Bali Visa on Arrival: Indonesia's e-VOA Fee, Stay and Rules

Bali brings more American visitors to Indonesia than the rest of the country combined, and almost all of them arrive on an electronic Visa on Arrival, the E-VOA. It is the same permission as the visa on arrival, obtained before you fly rather than at the checkpoint; what visa-free, visa on arrival, e-visa and ETA each mean sets out the general pattern. The rules below come from the Directorate General of Immigration’s visa FAQ.

Bali follows the national rules

Ngurah Rai in Denpasar applies the same national visa rules as Soekarno-Hatta in Jakarta. Bali adds one charge of its own, a tourist levy, covered in our Bali entry requirements checklist.

The arrival card is a second requirement and is not a visa. Indonesian Immigration’s e-Visa portal states that “All travellers are required to submit an arrival card within 3 (three) days prior arrival in Indonesia”. It applies to everyone, and holding a visa does not satisfy it. The pre-arrival admin is in flying to Bali.

Eligibility

The official E-VOA country list has 97 entries. The United States is number 3 on it. Canada is 36 and Australia is 8. Check your own nationality on the official page linked at the top of this article.

What you need before you fly

• A passport valid for at least six months. The FAQ words it as “Original valid passport valid for at least six months”. Count from arrival, not from booking.
• A return ticket, or an onward ticket to another country. The FAQ lists it as a requirement.

Visa on Arrival or E-VOA

Visa on Arrival is submitted in person at certain immigration checkpoints when you land. E-VOA is applied for online before you travel. Both lead to the same permission. The online route can be fixed from a laptop, not from a queue.

For the online application, the FAQ asks for:

• Your passport biodata page, as a JPG, JPEG or PNG under 200 KB.
• A passport-size photo, same formats, same 200 KB ceiling.
• Payment by Mastercard, Visa or JCB. No other card network is named.

Resize the files before you start, not after the upload fails.

Fee and length of stay

The visa FAQ itself says nothing about either. Immigration’s General Information and FAQ page, elsewhere on the portal, gives both:

• Fee: IDR 500,000.
• Stay: “30 days from the arrival date”.
• Visa validity: 90 days. That is the deadline to arrive by, not the length of the trip.

The usual “30 days, extendable once” is right about the 30 days. For the extension, Immigration says to apply at the Immigration Office for a residence permit extension, and gives no fee.

When it goes wrong

The FAQ names two failure paths.

• Payment fails. Check your balance and payment method, then contact the payment provider. The Indonesian-language version of the page names an email address for the payment processor.
• Your E-VOA account is not activated. Write to humas@imigrasi.go.id with your name, passport number, transaction number and proof of payment.

Both remedies mean assembling your own documents, emailing a government address and waiting, with no published response time. That is fine if your flight is weeks away and a problem if it is not. VisaHQ files it on your behalf, and because Immigration publishes the fee at IDR 500,000, you can see the markup before you choose. The portal is free and linked at the foot of this page.

How old the FAQ is

The Indonesian-language version of the FAQ carries a last-updated stamp of 19 January 2024. The English version carries none, so an English reader has no sign of its age. Passport validity and onward tickets are stable rules. Confirm anything time-sensitive against a page that carries a date.