India e-Visa for British Citizens 2026: Fees, Rules, Steps

TL;DR

British citizens need a visa for India. For a holiday, a family visit, business meetings, private treatment or a conference, that is the e-Visa, applied for only on indianvisaonline.gov.in. You upload a square JPEG photo and a PDF of your passport, pay the official USD fee on the portal by card, and the Government of India emails granted or rejected. Apply yourself for that fee alone, or have our desk prepare and submit it for £35 per applicant.

Do British citizens need a visa for India?

Yes. There is no visa-free entry for a British passport. What most people from the UK use is the e-Visa, an online application that ends in an Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA) by email, which you print and carry. The visa itself is stamped in your passport at the Indian airport.

Two groups do not need an e-Visa at all. Holders of an OCI card already have a lifelong multiple-entry visa; the Bureau of Immigration says plainly that no visa is required for OCI cardholders. And anyone who is not eligible for an e-Visa, which we come to below, applies for a regular visa through the High Commission of India in London instead. Our OCI card versus e-Visa guide covers the first group.

The one official portal, and the lookalikes

The only official site is indianvisaonline.gov.in/evisa. The portal's FAQ says so in its own words: it is the only official website for e-Visa services, the service is completely online, no intermediary or travel agent is needed, and you should not fall for anyone who claims a speedy or express grant and charges for it. It also warns against sharing your personal details with any unauthorised website.

Search results are full of sites with official-looking names and flags; they type your details into the same form and charge a mark-up, sometimes several times the official fee. The Government of India states that it does not authorise any agent to charge emergency or express fees, and that nothing extra is paid at the airport. If a site is not indianvisaonline.gov.in, it is not the Government of India.

Which e-Visa: the categories open to British citizens

The e-Tourist visa covers recreation and sightseeing, casual visits to friends and relatives, short yoga programmes and short informal courses, and unpaid voluntary work of up to a month. Our guides to the 30-day visa, the 1-year and 5-year visas, the e-Business visa and the e-Medical visas go category by category. Every e-Visa is non-extendable and non-convertible, so pick the category for the trip you are actually making.

What it costs: the official fees for UK passports

The portal publishes the fee by nationality in two PDFs. The United Kingdom rows read, in US dollars:

A bank charge of 3 percent is added on card payments (4 percent through PayPal) and shown on the payment page. The fee pays for processing and is not refunded whether the result is granted or rejected. It must be paid at least 4 days before your travel date or the application is not processed. The e-Conference visa has no separate column in the fee PDF; the portal shows the fee for your category before you pay.

When to apply and what to have ready

Apply at least 4 days before your arrival date and no more than 120 days before it. The portal publishes no processing time, so treat 4 days as the floor and not a target.

Your passport must have at least six months' validity when you apply and at least two blank pages for the entry stamp. You need a return or onward ticket and enough money for the stay. Every traveller needs their own passport and their own application, including children, whose passports must be valid for six months from arrival.

Two uploads are required for every category: a recent front-facing photo and the bio page of your passport. The photo must be a square JPEG between 10 KB and 1 MB, full face, eyes open, no spectacles, on a plain light or white background, with no shadows and no borders. The passport page must be a PDF between 10 KB and 300 KB. Business and medical categories need one more PDF of the same size. The portal says an application is liable to be rejected if uploads are not clear or not to specification, so read our photo and passport scan guide and use the compressor to get a scan under 300 KB.

Who cannot use an e-Visa

The portal is explicit. Foreigners of Pakistani origin or holding a Pakistani passport are not eligible, and nor is anyone whose parents or grandparents, on either side, were born in or permanently resident in Pakistan; they apply for a regular visa at an Indian mission. Diplomatic and official passport holders cannot use it, and the portal says anyone with a serving or retired defence, military, security or police background is not eligible and risks refusal of entry and deportation if they try. The e-Visa does not cover employment, journalism or NGO work.

If any of that is you, the plan step will say so before taking a penny. We do not sell regular visa help.

How to apply yourself, step by step

1. Go to indianvisaonline.gov.in/evisa and start a new application. The portal estimates 10 to 15 minutes, and you can save it part way.
2. Enter your details exactly as your passport shows them. Previous visa details are mandatory; the portal accepts "NA" if you do not have the number. You are responsible for the accuracy of every answer.
3. Upload the square JPEG photo and the passport PDF, plus the business card or hospital letter if your category needs one. Everything must be in English.
4. Pay the official fee by card on the portal. Payment status can take up to two hours to update; do not pay twice.
5. Watch your email. Granted or rejected arrives there, and you can check status on the portal. Print the ETA, check it reads GRANTED, and check that your name, passport number, nationality and date of birth are right.

Arriving in India

E-Visa holders enter only through the designated ports: 37 airports, including Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Cochin, Goa, Ahmedabad, Amritsar, Jaipur, Lucknow and Thiruvananthapuram, and 38 seaports for cruise passengers. You can leave from any immigration checkpost. At immigration your fingerprints and photo are taken and the visa is stamped. Carry the printed ETA, and travel on the passport you applied with; if you have renewed it since, carry the old one too. The e-Visa is not valid for protected, restricted or cantonment areas.

Our £35 prepared-and-submitted service

If you would rather not do the form, our desk does it for £35 per applicant, each additional applicant £35, up to five on one order. We prepare the application in your own account on indianvisaonline.gov.in from your details and documents, check your photo and passport scan against the portal's specification, send you the completed form to check, submit it on your say-so and tell you when the ETA arrives. You pay the official fee on the portal yourself by your own card at the final step; we never take or enter card details. Submitted on the official portal within 24 hours of your complete details and documents, or your service fee back.

What we cannot do is anything the portal cannot: there is no faster lane, no guarantee, and the Government of India decides. If you cancel before work starts you get a full refund. You can apply yourself on indianvisaonline.gov.in for the official fee alone. The service is run by WayaNerd Ltd, company 16269713. Start at the plan step, which checks eligibility first.