Bringing your dog or cat to Singapore.

Australia, New Zealand, and Japan are all rabies-free and all make you wait: long lead times, blood-test clocks, mandatory facility quarantine. Singapore is rabies-free too (since 1953), but it sorts countries into three rabies-risk schedules, and as of 2026 the US sits in Schedule II, the middle tier. Schedule I is a short rabies-free list (Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, the UK); Schedule III is everywhere else, and it carries a 30-day facility quarantine. Landing in Schedule II is the good outcome for a US owner.

What Schedule II buys you is the headline: no post-arrival quarantine by default. Your pet clears inspection and goes home with you the same day, provided the paperwork is in order and you have not tripped one of the two quarantine triggers below. That makes Singapore one of the more manageable rabies-free moves, but only if you run the sequence precisely, because the strictness has moved from waiting to documentation.

This is the part to plan your whole move around. Schedule II normally means no quarantine, but a minimum 10-day home quarantine becomes mandatory in two situations, so avoiding both is the goal:

1. Your pet arrives more than 5 days after you enter Singapore. The fix is simple: line up the travel so your pet arrives within 5 days of your own arrival, ideally alongside you or just after.
2. Your pet has been under your or your immediate family's direct care for less than 6 months at the time of import. This catches recently adopted, rescued, or purchased animals. If your pet is newly yours, plan around the 6-month mark or expect the home quarantine.

Follow these in sequence. The licences and the titer both have timing rules, so starting late is the classic way to force a delay or a quarantine you did not want.

1. Microchip first. Your pet needs an ISO-compliant microchip (11784 or 11785). If it is not ISO compliant, you must supply a reader at the point of entry. Do this before the rabies vaccination that counts, so records tie to the chip.
2. Rabies vaccination, by a licensed vet, recorded against the microchip number.
3. Rabies titer test (RNATT). For Schedule II, the blood sample must be taken at least 28 days after the rabies vaccination, and at least 90 days and within 12 months before export. This is the timing that most often sets the earliest possible travel date, so work backward from it.
4. Licences, filed 30 days ahead. For dogs, apply for the dog licence first, then the AVS import licence; both must be submitted at least 30 days before arrival. For cats, submit the import licence at least 30 days before arrival.
5. Appoint an AVS-recognized pet agent. Since 1 April 2026, an approved pet agent must handle your pet's import clearance at the Changi Animal and Plant Quarantine Station (CAPQ). Line this up early.
6. Export health certificate. A USDA-accredited vet completes the Singapore health certificate, endorsed by APHIS, plus the parasite treatments and any airline captain's declaration required.
7. Book the arrival inspection. Make the CAPQ inspection appointment at least 5 working days before arrival via AVS's online system. Arriving without an appointment brings an hourly inspection fee.

No insurance product reimburses mandatory quarantine. Not pet health insurance, not travel insurance with a pet add-on, not a shipper's own protection plan. If your destination requires a quarantine stay, treat that boarding bill as an out-of-pocket cost and budget it from the start. Nationwide is the one US pet insurer that reimburses vet care at any licensed vet worldwide, and even it excludes boarding, which is what quarantine is.

US pet insurance is written around a pet that lives in the US. Most policies carry a policy territory, typically the US and sometimes Canada or Puerto Rico, and even the ones that reimburse vet care worldwide generally require your primary residence to stay in the US. So a policy may well pay a vet bill on a trip abroad and still lapse the day the move becomes permanent. Read your own policy's territory and residency wording before you assume it travels with you, and for a permanent move plan on taking out local pet insurance in your new country.

As a rough sanity check on any quote, and this is our read of current market pricing rather than an official figure: a standard international pet move tends to run about $1,500 to $6,000, while destinations with mandatory quarantine sit higher, roughly $3,000 to $12,000 and up. Australia in particular often lands between $5,000 and $15,000 once quarantine and the limited set of approved flights are counted. Full-service door-to-door typically costs 30 to 50 percent more than a transport-only booking where you handle the vet work and paperwork yourself.

The costs people forget are the small ones. USDA APHIS charges a user fee to endorse an export health certificate, currently $101 where no test verification is needed, $160 for a certificate covering one or two tests, and $206 for three to six tests, with rabies vaccination not counted in that tally. These rates rose on 10 January 2025, the first APHIS fee adjustment since 2012. Add an airline-compliant crate (roughly $50 to $400), the travel vet visits themselves, boarding on a layover, and summer heat surcharges.

Pet shipping attracts scammers, so verify any company before you send money. IPATA, the International Pet and Animal Transportation Association, is a trade association: its members ship under their own company names, IPATA itself does not ship pets, and there is no legitimate shipper with "ipata" in its name. Scammers clone real shippers' sites, logos and testimonials, so check the company in the member directory at ipata.org rather than trusting a logo on a website. Treat these as red flags: a quote dramatically below every other quote, a domain registered less than six months ago, email coming from a gmail address rather than the company domain, and any request to pay by Western Union or MoneyGram.

Budget several thousand dollars all in. As with every long-haul pet move, the largest line is air transport, since most pets fly as cargo rather than in the cabin, followed by the pet-agent and clearance fees, the vet work, and the rabies titer. There is no facility-quarantine bill in the default Schedule II case, which keeps Singapore cheaper than the Schedule III or facility-quarantine destinations, another reason the middle-tier status matters.

The return leg is easy. Because Singapore is rabies-free, a dog flying home to the US is on the simplest CDC path: typically a CDC Dog Import Form receipt, a microchip, a minimum age of 6 months, and a healthy appearance, with no titer and no quarantine. Cats have no federal requirement. See our guide to bringing a dog into the US for the details, and traveling with a pet for how Singapore compares with other destinations on lead time and cost.

Common questions

Quick answers.

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