Alternatives Guide 2026
iVisa charges $49-149 in markup fees on visa applications you can often do yourself for free. Here are your options.
iVisa is an online visa processing service that helps travellers apply for tourist visas, e-visas, and electronic travel authorisations. You fill in your details on their website, pay their fee (which includes a markup on top of the government fee), and they handle the submission.
The service is legitimate and works well for people who want zero friction. But the markup is significant. A Turkish e-visa that costs $50 directly from the government portal might cost $99-129 through iVisa. An Indian e-visa that costs $25 officially can run $75+ through the service. Across millions of applications, those margins add up — for iVisa, not for you.
The core question is whether the convenience is worth the price. For most standard tourist visas and e-visas, the answer is no. The official government portals are straightforward, and the application process takes 10-20 minutes. For more complex immigration visas — work permits, investor visas, long-stay permits — iVisa does not even cover those. That is where the real research challenge lies.
Most countries now offer online visa applications. The Turkish e-visa portal, India's e-visa system, Kenya's eTA, and dozens of others let you apply in under 20 minutes for just the government fee.
iVisa helps you apply for a visa you already know about. WhereToEmigrate helps you discover which visas you qualify for in the first place — across 1,913 programmes in 200 countries. Free assessment, EUR 10 for the full report.
If you genuinely need a service to handle your application — perhaps for a complex embassy submission with physical documents — VisaHQ and Atlas are established alternatives to iVisa with similar services.
iVisa is a legitimate service that removes friction from tourist visa applications. If your time is worth more than $50-100 and you want someone to handle a straightforward e-visa, it does the job. No shame in that.
But most people searching for "iVisa alternatives" are looking for the same thing: a way to avoid paying a markup on something they suspect they can do themselves. And they are right. The vast majority of tourist visas and e-visas can be obtained directly from government portals in under 20 minutes for just the official fee.
If your question is broader — not "how do I apply for this visa" but "which visas can I actually get?" — that is a different problem entirely. iVisa does not help with that. WhereToEmigrate checks your profile against 1,912 visa programmes across 200 countries, covering work permits, investment visas, retirement visas, and pathways to permanent residency. The free assessment takes under 5 minutes.
Save your money. Apply direct for tourist visas. Use WhereToEmigrate for the bigger question.
No payment required. See your top visa matches in under 5 minutes.
iVisa is not a scam — it is a legitimate visa processing service. However, it charges significant markup fees ($49-149 or more) on top of official government visa fees. For many visa types, especially e-visas and visa-on-arrival countries, you can apply directly through the official government portal for just the base fee. iVisa adds convenience but at a steep price.
Yes. Most countries offer direct online visa applications through their official immigration websites. E-visas for countries like Turkey, India, Kenya, and Sri Lanka can be obtained directly from government portals. iVisa acts as an intermediary — it fills out the same forms you would fill out yourself. For straightforward tourist and business visas, applying direct is usually simple and saves you the markup fee entirely.
iVisa fills out visa application forms on your behalf, submits them to the relevant authority, and provides customer support if there are issues. For some complex visas, this hand-holding can be valuable. But for simple e-visas and electronic travel authorisations, you are essentially paying $49-149 for someone to fill out a one-page online form that takes 10 minutes.
WhereToEmigrate and iVisa solve different problems. iVisa helps you apply for a specific visa you have already chosen. WhereToEmigrate helps you figure out which visas you are eligible for in the first place. WhereToEmigrate checks your profile against 1,912 visa programmes across 200 countries and tells you where you can legally move — before you ever need to apply for anything.
The cheapest way is to apply directly through the official government immigration website. Most countries now offer online applications. Use WhereToEmigrate (free assessment) to identify which programmes you qualify for, then go straight to the official portal. You pay only the government application fee — no middleman markup. For complex cases like work permits or investor visas, a local immigration lawyer (EUR 500-2,000) is still cheaper than most agency fees and provides actual legal advice.