If you are weighing a Suriname E-Tourist Card against a Suriname E-Visa, the honest finding comes first, because it saves you the comparison. The E-Tourist Card is offered to the holders of three passports: Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Venezuela. For almost everyone else the choice does not exist, and the thing you actually buy is a third product that most guides do not even mention: an Entry Fee voucher.
The short answer, counted from the official country list
The visa portal run for Suriname's Ministry of Foreign Affairs publishes a list of every country with the products available to its passport holders. We counted that list from the version captured in the Internet Archive on 31 July 2026, the most recent readable copy. It holds 251 countries and territories, and they fall into four groups:
- 216 are listed with Entry Fee (Single + Multiple) / Business / Transit / Short Stay, 90 Days. For tourism, these travelers pay an Entry Fee. No tourist card, no tourist visa.
- 21 are listed with Tourist / Business / Transit / Short Stay, 90 Days. These travelers need a visa before they fly.
- 14 are listed as Caricom Member State, Visa Exempt for all visas except Short Stay [MKV] visa, 90 Days.
- 3 carry the words E-Tourist Card in their entry: Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Venezuela. Those three, and no others.
So the question which should I pick has a flat answer for an American, a Canadian, a Dutch or a German passport. The portal lists the United States of America as All types of Passport with Entry Fee (Single + Multiple) / Business / Transit / Short Stay, 90 Days. There is nothing to choose: for a holiday you buy an Entry Fee voucher.
How the card went from 51 nationalities to three
The comparison used to make sense, which is why it still circulates. When VFS Global and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs launched the service, in a media release dated Paramaribo, 15 April 2019, the release named 51 countries whose citizens were eligible for E-Tourist Cards, the United States, Canada, the Netherlands and much of Europe among them, and said the cards were valid for a period of 90 days for a single visit. Then two things happened, and the ministry sets them out itself.
In 2022, in the ministry's own words, het visum werd wereldwijd afgeschaft en vervangen door een Entry Fee — the visa was abolished worldwide and replaced by an Entry Fee. Travelers no longer apply for a visa but must pay the fee and show the voucher at the airline check-in desk. Then, in 2023, the visa requirement came back for 21 countries, and for three of them the tourist card came back with it.
That is why a guide written from the 2019 launch is not merely out of date. It points you at a product your passport is no longer offered.
The legal step behind that is published. S.B. 2023 no. 76, a decision of the Minister of Foreign Affairs of 9 May 2023, number 4002, adds a new paragraph 5 to article 2 of the Visum-Instructie 1983 and declares, with effect from 1 May 2023, that the tourist card again applies to Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela and India, and that the visa requirement applies to Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Angola, Ghana, Cameroon, Kenya, Nigeria, Zambia, South Africa, Eritrea, Somalia, Egypt, Syria and Tunisia. Seventeen plus four makes the twenty-one.
The same decision records that the Entry Fee for travelers who may enter without a visa was raised to US$ 50 or Euro 50, and that is where a figure you may have seen comes from. A fee of 25 dollars is not, and never was, the price of a tourist card: it was the original Entry Fee, set by a ministerial decision of 24 June 2022, and the fee decree of 22 January 2024 doubled it. If a guide quotes you 25, it is quoting a superseded Entry Fee under the wrong name.
What the 21 visa countries must show on top of the visa
This is the part of the difference that matters most and is least written down. The ministry's published entry instructions, effective 1 May 2023, require of everyone a passport with at least six months validity, a valid visa or Entry Fee voucher, evidence of having sufficient funds to cover the entire stay, and a yellow fever certificate if you arrive within six days of leaving or transiting an infected or endemic area. Passport holders of the 21 countries must also:
- Present a letter of guarantee or invitation from a company registered with the Chamber of Commerce, or from a person in Suriname.
- Show proof of a paid hotel reservation covering the entire stay, for tourism or business purposes.
Those two requirements do not apply to Entry Fee travelers. That, far more than the name on the document, is the real difference in what a trip costs you in paperwork.
Where the official sources contradict each other
We are not going to smooth this over, because you may be the person it catches.
- India. The 2023 decision lists India under the tourist card. The ministry's announcement reintroducing the card names only Cuban, Dominican and Venezuelan passports. The portal's own country list gives India a Tourist visa and no E-Tourist Card. Three official sources, three positions.
- The link in the ministry's own announcement is misspelled by one letter and points at a domain that does not exist. Type the portal address from the ministry's August 2026 announcement instead, not from that page.
Where official sources disagree, the one to act on is the one that will be read at the check-in desk, and the airline reads the portal. Ask the ministry or a Surinamese mission in writing if your nationality sits in the gap.
One thing all of them share: the limit is on the stay, not the document
Every entry on the portal's country list, in all four groups, ends with 90 days. The Entry Fee page gives the maximum duration of stay as 90 days for a single entry, and the same for a multiple entry voucher whose own validity is three months. If what you are planning is longer than 90 days, no version of this document is your answer; a residence permit is, and that is handled by the Hoofdafdeling Vreemdelingenzaken under the Ministry of Justice, not by the visa portal. Its own public information says that to stay legally you need a valid residence permit and that the application is filed digitally on its website.
What expats should know
- The E-Tourist Card is for three passports: Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Venezuela.
- 216 of 251 listed countries get an Entry Fee instead, which is what most readers of this page will be buying.
- The 2019 list of 51 eligible countries is history. Treat any guide built on it as unusable.
- 21 countries need a visa under S.B. 2023 no. 76, in force since 1 May 2023.
- Those 21 also need a letter of guarantee and a paid hotel reservation. Entry Fee travelers do not.
- A quoted 25 dollars is a superseded Entry Fee, not a tourist card price. The fee decree of 22 January 2024 sets US$ 50 or Euro 50.
- No published tariff exists that we could read for the e-visa or the tourist card itself. See the next point.
- Ninety days is the ceiling on every one of them. Longer means a residence permit, through a different ministry.
What is not published, and where to ask
We cannot give you the price of an e-visa or of a tourist card, because nobody publishes it where we could read it. The 2023 decision refers for those amounts to the Staatsbesluit Heffing Kanselarijrechten. The fee table we could read in that chain, the decree of 22 January 2024, sets only the Entry Fee and the fees for the PSA document. The chain names a further amendment, S.B. 2024 no. 114, which is not published on the state's own legal information site, measured on 25 October 2026. The portal's fee page is a script-driven page that leaves no readable table in the archive. So ask the portal's service desk or a Surinamese embassy or consulate-general for the amount in writing, and do not budget from a figure in a guide.
One more measurement worth your time. On 25 October 2026 we tested the addresses that circulate for this service. evisa.gov.sr and suriname-evisa.org returned no connection at all, not even an error page. vfsglobal.com/suriname answers, but what it serves is VFS Global's own Page Not Found screen. The ministry's announcement of 10 August 2026 states that after a platform migration one address is the official one and that de voorheen gebruikte webpagina is niet langer actief. Use that one address, which is given below.
Where to check
The country list, the product names and the 90-day ceiling are from the Suriname eVisa portal's own country list and its single-entry and multiple-entry pages, read from Internet Archive captures of 31 July and 23 September 2026; the live portal at suriname.vfsevisa.com returned a Cloudflare access check to our requests from two networks on 25 October 2026, while the Archive holds a successful capture from 2 October 2026, so a traveler using an ordinary browser should get through. The timeline from 2019 to 2023 is the ministry's own explanation of the visa and tourist card procedure. The statutory step is S.B. 2023 no. 76 and the Entry Fee tariff is the fee decree of 22 January 2024. The entry requirements and the extra documents for the 21 countries are the ministry's instructions effective 1 May 2023. The 51-country list is VFS Global's launch release of 15 April 2019. The reintroduction of the card is the ministry's announcement; the residence permit route is Vreemdelingenzaken. All read on 25 October 2026.
