Singapore Arrival Card Fee: What It Costs and How Long It Takes

The Singapore Arrival Card fee is zero

The fee for the Singapore Arrival Card (SGAC) is zero. ICA states it on the official page in plain words: SGAC submission is free of charge, on the SGAC e-Service and on the MyICA mobile app. No government fee, no processing fee, no service charge.

If that is all you came for, you can stop reading and file it yourself now. The rest of this page covers what paid options exist, what they legitimately charge for, how long everything takes, and how to tell an honest filing service from a lookalike site. We are one of those paid options: $19 to file the SGAC for you, acknowledgment within 24 hours, full refund if we fail to deliver.

Processing time: how long the SGAC takes

The submission itself is instant. When you complete the form on the e-Service, the record is created on the spot, and ICA sends an acknowledgment email to the address you declared. Travelers normally see it within minutes.

There is no approval stage, because the card is not an application. It is a record of your arrival that ICA matches against your passport at clearance. Nothing is pending, nothing is under review, and no one decides whether to grant it.

The only real time constraint is the window: file within 3 days before your arrival in Singapore, counting the arrival day. Arrive Sunday 20 December 2026 and the e-Service accepts filings from Friday 18 December 2026. Inside the window, minutes; outside it, not accepted at all. The filing steps are in how to apply for the SGAC.

Why paid SGAC services exist

If the form is free and instant, what is there to pay for? The work, not the card. Some travelers hit the portal the night before an early flight with a passport in one hand and a booking reference in the other. Some are filing for a family of five and want one person to own the task. Some want a human to check that the passport number is right before it reaches immigration.

That is what our $19 covers. You send your trip details once, we complete the official form, verify every field against your passport, submit inside the correct window, and forward the acknowledgment within 24 hours. Corrections after filing are handled free. Payment runs through Stripe, Alipay, or WeChat Pay.

What we are honest about: ICA does not support or endorse commercial entities that submit the SGAC for a fee, and that includes us. We are an independent service with no government affiliation, and the official form is always free to submit yourself. Our complete SGAC guide covers the wider rules.

Official portal vs our service

Side by side:

The fee scams to avoid

Not every paid SGAC page is an honest filing service. ICA has issued public advisories about fake and misleading websites that imitate the official form, harvest passport details, and charge for a submission that costs nothing. One fake site ICA flagged phished travelers' particulars and requested US$30. Singapore media have reported overseas-hosted portals charging as much as S$100 for help with the free form.

Three checks keep you safe. First, the official address is ica.gov.sg, a .gov.sg domain; be suspicious of anything else charging a fee. Second, no legitimate service charges for the card itself, only for filing assistance, and says so up front. Third, a real service tells you the free option exists before asking for money. We put it in our first paragraph.

If a site charged you for a card and you suspect it was fake, ICA's advisory page is the place to verify the official channels and report what happened.

Cost questions for real trips

A family of four flying to Changi: four cards, one Group Submission, zero cost on the official channel, or $19 each through us if you want the handling done. A solo traveler with details ready: free and done in minutes, no reason to pay anyone. A traveler who wants confirmation in hand before check-in with none of the portal work: that is our customer, and the fees and turnaround above are the whole price.

Either way, the card itself never costs anything. Start my application for the $19 filing service, or use the free official e-Service and keep your money for the arrival hall. Both routes end at the same immigration counter, with the same record on file, filed in the same 3-day window.

Frequently asked questions