India e-Visa for Canadians: fees, documents and how to apply

India e-Visa fees for Canadian passports

The Ministry of Home Affairs sets the e-Visa fee per nationality. For Canadian passport holders the 30-day e-Tourist Visa is CA$34.92 (US$25) for arrivals between July and March and CA$13.97 for arrivals between April and June. The 5-year e-Tourist Visa is CA$279.34 and the 1-year e-Business Visa CA$167.61. The portal adds a 3% bank transaction charge to every card payment, shown as its own column below and included in the total.

Vistolane's fee is fixed per traveller and kept 20% below the published online-agency price for the same visa: CA$32.12 for the 30-day e-Tourist Visa, CA$50.28 for the 5-year and CA$54.47 for the e-Business Visa. It covers the passport and photo check against the portal's specifications (the most common reason e-Visa applications are rejected), filing on indianvisaonline.gov.in, paying the government fee for you and a case page that shows the status until the ETA lands in your inbox. Amounts in CAD follow the live exchange rate on the day you pay; the US-dollar figure is the fixed reference.

Who can use the e-Visa, and who cannot

• Citizens of Canada holding an ordinary passport valid for at least six months from the date of arrival, with two blank pages
• Travel for tourism, visiting friends and family, short yoga or Ayurveda programmes, short courses (under six months) and voluntary work (under one month) on the e-Tourist Visa
• Business meetings, trade, recruitment and conferences on the e-Business Visa; treatment at a recognised hospital on the e-Medical Visa (up to two attendants)
• Entry through one of the designated e-Visa airports (Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Kochi, Goa and others) or five seaports; exit from any immigration check post

Diplomatic and official passports, persons of Pakistani origin and anyone whose parents or grandparents were Pakistani nationals must apply for a regular visa at the Indian mission instead. Journalists, long-term students and workers need the matching regular visa; the e-Visa cannot be extended or converted in India.

Documents to upload

• Scan of the passport biographic page: PDF, 10 KB to 300 KB, every corner readable
• Recent colour photograph: square, plain white background, face centred and uncovered, JPEG at least 350 × 350 px
• Return or onward ticket and enough funds for the stay (asked for at the airport, not uploaded)
• e-Business Visa: business card or a letter from your employer, plus the invitation from the Indian company
• e-Medical Visa: letter from the Indian hospital on its letterhead naming the patient and treatment

Vistolane's checker reads the scan and the photo before filing: wrong aspect ratio, shadows, glasses, a cropped passport line or a file over the size limit are fixed with you first, because the portal rejects them without refunding the fee.

How the application works

1. Choose the visa and pay once. Pick 30 days, 1 year, 5 years or business, add travellers and pay the government fee, bank charge and Vistolane fee together in CAD.
2. Upload the passport and photo. Ten minutes in the portal: passport scan, photo, address in India and the arrival airport. The checker flags anything the government portal would reject.
3. Vistolane files on the official portal. The application is submitted on indianvisaonline.gov.in and the government fee paid on your behalf; you get the application ID the same day.
4. Approval by e-mail. The ETA normally arrives within 72 hours (allow four working days). Print it or keep it on your phone; immigration stamps the visa into the passport on arrival.

Processing time and when to apply

Most e-Visa approvals are issued within 72 hours of a complete application; the portal asks that the fee is paid at least four days before the date of arrival. The 30-day e-Tourist Visa can be applied for up to 30 days before arrival, the 1-year, 5-year, business and medical e-Visas up to 120 days before. Flights from undefined take 8 to 17 hours, so an application filed in the week before travel is usually approved in time; filing two to three weeks ahead removes the risk.

At the airport in India

Carry the printed ETA, the passport used in the application and your return ticket. Immigration takes fingerprints and a photo, checks the ETA and stamps the e-Visa into the passport; the stamp, not the e-mail, is your visa. The 30-day e-Tourist Visa allows two entries within 30 days of the first arrival; the 1-year and 5-year visas allow unlimited entries with the per-visit limit shown above.

Questions, answered