Do US citizens need a visa for Cambodia?

Most countries price the online application at or below the on-arrival one, which is why the standard advice everywhere is to apply before you fly. Cambodia inverts that. The visa itself is $30 whichever way you get it. The official portal adds a $6 processing fee on top, so applying online lands at about $36.

Six dollars a person is not a reason to reorganize a trip, and paying it buys you a printed approval and no counter queue at the end of a long flight. But it is worth knowing which way the trade runs here, because a great deal of general advice assumes the opposite, and any site telling you the e-visa is the cheaper option has it backwards.

The saving comes with conditions, and they are the kind that go wrong at a counter rather than at a desk at home. Have these ready before you land:

1. $30 in clean US dollars. The fee is cash, in US dollar notes, and clean ones. Cambodia uses the US dollar as its everyday currency, with the riel appearing mostly as change, so dollars are normal here rather than a foreign-exchange exercise.
2. A passport photo, and it is worth carrying a spare rather than being one short at the counter.
3. A passport with space in it, plus your onward travel and accommodation details.

The $30 on-arrival price is sourced for the airport. That covers most people, because overland travel from Thailand is largely suspended and the great majority of visitors now fly in. See the US Embassy advisory below for the current position on that border.

If you are planning to cross by land from anywhere else, treat the on-arrival route as unconfirmed by us rather than as available, and apply online first. We would rather send you to the portal with six dollars of processing fee than have you arrive at a post we have not checked.

Alongside the visa, Cambodia requires a free e-Arrival Card within 7 days of arrival. It is a separate filing from the visa and it costs nothing.

We have not linked it, and the reason is the whole point. The rule on this site is that we never name an arrival form without handing over its real government address in the same breath, because a named form with no link sends you to a search page, and paid lookalike sites buy exactly those search terms. New, obscure and mandatory is the combination they farm.

So the honest version is this: the e-Arrival Card exists, it is free, and until we can source its own official portal we will point you to the e-visa site above and to the airport itself to complete it through the official channel. Pay nobody for it. If you are quoted a price for an e-Arrival Card, you are on the wrong site.

The visa fee is a real cost and you will pay it. What is optional is what sits on top. Search for a Cambodia visa and much of what ranks above the official portal is a reseller, filing the same application through the same government site and charging you for the typing.

We publish no figure for that markup, because none is sourced for Cambodia and it varies by reseller. The asymmetry is deliberate: inventing a number for what a middleman charges would be the same fault as the middleman. What we can give you exactly is the official price, $30 on arrival or about $36 online, and the official address, evisa.gov.kh. Anything above that figure is somebody's fee, not Cambodia's. For how money works once you are through the border, see the Cambodia money guide.

Common questions

Quick answers.

More on Cambodia

The little money things nobody warns you about.

• Do I need cash in Cambodia, or can I use cards?Cash, mostly, and here is the unusual part: the everyday cash is the US dollar. That makes Cambodia one of the simplest countries anywhere for an American to handle, with one condition about the state of your banknotes.
• Tipping in CambodiaNothing here is obligatory, and a small tip goes a long way. Because you are already spending US dollars, tipping is simpler than almost anywhere: a dollar or two, handed over, in the currency you are carrying.
• Taxis, tuk-tuks and ride apps in CambodiaThe tuk-tuk is how you get around here, and the apps have taken the negotiation out of it. Install one before you land and the fare stops being something you argue about on a hot street corner.
• Common money scams in Cambodia, and what they cost youCambodia is safe for the great majority of visitors and almost none of this is dramatic. Because the country runs on US dollars, its money traps are unusually simple: a fake note in your change, a fee somebody padded, a ticket sold by the wrong person. They cost a few dollars at a time, and a handful of habits defuse nearly all of them. Here is each one, what it costs, and how to sidestep it.
• Staying connected in Cambodia.Cambodian mobile data is among the cheapest in the world. A few dollars buys more gigabytes than most travelers use in a month, which makes the decision here easy and makes our commission argument weak.
• What does getting sick in Cambodia cost?The everyday side is manageable: Phnom Penh and Siem Reap have clinics used to foreign patients, and you walk in and pay. The part worth planning for is that Cambodia stabilises serious cases rather than treating them, so the real bill is the flight to Bangkok.