Indian e-Visa for British Citizens 2026: New Fees and Which One to Actually Buy

For years, the advice we gave British clients planning trips to India was simple: buy the five-year tourist e-Visa. It was cheap, it was convenient, and it meant you never had to think about an Indian visa again for half a decade. At around US$80 it was one of the best-value travel documents in the world.

That advice is now wrong.

On 23 December 2025, India revised its visa fees for British nationals on a reciprocity basis — broadly mirroring what the UK charges Indian citizens for equivalent visas. The headline change is dramatic: the five-year tourist e-Visa for British passport holders jumped from roughly US$80 to around US$484. Overnight, the obvious bargain became the most expensive option on the menu, and the calculus of "which Indian visa should I buy" flipped completely.

We process Indian e-Visa applications for British citizens and NRIs every week, and since the change the most common question has become: which one do I actually buy now? This guide answers that, with the new numbers, the new 120-day arrival window, and the honest break-even maths.

What changed on 23 December 2025#

Two things happened in the same window, and it helps to keep them separate.

1. Reciprocity-based fee revision (23 December 2025). India moved British nationals onto fees that broadly reflect UK charges for Indians. The approximate new figures, at the time of writing, are:

• 5-year tourist e-Visa — around US$484 (up from roughly US$80)
• 1-year tourist e-Visa — around US$40
• 30-day tourist e-Visa — around US$10–25, varying by season (the off-season rate is lower, the peak winter-tourism rate higher)
• e-Business visa — around US$242
• e-Medical visa — around US$129

On top of these, expect a bank/payment surcharge of about 3% when you pay by card. The numbers in fee tables are almost always the base fee before this surcharge.

2. Extended arrival window (18 December 2025). The arrival window for the 30-day e-tourist visa was extended so you can now plan arrival up to 120 days ahead. This is a genuine convenience upgrade: you can lock in a short visa much earlier relative to your trip than before.

The three tourist options, side by side#

Here is how the three tourist e-Visa options compare now, so you can match the document to how you actually travel.

	30-day	1-year	5-year
Approx base fee	US$10–25 (by season)	~US$40	~US$484
Validity	30 days from entry	1 year, multiple entry	5 years, multiple entry
Best for	A single short trip	One or two trips a year	Frequent, regular travellers
Arrival window	Up to 120 days ahead	Multiple entries over the year	Multiple entries over 5 years
Value verdict	Cheapest per trip	The new sweet spot	Only if you travel a lot

A few notes on reading this table:

• The 30-day visa is now the cheapest way to visit India for a one-off holiday or family event. The catch is the short window — 30 days from entry — so it is no use if you stay longer or want repeat trips.
• The 1-year visa is the new sweet spot for most people. At around US$40 it covers multiple entries across a full year, which suits anyone visiting India once or twice annually — the typical NRI-with-family travel pattern.
• The 5-year visa is now a specialist purchase. It only makes sense if you are a genuinely frequent traveller — business owners with regular India trips, people with elderly parents they visit several times a year, that kind of pattern.

The honest break-even maths on the 5-year visa#

Because clients keep asking, here is the calculation laid out plainly.

The five-year visa costs roughly US$484. A one-year visa costs roughly US$40. So the five-year visa is worth it, purely on fees, only if buying a one-year visa each time would cost you more than US$484 over five years.

That is more than twelve one-year visas over five years — i.e. you would need to be applying for a fresh visa more than twice a year, every year, for half a decade, before the five-year option breaks even. Even allowing for the convenience of not re-applying, the gap is enormous.

The practical conclusion: unless you are travelling to India several times a year on a sustained basis, the one-year visa (re-bought when you need it) beats the five-year visa on cost by a wide margin. The five-year visa's old appeal — set-and-forget cheapness — is gone.

How the 120-day arrival window changes your planning#

The extended arrival window introduced on 18 December 2025 is easy to overlook, but it genuinely changes how you should time an application. Previously, the short visa windows pushed people into a nervous game of applying close to departure and hoping the approval came through in time. With the 30-day e-tourist visa's arrival window now stretching up to 120 days ahead, you have far more room.

In practice, that means you can apply once your trip is roughly firm — flights booked, rough dates set — rather than waiting until the last minute. It de-stresses the whole process, particularly for family trips that are planned months out. The one thing it does not change is the validity of the visa once you enter: a 30-day visa still gives you 30 days from entry, no matter how far ahead you applied. The wider window is about when you can apply and plan arrival, not about how long you can stay.

When each option is the right one#

To make it concrete, here is how we'd advise different British travellers:

• "I'm going to a wedding in Delhi for two weeks and won't be back for years." → 30-day visa. Cheapest, fits the trip, done.
• "I visit family in India about once a year." → 1-year visa each time you go. The new default for most NRIs.
• "I go to India three or four times a year for work or to see my parents." → 5-year visa. This is the pattern it's built for.
• "I'm not 100% sure of my exact dates yet." → The 120-day arrival window gives you room to apply once your trip is roughly firmed up, even if you haven't pinned every detail.

The mistakes we see British applicants make#

Even with a simple e-Visa, the same errors come up again and again, and most cause a rejection or a re-apply rather than a quick fix:

• Passport name vs application name mismatch. Your e-Visa details must match your passport exactly. A middle name dropped or a hyphen missed is a common rejection cause.
• Photo and passport-scan quality. The uploaded passport bio page and photo must be clear and meet the spec. Blurry phone snaps get bounced.
• Less than 6 months passport validity. Your passport must have enough validity on arrival. Renew first if you are close to the line.
• Applying for the wrong visa type. Attending a conference or doing paid work on a tourist visa is a real problem at the border. If your trip is business or medical, you need the matching visa, not the tourist one.
• Forgetting the surcharge in your budget. The ~3% bank surcharge means the total at checkout is higher than the fee table suggests. Not a mistake exactly, but a frequent surprise.
• Buying through a lookalike third-party site. Searching "Indian e-visa" throws up plenty of intermediary sites that bolt on a hefty "service fee" over the government charge. There is nothing wrong with using a genuine agent who adds value, but paying a markup to an anonymous site that simply re-keys your form into the official portal is money wasted. Know whether you're paying for the visa or for someone's overhead.

A worked example: the lapsed five-year visa holder#

The most painful version of all this is the traveller who bought a five-year visa years ago for US$80, loved it, and now goes to "renew the same thing" — only to be quoted around US$484. We've had this exact conversation many times since December 2025. The honest advice is almost always the same: don't reflexively re-buy the five-year visa. Unless your travel pattern has genuinely become frequent, switch to buying a one-year visa when you travel. You'll spend a fraction of the cost and lose nothing you'll actually notice, because most people who bought the old five-year visa used it for one trip a year anyway — exactly the pattern the one-year visa now serves best.

If your trip is business, not tourism#

One important branch: everything above is about the tourist e-Visa. If you are travelling for meetings, trade, recruitment, or any commercial purpose, the tourist visa is the wrong document and using it can cause problems at immigration. The e-Business visa (around US$242 at the time of writing) is a different product with different documentation requirements — a business letter, company details, and so on.

We break down exactly when you need it, and how to get the supporting documents right, in our guide to the Indian business e-Visa from the UK in 2026. If there is any chance your trip involves work rather than pure tourism, read that before you apply.

Where an agent earns its fee — and where it doesn't#

The Indian e-Visa portal is usable, and for a straightforward case — clean passport, simple holiday, no name complications — a confident applicant can absolutely do it themselves. We won't pretend otherwise.

Where we earn the fee is on the cases that go wrong: a name or passport mismatch that keeps getting rejected, a tight travel deadline where a re-apply would blow the trip, choosing the correct visa category when the purpose is ambiguous, and getting business or medical visa documentation right the first time. We also keep on top of the moving fee schedule so you don't overpay for the wrong category — exactly the kind of thing that just changed in December 2025.

If you want the Indian e-Visa handled properly — the right category, the right documents, no rejected re-applies eating into your travel dates — that is what we do.

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This guide reflects India's reciprocity-based visa fee revisions for British nationals and e-Visa procedures as observed by NriDirect in 2026. Fees are approximate, are quoted before bank surcharges, and change without notice — verify current fees and your eligibility on the official Indian e-Visa portal↗ before applying. NriDirect is an independent agent and is not affiliated with the Bureau of Immigration, VFS Global, or the Indian High Commission.