Unpaid means the clock hasn't started. If you applied at evisa.gov.vn yourself and the status page still shows Unpaid, Immigration doesn't have a paid file. None of the 3 working days have run. The same page lets you reopen that application to edit it and pay, so check it before you start over.
Working Days on Vietnam Time: Weekends, Holidays and Tet 2027
Vietnam's eVisa site says declaration and processing times run on UTC+07:00, which is Vietnam time, and the application form carries a live clock set to it. The day changes at midnight in Hanoi, not wherever you happen to be. After 5 p.m. UTC on a Friday it's already Saturday in Vietnam, and anything sent then won't meet a working day until Monday. If the arithmetic for your city is fiddly, here's how Vietnam time lines up with yours.
Saturdays and Sundays are the civil service's weekly days off, which is how the 2027 National Day holiday runs four days, from September 2 to 5: two statutory holidays plus a weekend.
Two closures already have their dates set. Civil servants get Tuesday, November 24, 2026 off for Vietnamese Culture Day, a new holiday that's easy to miss. Then Tet runs from Thursday, February 4 through Wednesday, February 10, 2027, a 7-day break for government offices.
The Government Office's letter approving those dates asks agencies to keep duty staff working through the holidays, which isn't the same as processing eVisas. Count the break as dead time. An application that's complete on Tuesday, February 2, 2027 can use at most two of its 3 working days before offices close, so its legal deadline can't land before Thursday, February 11.
⚠️ Treat Tet 2027 as a 7-day gap in every timeline. Nothing published says eVisas are processed from February 4 to 10, 2027, and none of those days counts as a working day. If you land in mid-February, apply in January.
Our Speed Tiers: What Normal, Urgent and Super Urgent Buy
Vietnam Visa by BDA sells three speed tiers and prices, with any surcharge charged per applicant:
| Tier | Normal | Urgent | Super Urgent |
|---|---|---|---|
| Delivery after we submit | 5 to 10 business days | 2 business days | 1 business day |
| Surcharge per applicant | Included | +$45 | +$85 |
| Total, 1-month single entry | $54 | $99 | $139 |
The clock starts when your application reaches Vietnam Immigration, normally within 2 business hours of payment, not at checkout. Our page on how the application timeline works walks through each step from form to filing. The bottom row is the cheapest eVisa, $54, with each surcharge added.
Paying for speed buys our turnaround, not a different government process. Vietnam Immigration still makes the decision, and its own site sells no express option. A weekend or a holiday also sits outside every business-day count, ours included. If your flight leaves within 24 hours, phone +84 832 320 320 before paying so we can tell you whether it's doable. If we can't deliver in time, we'll tell you upfront and refund. The line is open 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. Vietnam time, seven days, and those are our support hours, not Immigration's processing hours.
Why Some Applications Take Longer: Corrections, Copycats and Volume
In November 2024, Vietnam's Immigration Department said many tourists had entered their details on unofficial websites or sent incorrect or incomplete information, and that this was delaying eVisas. As of that month, the old eVisa site was handling over 15,000 applications a day. Volume has kept climbing: in 2025, Vietnam issued more than four million eVisas.
Corrections are the delay you control. When Immigration wants a change, the status page shows Amendment required, with a Reason line saying what to fix and a link to send the application back. Because the 3 working days run from complete information, our reading of the law's wording, not a published rule, is that the count starts again once the corrected file returns. That's why we read every application before we submit it and email you to fix typos, mismatches or photo problems at no extra cost. A fix made before Immigration sees the file never touches its clock.
⚠️ Check the address before you pay anyone. Vietnam Immigration's eVisa site is evisa.gov.vn, and thithucdientu.gov.vn is its Vietnamese-language alias. Details typed into a look-alike site are one of the delays the Immigration Department itself has named.
The Government Route: $25 and No Express Lane
You can skip us entirely. Apply at evisa.gov.vn and you pay only Vietnam Immigration's fee, which Circular 28/2026/TT-BTC sets at $25 for a single-entry eVisa and $50 for multiple entry. The site lists no express option at any price. The same 3-working-day legal deadline applies there, so on that route the only way to speed things up is to apply earlier.
Vietnam Visa by BDA is a private company. We're not affiliated with the Vietnamese government, and the address check above applies to us as much as anyone. Our 1-month single-entry eVisa costs $54 with the $25 government fee inside it, so $29 is what you pay for our service: a person reads your application before it's filed, catches what would come back as an amendment and chases Immigration until the eVisa is issued.
Processing Time Isn't Validity: You Pick the Window
How fast the eVisa arrives tells you nothing about how long it lasts. A Vietnam eVisa can be valid for up to 90 days, single or multiple entry, and you choose the dates yourself: the form asks when you want the eVisa valid from and to, and it won't accept a window longer than 90 days. With an eVisa, you can stay until the end date on it. Set the start on or before the day you land, not the day you book.
A multiple-entry eVisa lets you leave and come back while it's valid. For travelers who qualify to enter visa-free, current Vietnamese law sets no minimum gap between visits. Our Vietnam visa guide covers which length and entry type suits which kind of trip.
How Many Days to Allow: Two Weeks, and Why
Give yourself one to two weeks and the speed tiers stop mattering; our terms recommend applying at least that far in advance. If you can, plan on the top of that range. Two calendar weeks hold 10 business days, the slow end of Normal, so two weeks out the whole Normal range fits before your flight. Cut that to a week and you have 5 business days, Normal's best case, with no room for a correction.
Then add any holiday on top. A trip that starts in mid-February 2027 needs those two weeks plus the 7 days of Tet, which pushes the application back into January. Inside a week, Urgent and Super Urgent earn their surcharge. Inside 24 hours, phone before paying.
Embassy Visas and Visa on Arrival: Two Other Clocks
A visa from an embassy runs on that embassy's timetable, not on the eVisa's. The Embassy of Vietnam in Washington processes applications in 5 working days, or 1 to 4 with expedited service, counted from a complete application and fee, and it takes them in person or by mail. That's one embassy's published time, so check the one you'd use.
Visa on arrival isn't a walk-up option either. It works only in specific cases, and a sponsor in Vietnam has to get Immigration's approval before you fly. Vietnam Immigration then has up to 3 working days to approve the request, or 12 working hours for a funeral, a serious illness or an emergency, and the visa is stamped at the border against that approval. We don't process visa-on-arrival letters, and for most travelers the eVisa is simpler.
What to Expect When It Arrives
When Immigration approves the application, its status reads Acceptance, and the eVisa itself is a PDF file from Vietnam Immigration's eVisa site. Vietnam's immigration law describes printing the eVisa from that site, so carry a printed copy and keep one on your phone.
Before you pack, hold the dates on the eVisa against your flights. You can enter only from the start date printed on the visa, and you must leave by its end date. The timing questions we get asked most often have their own answers on our FAQ page.