Vietnam's entry rules, checked against what the government actually publishes
Vietnamese decrees currently open 83 checkpoints to travellers arriving on an e-visa. The list published on the official e-visa portal names 42. 41 of them appear in the law and not on the portal.
That is the gap this site exists to close. One document is right and the other is incomplete, and a traveller reading either one alone cannot tell which is which. Below is the comparison, checkpoint by checkpoint, with the decree on one side and the portal’s own list on the other.
To be exact about what this does and does not mean: we are comparing two documents on a given date. We are not telling you that an unlisted checkpoint will turn you away, and we are not telling you the portal is wrong. Border control decides who enters, and only it can say what a particular crossing does today.
| Type of checkpoint | In force by decree | Listed on the portal | Not listed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Airport | 17 | 13 | 4 |
| Land border | 27 | 16 | 11 |
| Port | 39 | 13 | 26 |
The full list of the 41 unlisted checkpoints, each with the decree that added it, sits on the entry check alongside the rest of the entry data.
Viet Nam rewrote its entry rules across 2023 to 2026, and the official e-visa portal has not caught up with its own government. We read the decrees, we read the portal, and we publish the difference with the date we checked it.
That difference is not a curiosity. A checkpoint can be open by decree and missing from the only list most travellers will ever see, and nothing on either page tells you the two disagree. Our entry check carries both sides, so you can see which document says what.
Every fact here lives in a database with a link to the act it came from and the date we last read it. Where we could not reach a first-party source, the page says so and names what we tried. A number without a source and a date is worse than no number, because it looks reliable.
Start here
- Entry checkEnter your nationality, entry point, length of stay and travel dates to see which entry route applies, whether your entry point accepts e-visa, and what overstaying costs.
- Driving permitsVietnamese law gives a foreign international driving permit effect under whichever treaty Viet Nam belongs to, and points at a list the traffic police must publish. We could not obtain that list. Here is everything that is established, and nothing that is not.
- Law against official listsA dated register of every first-party source behind this site: what the decrees say, what the official portals publish, what we could not reach, and the error we got. Checked 3 August 2026.