Vietnam waives visas for citizens of more than a dozen countries, but the number of days you get depends on which legal tool covers your passport, not just where you’re from. Right now Russians get up to 45 days visa-free per entry, while Belarusians and Kazakhstanis get 30. The gap isn’t random: Vietnam uses two different legal instruments, a one-sided government resolution for some countries and a signed bilateral agreement for others, and each instrument comes with its own day count baked in.
I’ve lived in Da Nang for nine years and run visa-run transfers for people whose visa-free window is about to run out. I get asked “why does my friend from another country get more days than me” almost weekly, so here’s the mechanism, not just the numbers.
Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan: visa-free terms compared
| Country | Visa-free days | Legal basis | Effective dates | How to stay longer |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Russia | Up to 45 days per entry, any purpose | Resolution 44/NQ-CP (unilateral) | 15 Mar 2025 to 14 Mar 2028 | e‑Visa or visa run before day 45 |
| Belarus | 30 days per entry, up to 90 days per calendar year | Bilateral visa waiver agreement | Signed 8 Dec 2023, in force since 30 Jan 2025 | e‑Visa or visa run before day 30 |
| Kazakhstan | 30 days per entry, up to 90 days per rolling 6-month period | Bilateral visa waiver agreement | Signed 21 Aug 2023, in force since 25 May 2024 | e‑Visa or visa run before day 30 |
| 11 other nationalities on Resolution 44/NQ-CP | 45 days per entry, same terms as Russia | Resolution 44/NQ-CP (unilateral) | 15 Mar 2025 to 14 Mar 2028 | e‑Visa or visa run before day 45 |
If you’d rather someone else track the deadline for you, that’s the kind of thing I do for a living, more on that below.
Russia: 45 days under a one-sided Vietnamese resolution
Russian passport holders get up to 45 days visa-free per entry into Vietnam, and this applies regardless of whether the trip is tourism, business, or a family visit. The rule comes from Resolution 44/NQ-CP, issued by Vietnam’s own government on 7 March 2025 and running through 14 March 2028.
A resolution like this is a unilateral instrument. Vietnam decided on its own, without negotiating a treaty with Russia, that citizens of 12 named countries get 45 days at the border. Nobody signed anything on the Russian side, and Russia doesn’t owe Vietnamese citizens a matching waiver in return. That’s the whole reason this route can be revised or dropped by Vietnam alone before 2028 without renegotiating anything with Moscow.
Belarus: 30 days under a bilateral visa waiver agreement
Belarusian citizens with an ordinary passport get 30 days visa-free per entry, capped at 90 days total across a calendar year. This runs on a bilateral visa waiver agreement between Vietnam and Belarus, signed in Hanoi on 8 December 2023 and in force since 30 January 2025, confirmed by Belarus’s own embassy in Hanoi.
A bilateral agreement is a two-way treaty: both governments sign it, and both sides commit to waiving visas for each other’s citizens under agreed terms. Belarus had briefly been on the same unilateral 45-day list as Russia before this treaty took effect, but the new signed agreement replaced that arrangement, and the negotiated number in the treaty text is 30, not 45.
Kazakhstan: 30 days under its own bilateral agreement
Kazakhstani citizens also get 30 days visa-free per entry, with a cap of 90 days inside any rolling 6-month period rather than a calendar year. The agreement was signed on 21 August 2023 and took effect on 25 May 2024, reported at the time by Kazakh outlet Vlast.kz.
The 30-day figure matches Belarus because both countries negotiated separate bilateral treaties, and 30 days appears to be the standard number Vietnam offers in that kind of two-way deal. The 90-day cap works differently though: Kazakhstan’s window resets on a sliding 6-month basis, while Belarus resets once per calendar year, so someone tracking their allowance needs to check which clock applies to their own passport.
Why do unilateral and bilateral visa waivers give different day counts?
A unilateral resolution and a bilateral agreement are legally different tools, and Vietnam has used a bigger number, 45 days, only on the unilateral list, while every bilateral agreement I found lands on 30 days. A government resolution is Vietnam acting alone, easy to issue and just as easy to amend or cancel without consulting the other country. A bilateral agreement is a negotiated treaty, slower to arrange and harder to unwind, but it commits both sides.
No official Vietnamese statement I found spells out “we give unilateral countries more days because it costs us nothing to change our mind.” But the pattern is consistent: both Belarus and Kazakhstan, negotiating independently of each other, ended up with the same 30-day figure in their treaties, while every country still sitting on the resolution route gets 45. Read it as Vietnam offering a longer runway where it keeps full unilateral control, and a shorter, but treaty-locked, runway where a foreign government signed on the dotted line too.
How do you find your own country’s visa-free rule?
Start by checking whether your country appears on Vietnam’s current unilateral list or has a standalone bilateral agreement, since the two lists aren’t the same and a country can move from one to the other, as happened with Belarus. The safest sources are your home country’s embassy website in Vietnam or Vietnam’s own portals, not a random travel blog repeating last year’s numbers.
Once you know which instrument applies, note the exact day count and whether the cap resets per calendar year or per rolling window, because that detail changes how soon you can re-enter after a long stay. Missing your own deadline is the actual problem people bring to me: someone realizes on day 43 that their 45-day window is almost up and hasn’t planned an e‑Visa or a border run, and now it’s a rush instead of a plan. That’s where I usually get involved. I check the exact expiry date on a client’s stamp, file the e‑Visa application myself with a card that evisa.gov.vn actually accepts, since it rejects a lot of foreign cards, and get the new visa processed the same day, run from Da Nang. All that’s needed from the traveler is a passport scan and their arrival details.
I run this out of Da Nang under the Best Bus brand (danangvisarun.com), covering the Da Nang to Laos crossing and the paperwork that goes with it.
What should you actually do before your visa-free window runs out?
Whichever country you hold a passport from, the day count is fixed but the deadline still needs tracking, since Vietnam doesn’t extend a visa-free stay inside the country. You either file an e‑Visa before the clock runs out or leave and re-enter to reset it, and neither happens automatically. Overstaying carries a fine that climbs with every extra day, and a long enough overstay can end in deportation and a future entry ban, so the safer move is filing the e‑Visa a few days before day 30 or day 45, not on the last one. This part can be handed over end to end — what that covers is on our Da Nang visa run page.
If tracking a foreign bureaucracy on top of a trip already feels like one thing too many, I’d rather just take that piece off your plate. Message me on Telegram with your passport country and entry date, and I’ll tell you exactly which deadline applies to you and what the fastest way to extend it looks like.
