ETIAS Cost: The €20 Fee, Who Pays, Who’s Free & the Fee-Mill Scams

ETIAS costs €20. That is the entire price list — one line — and yet the fee is the most lied-about number in European travel, because an industry of middleman sites plans to charge you €60, €80, €90 for the same ten-minute form. Here is everything about the money: the exemptions that make it free for kids and seniors, the story of the €7-to-€20 triple, the honest comparisons with ESTA and the UK ETA, and the fee-mill playbook to recognize before it recognizes you.

The Price, Broken Down to Its One Component

When applications open, you will pay €20 — roughly $21–$23 depending on the exchange rate — by debit or credit card, on the official portal, at the end of the ten-minute form. There is no service charge on top, no processing tier, no expedite fee, no renewal discount, no group rate. Divide it across the validity and the number stops feeling like a number at all: three years of unlimited European trips for the price of an airport sandwich — well under €7 a year. The fee is paid per application, which means a denial (rare — the approval rate runs about 95%) does not get refunded, and a reapplication pays again; the denial guide covers how to avoid needing one.

Who Travels Free — the Exemptions Families Should Plan Around

Three groups pay nothing: applicants under 18, applicants over 70, and certain family members of EU citizens covered by free-movement rules. Two fine-print points matter. First, free is not exempt: a 6-year-old and a 75-year-old still need their own approved ETIAS — the application must be filed, it simply skips the payment screen (age is assessed at application). Grandparents planning the once-in-a-lifetime trip and parents wrangling four kids’ forms should read the senior guide and family guide — both groups are prime targets for fee-mill sites precisely because the real price of their application is zero.

Run the family math the honest way: two parents, three kids = €40 total (two paid applications, three free) for three years of trips. Now run it the fee-mill way at €79 “per applicant, all ages”: €395. That €355 spread — charged for filling in the same free-or-€20 government form — is the entire business model this page exists to break.

Why the Fee Tripled — the €7 to €20 Story

ETIAS was legislated with a €7 fee, and years of coverage quoted it — plenty of stale articles still do. On July 17, 2025, the European Commission adopted a decision raising it to €20, citing inflation since 2018, the real operational costs of running the system, and — candidly — alignment with what peer systems charge (the US had just raised ESTA to $40, and the UK’s ETA sits at £20 after its own April 2026 increase). The practical takeaways: any site quoting €7 hasn’t updated since 2025 and should be trusted accordingly on everything else; and the €20 is set by Commission decision, meaning it can move again in future years — if it does, this page updates within days.

How €20 Compares — the Authorization Price Board

Line up the world’s pre-travel authorizations and Europe lands mid-pack: the US ESTA at $40 for two years (making ETIAS cheaper per year of validity by a wide margin), the UK ETA at £20 for two years, Canada’s eTA at CA$7 for up to five, Australia’s ETA around AU$20. For a traveler who visits Europe even once every eighteen months, ETIAS is the cheapest recurring document in their travel life — which is worth remembering when a fee-mill’s checkout page tries to make €79 feel normal. It is not normal. It is not the price. The price is €20.

The Fee-Mill Playbook — Recognize It Before You Pay It

The pattern is already running for other countries’ systems and is warming up for ETIAS launch day: a polished site ranks for “ETIAS application,” walks you through a convincing form, and charges €60–€90 — sometimes framed as “government fee + service fee,” sometimes hiding the markup entirely. The tells, in order of reliability: (1) the domain is not travel-europe.europa.eu — that alone is dispositive for applications; (2) any price other than €20; (3) urgency theater (“apply before the deadline!”) for a system with three-year validity; (4) accepting “applications” before the portal has even opened — the current dead giveaway, since nobody can file anything today. Some of these operations deliver nothing at all; the more dangerous ones deliver your passport data to people who resell it. The complete taxonomy — including the fake-approval-email and “ETIAS renewal” cons coming after launch — lives in the scam field guide.

And the one-sentence defense that beats all of it: type the official address yourself, pay €20 or nothing, and treat every other door as hostile. This site will remind you of the price on nearly every page, on purpose — the drumbeat is the protection.