Spotting a fake Vietnam visa site

Search for a Vietnam visa and the results are crowded with sites that copy the official look closely enough to fool a hurried traveller. Some are honest agencies; some are imitations built to be mistaken for the government. This page is how to tell them apart, using signs you can check in under a minute. It sells nothing and asks for nothing.

Start with the address

The most reliable single check is the domain. Genuine Vietnamese government sites end in .gov.vn, and the e-visa portal is evisa.gov.vn. Anything ending in .com, .org or .net is a private site by definition, however official the page looks.

Watch especially for near-misses built to deceive, such as an address ending in .govt.vn rather than .gov.vn. One extra letter is the whole trick. Reading the address bar carefully defeats most imitations before you have entered anything.

Check who is behind it

An honest operator says who it is. Somewhere on the site there should be a real identity: a company or trading name, a contact, an address. A page that presents a government-style interface while hiding its operator is telling you something important about itself.

The absence of a nameable entity is not a small oversight in this niche. A legitimate agency is willing to be identified because it stands behind the service; an imitation avoids it precisely because it does not.

Read the price the right way

The government e-visa charge is fixed: US$25 for single entry, US$50 for multiple. That number is the anchor for everything else.

An honest agency will add a service fee and, if it is honest, will name that fee separately from the government charge. The warning pattern is a single inflated total with no breakdown, or a screen that mimics an official checkout while quietly charging several times the state fee. If you cannot see which part is the government charge and which part is the service, ask before you pay.

Notice the pressure

Imitation sites lean on urgency because urgency stops people checking. A countdown that has nothing to do with your flight, a guaranteed approval time, a claim of official authorisation: each is designed to move you past the checks above.

Genuine information does not need to rush you. A real processing time is a working-days figure, not a ticking clock, and no private party can promise an approval, because the decision belongs to immigration. Treat manufactured pressure as a reason to slow down, not speed up.

A one-minute verification

• The address ends in .gov.vn for the official portal; anything else is private.
• Watch for look-alikes such as .govt.vn that copy the official ending.
• A real operator names itself: company, contact, address.
• The government charge is US$25 / US$50, and an honest fee is itemised.
• Distrust guaranteed approval times, official-authorisation claims and fake countdowns.

When you are ready to apply, the government portal, evisa.gov.vn, is the place to do it, and it is the reference every honest agency should point you back to.