The ETIAS Application: Cost, Requirements and How to Avoid Copycat Sites
The short answer
ETIAS cost and requirements, in one line: the fee is EUR 20, the authorisation is valid for three years or until your passport expires, applicants under 18 and over 70 pay nothing — and as of September 2026 there is no application to fill in. No portal is open. No form exists. Nothing is due.
That last part is the whole story. Every site taking payment today for an "ETIAS application" is either a reseller banking on a launch that keeps slipping, or a straightforward scam. The useful thing you can do now is gather your details and understand what the form will ask, which is what the rest of this guide covers. If you want the wider border picture first, start with Europe's new travel authorisation rules.
We track this scheme month to month, and the honest position has not changed all year: prepare, do not pay.
What ETIAS will cost, and who pays nothing
The headline number moved. ETIAS was legislated in 2018 with a EUR 7 fee, and Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2025/1411, adopted in July 2025, amended Article 18(1) of the ETIAS Regulation to set the fee at EUR 20 per application. The Commission's stated reasons were cumulative inflation of 30.12% since 2016, rising numbers of visa-exempt travellers and additional ETIAS functionalities pushing up operating and maintenance costs, and alignment with comparable schemes elsewhere.
One fee, one application, one traveller. There is no family rate and no express tier, so a household of four adults pays EUR 80.
According to the EU's official ETIAS guidance, three groups pay nothing:
- Applicants under 18 at the time they submit
- Applicants aged 70 or over at the time they submit
- Certain family members of EU, Icelandic, Liechtenstein, Norwegian and Swiss citizens exercising free movement rights, where they do not already hold a residence card
Read that list carefully, because it is the most misunderstood line in the whole scheme. A fee exemption is not a scheme exemption. Under-18s and over-70s will still need an ETIAS; they simply will not pay for it. Being outside the scheme altogether is a different question, and we break it down in who is exempt from EES and ETIAS.
Why there is no application to fill in yet
ETIAS was always designed to sit on top of the Entry/Exit System and draw on the same border records, so EES had to land first. According to the European Commission, EES has been fully operational across all Schengen countries since 10 April 2026, after a phased rollout that began in October 2025. That box is ticked. ETIAS is the one still outstanding, and if the underlying machinery is new to you, how the Entry/Exit System works is the shorter read.
The timing is genuinely unsettled, and we would rather say so than invent a date. In an April 2026 explainer the Commission wrote that ETIAS was "scheduled to start in the last quarter of 2026" and that the exact start date would be communicated later that year. Since mid-2026 the reporting has pointed the other way: coverage citing eu-LISA, the EU agency building the system, indicates a 2026 start is no longer considered feasible, the Q4 2026 target was dropped from the official ETIAS page, and 2027 is now the widely reported expectation. As of late September 2026 the EU has not published a confirmed start date.
What the EU has committed to is notice. The official position is that the start date will be announced several months before launch, and the reasoning published alongside the 2025 fee change refers to a global information campaign beginning six months before ETIAS goes live. You are not going to miss it.
For the running status, which we keep separately, see is ETIAS required yet.
What the ETIAS application will ask you for
This is the part worth preparing. Article 17 of Regulation (EU) 2018/1240 sets out the data an applicant must supply, and the Commission describes the process as completing a digital application form on the official ETIAS website or mobile app with personal details, passport information and travel data, then paying the fee.
Expect to be asked for:
- Identity — surname, first names, surname at birth where it differs, date and place of birth, sex, and current nationality, plus any other nationalities you hold
- Travel document — passport number, issuing country, date of issue and date of expiry
- Contact details — home address, email address and phone number
- Education and occupation — your level of education and your current occupation
- First intended stay — the Member State of your first intended stay
- Background declarations — yes/no questions on convictions for certain serious criminal offences, on stays in specific war or conflict zones, and on whether you have previously been refused entry or required to leave a country
- For minors — details of the person exercising parental authority or legal guardianship
Two practical notes. The background questions are narrow and category-based rather than a general "have you ever been in trouble" sweep, but answering them dishonestly is its own problem, because the system is built to cross-check applications against EU databases. And the education and occupation fields exist for risk profiling, so a brief answer is fine where an untrue one is not.
What you can actually do today: confirm your passport will still be valid for the trips you are planning, and know its issue date. That is most of the form.
How long a decision takes
Most people will never see a delay. According to the Commission, most applications are approved within minutes, and the official guidance is that where a decision takes longer you will hear within four days.
The regulation is more precise. Article 32 of Regulation (EU) 2018/1240 requires that an admissible application be decided no later than 96 hours after submission. Where a file is escalated, the clock changes rather than disappears:
- If an ETIAS National Unit asks for extra information or documents, you have 10 days to respond under Article 27, and the decision follows no later than 96 hours after you supply it
- If you are invited to an interview, the decision is due no later than 48 hours after that interview takes place
The Commission's own summary of those extensions is that the four-day period may be extended by up to 14 days where additional information or documentation is requested, or up to 30 days where an interview is required. So the realistic planning range is minutes for most travellers and up to a month for the unlucky few, which is the argument for applying when you book rather than when you pack.
If you are refused
A refusal is not a ban and it is not final. Under the ETIAS Regulation, the refusal notification identifies the country whose ETIAS National Unit took the decision, gives the grounds, and tells you that you have a right of appeal. That appeal is handled by the authorities of the Member State that refused you, under that country's national law. There is no central EU appeals body, which in practice means the procedure and the deadlines vary depending on which country's unit handled your file.
You can also simply apply again — for instance once a circumstance behind the refusal has changed, or once you can document it properly. A refusal does not touch any separate national visa or residence permit you already hold. And if your plans in Europe run longer than short stays anyway, a national route is often the better answer: our complete digital nomad visa guide covers those.
Validity, passport linkage and the renewal trap
An approved ETIAS will be valid for three years or until your passport expires, whichever comes first, according to the European Commission. It is a multiple-entry authorisation for short stays, so within that window you are not reapplying for each trip.
The trap is the passport link. The authorisation is tied to the specific travel document you applied with. Get a new passport — a renewal, a replacement after loss, a second passport for visa reasons — and the old authorisation does not follow you. You apply again, and you pay again.
For anyone who moves constantly, that has a real consequence: if your passport expires in 14 months, your ETIAS expires in 14 months too, however generous the three-year rule sounds. The cheap move is to renew the passport first and apply for the ETIAS second, so your EUR 20 buys the full three years. If you are burning through passport pages fast, sequence the two deliberately.
An approved ETIAS is permission to travel, not permission to enter
This distinction catches people out, and it is baked into the scheme. An ETIAS lets you board and present yourself at the border. It does not oblige anyone to let you in. Border guards will still check your passport and supporting documents, still assess whether you meet the entry conditions, and can still refuse entry to someone holding a valid authorisation.
It also does nothing to your day count. ETIAS does not extend the 90-days-in-any-180 limit for short stays, and with EES now recording entries and exits automatically, that arithmetic is enforced by machine rather than by a border guard squinting at ink stamps. If you are anywhere near the limit, the Schengen 90/180 rule is the number to get right before anything else.
Nor will it get you through faster. Queues are an EES phenomenon, not an ETIAS one, and we track the worst crossings in our guide to EES border queues.
How to spot a copycat ETIAS site
Fake ETIAS sites are not a new problem. Frontex, which hosts the ETIAS Central Unit, published a public warning as far back as April 2023 that the number of unofficial ETIAS websites in multiple languages had risen to over 50, and stated that travellers will be able to submit applications exclusively through the official website. That warning went out when the legislated fee was still EUR 7. The sites have multiplied since and the fee has changed, which tells you how much the operators care about accuracy.
The tells, in rough order of reliability:
- It will take your money today. There is no application to submit as of September 2026, so a working checkout is proof of a problem, not of legitimacy.
- The price is not EUR 20. Third-party "service fees" typically land well above the official figure.
- The domain is not an official EU one. The EU's ETIAS pages sit under europa.eu. Reach them by typing europa.eu and navigating from there, never via a search advert or a social post.
- It promises speed. "Fast track", "guaranteed approval" and "24-hour processing" describe a decision that only an ETIAS National Unit can make.
- It calls ETIAS a visa. It is a travel authorisation, and the official material is careful about that. Copycats rarely are.
- It sells you support. There is no paid ETIAS helpline, and no legitimate reason to pay for one.
If you are still not certain which scheme you are even looking at, we set the four side by side in EES vs ETIAS vs UK ETA vs ESTA.
If you already paid a third party
You have not bought an ETIAS, because there is none to buy. What you bought is, at best, a promise to file something on your behalf at an unknown future date.
What we would do, in this order:
- Ask for a refund in writing, quoting the date and the amount, and keep the correspondence
- Raise a chargeback with your card issuer if that fails — services never rendered are routine for card schemes, and chargeback windows run from the transaction date, so do not sit on it
- Change any password you reused on that site, and treat the passport details you entered as exposed
- Watch the passport number, not just the card. The identity data is the more valuable thing you handed over
- Report it to your national consumer protection authority, and to your bank if card details were taken
Then do nothing further. When applications genuinely open, you will do it yourself in roughly ten minutes.
Frequently asked questions
How much does ETIAS cost? EUR 20 per application, following Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2025/1411, which replaced the original EUR 7 figure. Applicants under 18 and applicants aged 70 or over pay nothing.
Can US citizens apply for ETIAS now? No. As of September 2026 no nationality can apply, because no application channel is open. US citizens will be in scope once it launches, on the same terms as other visa-exempt nationals.
How long is an ETIAS valid? Three years, or until your passport expires, whichever comes first, and it covers multiple short-stay trips within that period.
Which countries does ETIAS cover? The Commission puts it at 30 European countries, which covers the Schengen area plus Cyprus. Ireland runs its own immigration rules and is not part of it.
Where is the official ETIAS website? The EU's ETIAS information pages sit under europa.eu. As of September 2026 they carry information only — there is no application form behind them.
What to do now
The gap between "everyone is talking about ETIAS" and "you can actually do something about ETIAS" is exactly where the money gets taken. Close it with four decisions.
- Budget EUR 20 per traveller, and nothing more
- Check your passport expiry now, and renew before you apply rather than after, or you shorten your own authorisation
- Do not pay anyone. As of late September 2026 there is no application channel, and the EU has said it will announce the start date several months ahead of launch
- Remember the two numbers that matter — three years of validity, and the 90-days-in-180 limit that ETIAS does not change
Nothing about this scheme rewards being early. It rewards being unsurprised. Watch the official EU pages, ignore anyone charging you for the privilege, and read our EES and ETIAS guide for how the whole border stack fits together — that is the part that affects your next trip.
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