Saudi Tourist eVisa and Business Visit Visa 2026: Cost, Eligibility and How to Apply

If you hold an eligible passport, the Saudi tourist eVisa is applied for online at the official Visit Saudi visa portal, arrives in a few minutes to a few days, and costs roughly SAR 440 all-in including the mandatory medical insurance — a figure reported consistently enough to plan against, though sources differ and you should confirm the live total in the portal. It is a one-year, multiple-entry visa. The business visit visa is a different product entirely: applied for through the Saudi Visa Platform, it requires a Saudi company to invite you, and you cannot self-apply for it.

A necessary caveat. The Saudi visa portals are login-driven applications rather than published price lists, which means very few Saudi visa fees are publicly verifiable outside the portal itself. Where we give a figure below, we say how confident we are in it. Confirm every amount in the live portal before you pay — and be especially sceptical of any third-party site quoting a fixed "Saudi visa price" with a large service margin baked in.

Saudi Arabia issues several distinct visitor permits and they are not interchangeable. Using the wrong one is not a technicality — it affects what you may lawfully do in the Kingdom.

The line that catches people out is between the business visit visa and the work visit visa. Attending meetings, negotiating, or visiting a client's office is business visiting. Performing work — commissioning equipment, delivering a technical installation, doing billable hands-on work at a Saudi site — is generally a work visit, which is a different authorisation with a different sponsor obligation. Doing the second on the first is a real compliance problem for the Saudi host, not just for you.

If you are a resident bringing parents over, you are in a different guide entirely: the family visit visa is sponsored from inside the Kingdom by an iqama holder through Absher and the MOFA channel, and our Saudi family visit visa for parents guide covers that process, its documents and its cost end to end.

The tourist eVisa transformed access to Saudi Arabia. Before it, most leisure travel was simply not possible; now, for eligible passports, it is a self-service online application.

What is reasonably well established:

• Validity: one year, multiple entry. You may keep arriving throughout the year rather than applying each trip.
• Stay: up to 90 days. Note that sources are not consistent on whether this is 90 days per visit or 90 days cumulative across the year. This is a meaningful difference if you plan repeated long stays — confirm it in the portal for your specific visa before relying on it.
• Eligibility is by nationality. The list covers EU member states plus a substantial group of others including the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Japan, South Korea and China. It is commonly described as around 60-odd countries, and it changes.
• Mandatory medical insurance is bundled into the eVisa purchase rather than bought separately.

There is also a long-standing facility allowing holders of a valid US, UK or Schengen visa — used at least once — to obtain an eVisa on arrival, which extends practical access well beyond the core nationality list. Conditions attach and the wording has been refined over time, so verify your eligibility before travelling rather than assuming it at the airport.

Nationals of other GCC states enter under different arrangements altogether, and GCC residents holding an iqama in another Gulf country have their own routes — covered in our guide to travelling around the GCC on a residence visa.

Here is the honest state of the evidence. The commonly reported all-in figure is around SAR 440, described as inclusive of the mandatory health insurance. A second widely-circulated figure is around SAR 535. These do not reconcile, and neither could be confirmed against the live official portal, which requires a session to display pricing.

The practical guidance is simple: budget somewhere in the SAR 440 to SAR 550 band, apply directly on the official portal, and treat the number the portal shows you as the answer. There is no reason to pay a third party a service fee for a tourist eVisa you can complete yourself in minutes, and the sites charging USD 100-plus "processing" on top of the government fee are selling convenience you do not need.

Where a service desk genuinely earns its fee in Saudi Arabia is the paperwork the portals do not do for you: attestation, family sponsorship, iqama issues, and business visa invitations. Not a tourist eVisa.

1. Confirm your nationality is eligible, or that you qualify through a valid and previously-used US, UK or Schengen visa.
2. Go to the official Visit Saudi eVisa portal directly. Search results are full of look-alike third-party sites; type the official address rather than clicking an advertisement.
3. Create an account and start a new visa application.
4. Enter your details exactly as printed in your passport, including the machine-readable spelling of your name. A mismatch here is the most common reason an application fails or a traveller is stopped at check-in.
5. Upload a photograph to specification and your passport bio page.
6. Pay. The mandatory medical insurance is included in the total.
7. Receive the eVisa by email, usually within minutes to a few days. Print it and carry it.
8. At the border, present the eVisa with a passport valid at least six months and evidence of onward travel and accommodation if asked.

Practical notes: keep the eVisa PDF on your phone and printed, since airline check-in staff sometimes want a physical copy; make sure the name on your ticket matches the passport exactly; and do not leave the application to the airport — an on-arrival facility, where it applies to you, is a fallback, not a plan.

Generally yes, outside the Hajj period — this was one of the headline changes when the tourist visa was introduced, and it remains the widely understood position. But the process around it has been progressively formalised through the Nusuk platform, which is now the channel for booking Umrah permits and appointments, and the practical requirements have tightened rather than loosened.

What this means for a traveller:

• Holding a tourist eVisa is generally not, by itself, the end of the process — expect to need an Umrah permit or appointment booked through Nusuk.
• Timing around Hajj season matters enormously. Saudi Arabia restricts entry and movement in the run-up to and during Hajj, and those restrictions have at times extended to suspending or limiting certain visit visa categories for particular countries.
• Women travelling for Umrah, age rules and accompanying-guardian requirements have all been relaxed over recent years, but the specific current position should be checked rather than assumed from older guidance.

We were not able to verify the current 2026 position on Hajj-season restrictions, including whether the suspensions reported for a group of countries during the 2025 season remain, were lifted, or have been reinstated. If you are travelling anywhere near Hajj season, check the current rules with the Saudi mission for your country before booking anything. This is a genuinely volatile area where last year's guide can be actively misleading.

The business visit visa is structurally different from the tourist eVisa in one decisive way: you cannot apply for it on your own behalf. A Saudi entity has to want you there and be willing to say so formally.

The process, in outline:

1. A Saudi company issues an invitation. The host must be a properly registered Saudi entity, and the invitation is generated through the Saudi Visa Platform rather than written on letterhead and emailed.
2. The invitation is authenticated. Chamber of Commerce attestation has historically been part of this chain for commercial invitations; the platform has progressively absorbed steps that used to be manual.
3. The visa request is raised on the Saudi Visa Platform, which distinguishes between visitor categories and business or commercial categories.
4. You complete your side — passport details, photograph, and any supporting documents requested.
5. The visa is issued and you travel.

Entry types range from single entry through multiple-entry visas valid for extended periods, which is what makes this visa attractive for people who deal with Saudi clients regularly rather than once.

On cost, we are not going to give you a number. We could not retrieve fee figures for the business visit visa from the Saudi Visa Platform — the pages are application-driven and do not publish a schedule. Any specific SAR figure you find on a third-party site for a Saudi business visa should be treated as that site's price, not the government's. Ask your Saudi host what the platform quotes for the entry type you need, since they are the party raising the request and can see the actual figure.

The one thing we can say with confidence about the economics: the dominant cost on a business visit visa is usually not the government fee, it is the time spent getting the invitation issued correctly by a host company that may never have done it before.

The asymmetry in that table is the point. The tourist eVisa's gate is your passport; if your nationality is not on the list, no amount of paperwork opens it. The business visa's gate is the invitation; nationality is far less determinative, but without a Saudi host willing to sponsor the request, there is no application to make.

If you are running Saudi paperwork for a company and this is unfamiliar territory, tell us what you are trying to do — the invitation mechanics are where most first-time hosts get stuck, and it is a solvable problem.

Three separate numbers that people routinely blur into one:

• Visa validity — how long the visa itself remains usable. One year for the tourist eVisa.
• Permitted stay per visit — up to 90 days for the tourist eVisa, with the per-visit versus cumulative question flagged earlier.
• Actual days used — counted from each entry.

Extensions. Saudi Arabia does permit extension of some visit categories through Absher, and the mechanics are well worn for family visit visas in particular. The most common failure is not the extension itself but a blocked extension: the Absher screen reports the visitor as not eligible to extend, usually because the medical insurance linked to the visa has lapsed or never synced. That specific problem — and the exact fix — is covered in our guide to a Saudi visit visa showing "not eligible to extend". Read it before you assume the extension is simply refused.

Overstaying. Saudi Arabia enforces overstay penalties on visitors, and the consequences extend beyond the fine to entry bans and problems for the sponsor where one exists. We could not verify the current per-day figure from an official source, so we are not going to quote one — but treat the principle as firm: overstaying in Saudi Arabia is expensive and it follows you. Our GCC overstay fines comparison sets the regional context.

The planning rule for visitors: fix your departure date against the entry stamp, not against the visa's validity, and start any extension at least a week before the stay expires rather than on the last day.

• Applying through a look-alike site. The tourist eVisa is self-service; third-party "processing" fees are avoidable.
• Assuming 90 days is per visit. Sources conflict; confirm your own visa's terms before planning a long stay.
• Using a tourist visa for work. Attending meetings is business visiting; doing billable hands-on work is not, and the exposure sits with the Saudi host too.
• Booking near Hajj season without checking current restrictions. This is the highest-variance rule in the Saudi system.
• Planning Umrah without a Nusuk permit. The visa is one part; the permit is another.
• Name mismatches between the visa, the passport and the airline ticket.
• Expecting a business visa quickly. The invitation, not the visa, is the long pole — start it weeks out.
• Letting insurance lapse on a family visit visa and then discovering the extension is blocked.

If you are planning a Gulf trip that takes in more than one country, the systems are not equivalent and the differences are worth knowing before you book.

Two practical consequences. First, a visa for one Gulf country is not a visa for another — there is no single Schengen-style permit in force, although a unified GCC tourist visa has been discussed and approved in principle for some time. Plan each country separately.

Second, if you already hold a residence permit in one GCC country, that materially improves your access to the others: several states run eVisa or visa-on-arrival facilities specifically for GCC residents that ordinary tourists of the same nationality do not get. The catch is usually your profession as recorded on the iqama or residence card, which several countries screen against an approved list. Our GCC travel on a residence visa guide maps every route country by country, including which professions qualify.

If your Saudi visit is a precursor to relocating — a business trip that becomes a posting, or a family visit that becomes residence — the routes are different again, and you cannot simply convert a tourist eVisa. Start with our Saudi Premium Residency guide if you are self-funding, or the employer-sponsored work visa route if a Saudi company is hiring you.

For a straightforward tourist trip on an eligible passport, Saudi Arabia is now genuinely easy: apply on the official portal, pay somewhere in the SAR 440 to SAR 550 range including the bundled insurance, and travel. You do not need help with that, and anyone charging you a large fee for it is charging for nothing.

Where Saudi paperwork actually gets difficult is everything around it — a business visit visa that needs a Saudi host to raise and authenticate an invitation correctly, a family visit visa blocked on an insurance link, an extension that Absher refuses without explaining why, or the move from visiting to actually living and working in the Kingdom.

Wathim runs Saudi government paperwork end to end: visit and business visa files, family sponsorship, iqama issuance and renewal, attestation and MOFA work. See the Saudi residency visa service, the GCC residency hub, or everything we handle in Saudi Arabia.

Tell us who is travelling and why and we will tell you which visa applies, what it should cost, and what you can safely do yourself. Related reading: the family visit visa for parents, fixing a blocked extension, exit re-entry visas, and Saudi Premium Residency if the visit is turning into something longer.