UK ETA 2026: Cost, Who Needs One, How to Apply

If you last checked the price of a UK Electronic Travel Authorisation before April 2026, you have the wrong number in your head. It was £16. It is now £20, and a large share of the travel guides, forum posts and news articles still sitting at the top of search results have not been updated.

That gap matters more than four pounds, because it is exactly the gap copycat websites live in. If you have no idea what the official price is, £45 looks like a government fee.

This is a plain guide to the UK ETA as it stands in August 2026: what it is, who needs one, what it costs, how to apply through the official channel, and the mistakes that get people turned away at the gate. Every figure below was checked against GOV.UK and Home Office sources at the time of writing, and each section links to the official page so you can confirm it yourself.

The Short Version


Cost	£20
Valid for	2 years, or until your passport expires — whichever comes first
Entries	Multiple journeys
Stay per visit	Up to 6 months
Decision time	Usually within a day; up to 3 working days
Apply via	The official UK ETA app, or GOV.UK
Covers	UK, Jersey, Guernsey, Isle of Man
Needed by	Every traveller, including babies and children

The Home Office puts it in one sentence in its April 2026 ETA factsheet: an ETA "permits multiple journeys to the UK for stays of up to six months at a time over two years or until the holder's passport expires – whichever is sooner."

One more line from that factsheet is worth reading twice, because it is the single most misunderstood thing about the scheme: an ETA "is not a visa or a tax and does not permit entry into the UK – it authorises a person to travel to the UK." It gets you on the plane. A Border Force officer still decides whether you come in.

Who Needs a UK ETA

GOV.UK's own summary is that you "usually need an ETA rather than a visa if you're from Europe, the USA, Australia, Canada or certain other countries." In practice that means the visa-exempt world.

On 25 February 2026, enforcement became real. The Home Office announced that "from today (25 February), non-visa nationals will be barred from entering the UK without an Electronic Travel Authorisation," covering "visitors of 85 nationalities, including nationals of the United States, Canada and France." From that date, "airlines will prevent passengers from boarding if they do not have an ETA, eVisa or have other valid documentation."

Two details people get wrong:

EU citizens are not exempt. They have not been for a long time — GOV.UK's guidance records that nationals of EU countries (except Ireland), Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Andorra, Monaco, San Marino and Vatican City could apply from 5 March 2025. The February 2026 milestone is when carriers started blocking boarding, not when the requirement appeared. If you are French, German, Spanish or Italian and you have flown to London on your ID card habits, that era is over.

Children need their own. GOV.UK is blunt: "Each person travelling needs an ETA, including babies and children." There is no family application and no infant exemption. A family of four needs four ETAs and pays £80.

Since 9 April 2026, one ETA also covers travel to Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man, not just the UK.

If you are unsure which category you fall into, GOV.UK runs a checker at gov.uk/check-uk-visa, and the full list of eligible nationalities is on the ETA eligibility page.

Who Does Not Need One

The Home Office caseworker guidance sets out the exempt groups. You do not need an ETA if you are:

A British citizen.
An Irish citizen — with narrow exceptions for anyone subject to a deportation order, exclusion decision or international travel ban.
A British Overseas Territories citizen travelling on a BOTC passport.
Someone who already holds "entry clearance or permission to enter or stay in the UK, including those who are settled" — so a UK visa, settled or pre-settled status, or an eVisa replaces the ETA. You do not need both.
A person exempt from immigration control.
Transiting airside — an ETA-eligible national passing through a UK airport without crossing border control does not need one.
A third-country non-visa national lawfully resident in Ireland, travelling to the UK from elsewhere in the Common Travel Area.

British National (Overseas) passport holders also do not need an ETA or a visa to visit the UK.

The transit rule is the one that catches people, and it cuts both ways. GOV.UK's test is whether you cross the border: "You need an ETA if you're passing through border control at a UK airport before continuing your onward journey." Airside connection at Heathrow with no passport check, no ETA. Collect your bags and re-check them, and you have almost certainly passed through border control — get one.

If you hold two passports

This is the exemption that quietly denies people boarding. Dual British and Irish citizens are exempt from the ETA, but the Home Office is explicit that they "will be required to present either a valid British passport or Certificate of Entitlement when travelling to the UK." Being British is not enough on its own — you have to be able to show it at the gate.

If you are, say, British-Australian with a long-expired British passport, you cannot apply for an ETA on your Australian passport to work around it, and the airline has no way to verify your British citizenship without a document. Renew the British passport, or apply for a Certificate of Entitlement, and leave real time for it.

What It Costs, and Why So Many Guides Say £16

The current fee is £20. GOV.UK states it twice, on the overview ("An ETA costs £20") and on the application page ("It costs £20 to apply online or through the UK ETA app").

The change is recent and documented: the Home Office fee table effective 8 April 2026 lists the electronic travel authorisation moving from £16 to £20, a £4 increase.

So if you are reading an article dated 2025, or one that has quietly never been refreshed, £16 is what you will see. Treat £20 as your benchmark. Anything above it is somebody's margin, not the government's.

How to Apply: The Official App, and Nothing Else

The Home Office says the easiest route is the UK ETA app, "which can be downloaded from the Google Play or Apple App Store." You can also apply on GOV.UK directly.

You will need:

The passport you will actually travel with
An email address
A credit card, debit card, Apple Pay or Google Pay

The application asks you to photograph your passport and take a photo of the applicant's face. That is most of the work.

On timing, there are two official numbers and they do not contradict each other. GOV.UK's formal line is that "you'll usually get a decision by email within a day, but it can take up to 3 working days." The Home Office factsheet adds that "most applicants currently get an automatic decision in minutes when applying through the UK ETA app." Minutes is typical. Three working days is the commitment.

The Home Office recommendation is to "apply for an ETA at least three working days in advance of travel." Apply when you book, not the night before. You can check the status of an existing ETA at gov.uk/check-eta.

Your ETA is tied to the passport you applied with. New passport, new ETA — even if the two years have not run out.

The Copycat Sites Charging You Extra

This is the reader-protection part, and GOV.UK does not mince words. Its ETA page carries the warning: "Other websites may charge more to apply. Avoid websites that imitate government services." The application page adds the line that kills the entire sales pitch of these operators: "You cannot get a faster decision by applying through another website or app."

There is no premium tier. No expedited channel. No "review service" that improves your odds. The Home Office processes ETAs the same way whether you paid £20 or £120, and every pound above £20 buys you nothing.

How to stay safe:

Check the domain. The genuine service is on gov.uk. Not uk-eta.org, not eta-gov.co.uk, not anything with "official" in the name doing the work that a real .gov.uk domain would do by itself.
Check the price before you pay. £20 per person is the whole fee.
Use the app. Downloading "UK ETA" from the App Store or Google Play sidesteps search-ad traps entirely. Search engine ads for "UK ETA" are precisely where the copycats spend their money.
Be suspicious of guarantees. No third party can guarantee approval or speed, and anyone claiming to is either overcharging you or harvesting your passport and card details.

The worst versions of these sites are not merely expensive — some collect passport numbers, dates of birth and payment details without filing anything at all. If you have already used one and no ETA arrived, check your status directly on GOV.UK and treat the card you used as compromised.

What an ETA Lets You Do, and What It Doesn't

Straight from GOV.UK's own list. With an ETA you can:

Come for up to 6 months for tourism, visiting family and friends, a business trip, or short-term study
Come for up to 3 months on the Creative Worker visa concession
Come for a permitted paid engagement
Transit through a UK airport where you will pass through border control

You cannot:

Stay longer than 6 months
Do paid or unpaid work for a UK company or as a self-employed person (outside a permitted paid engagement or the Creative Worker concession)
Claim public funds
Live in the UK through frequent or successive visits
Marry or register a civil partnership, or give notice of either

That fourth one deserves attention from remote workers and people with partners in the UK. The two-year, multi-entry ETA looks like it permits a rolling life of three-month stays. It does not, and Border Force officers are the ones who assess whether your pattern of visits has turned into residence. The ETA authorises travel; it never removes the officer's discretion at the border.

UK ETA vs the EU's EES and ETIAS

A genuinely common confusion, and the answer is simple: they are separate systems and neither covers the other. The UK is not in the Schengen area. A UK ETA does nothing for you flying into Paris or Madrid, and the EU's border systems do nothing for you flying into Heathrow.

If you are doing a Europe-plus-London trip, you need to satisfy both sides independently. EU timelines have moved repeatedly, so rather than restate dates here that may slip again, see our dedicated guides, which we keep current:

For everything else you will want on the ground once you land — transport, payments, connectivity — see our United Kingdom app guide.

Before You Fly: The Checklist

Apply at least three working days ahead. Minutes is normal; three working days is the official window.
One ETA per traveller. Babies and children included.
Apply on the passport you will travel with. Renewed it since? Apply again.
£20 per person. Anything more is markup.
Only gov.uk or the UK ETA app. Nothing else is official.
Dual British or Irish citizens: carry a valid British passport or a Certificate of Entitlement.
Connecting through the UK? If you cross border control, you need one.
Check before you leave for the airport at gov.uk/check-eta.

The Bottom Line

The UK ETA is not a difficult process. It is £20, it usually takes minutes in the official app, it lasts two years, and it lets you come and go as often as you like for stays of up to six months.

Almost everything that goes wrong with it goes wrong for one of three reasons: someone paid a copycat site three times the real price, someone assumed a child or a dual-national relative didn't need one, or someone applied on a passport they then replaced. All three are avoidable in the ten minutes it takes to do it properly.

The official page is gov.uk/eta. Start there, and ignore anything that asks you for more than £20.

All fees, timings and rules in this article were verified against GOV.UK and Home Office sources in August 2026. Entry requirements change — check the official page before you travel.

UK ETA 2026: What It Costs, Who Needs One, and the Mistakes That Get People Denied Boarding