The paper form the cabin crew used to hand out somewhere over the Andaman Sea has quietly disappeared across Asia, and been replaced by something you are expected to have filed before you board. Miss it and you are not refused entry — you are sent to a kiosk in the arrivals hall to do it on airport wi-fi, holding your luggage, while the queue you were in moves on.
Here is what each of the big four actually requires, and the thing the intermediaries selling them would rather you did not know: every one of these is free from the government.
The four you are most likely to meet
| Who must file | When | Government fee | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Thailand TDAC | All foreign nationals, arriving by air, land or sea | Within 3 days (72 h) before arrival | Free |
| Malaysia MDAC | Foreign visitors, with a real exemption list (below) | No more than 3 days before arrival | Free |
| Singapore SGAC | All travellers except residents at land checkpoints and airside transit | Within 3 days, including arrival day | Free |
| India e-Arrival Card | Foreign nationals arriving in India | Before arrival | Free |
The pattern is not a coincidence. These are immigration declarations — who you are, where you are staying, sometimes a health question — not authorisations to travel. Nobody assesses you and grants anything. The system takes your details, hands back a QR code, and an officer scans it.
Thailand — TDAC
The Thailand Digital Arrival Card has been required since 1 May 2025, when it replaced the paper TM6. It applies to every arriving non-Thai national, whether you come by air, by land or by sea, and whether you are visa-free, on a visa on arrival or on an e-visa. Each arrival needs its own submission: the form is valid for one entry, so a trip out to Laos and back means filing again. You can submit from 72 hours before arrival, it takes about ten minutes, and it asks for your passport details, flight and accommodation, plus health information.
Malaysia — MDAC
The Malaysia Digital Arrival Card is the one with genuine exemptions, and they matter because people assume the wrong ones. Being visa-free does not exempt you — that is the single most common mistake. What does exempt you: Singapore citizens; Malaysian citizens and permanent residents; diplomatic and official passport holders; Bruneians holding a General Certificate of Identity; users of the Brunei–Malaysia Frequent Traveller Facility; Thai border-pass holders; and holders of Indonesian cross-border travel documents. Valid long-term pass holders — MM2H, Employment Pass, Student Pass, Residence Pass — are exempt for as long as their pass is valid. Everyone else files, no more than three days ahead.
Singapore — SGAC
The SG Arrival Card bundles your arrival details with an electronic health declaration. ICA's own wording is that "all travellers are required to submit the SG Arrival Card with Electronic Health Declaration before arriving in Singapore", with the exceptions being travellers transiting without immigration clearance and residents — citizens, permanent residents and long-term pass holders — using land checkpoints. The window is three days including the day of arrival, and ICA is blunt about the rest:
ICA does not support or endorse services offered by commercial entities assisting to submit the SG Arrival Card at a fee. They are not affiliated with ICA.
That is a government telling you not to pay anyone for this. Take the advice.
India — e-Arrival Card
India's e-Arrival Card is the same species: a declaration filed before you land, not permission to travel. It is separate from the India e-Visa — you can need both, and holding one says nothing about the other. The government charges nothing for it.
So why do we sell help with one of them?
Because a form being free is not the same as a form being easy, and we would rather say that plainly than let you find out from a comparison site.
We do assist with the India e-Arrival Card. The government fee is zero, we show it as zero, and what you would be paying us is a service fee for the assistance — checking the passport details against the document, filing it, and dealing with it if something is wrong. You can file it yourself, for free, and for many travellers that is the right answer. Our India e-Arrival Card page states the fee split before you start, and our pricing page has the whole table.
What we will not do is what the sites ICA is warning about do: present a free government form as though the fee were the government's, or imply we are the portal. If you take one thing from this post, let it be the habit of checking which half of a price is the authority's and which half is the company's — on our pages and on everyone else's.
The habits that actually save you trouble
- File inside the window, not before it. All four systems reject a submission that is too early — usually more than 72 hours out. Set a reminder for three days before you fly rather than trying to be organised a month ahead.
- One arrival, one form. These are per-entry, not per-trip. A side trip to a neighbouring country means filing again on the way back.
- Visa-free is not exemption. The two questions are unrelated. Check the arrival card separately from the visa, for every country on the itinerary.
- Screenshot the QR code. Airport wi-fi is exactly where you do not want to be reloading an email.
- Check the domain before you pay. A government arrival-card site does not need your card details, because none of these cost anything.
And if the destination does need a real authorisation
Arrival cards are the easy half. Where advance permission genuinely is required — and where a rejection costs you the trip — is the visa or travel authorisation itself: Kenya, India, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Canada and the rest. Our visa checker answers it for your passport in one click, and the filing-deadline planner tells you the last day you can safely apply for the date you fly.