The Dominican Republic’s eTicket is free. It takes five minutes. The official portal (at eticket.migracion.gob.do, the only legitimate .gob.do address) charges nothing, asks for no payment card, and generates a QR code the instant you submit. The entire thing is a pre-departure registration form. It’s not a visa. It doesn’t require an agent, an intermediary, or a “processing service” of any kind.

What it does require, apparently, is knowing that the free portal exists. Because a layer of third-party websites has been charging travelers $15 to $79 per person to complete this form on their behalf, buying Google ads that land above the actual government site, building portals that replicate the official design down to the fonts, and only revealing the fee at the very last step when you request your QR code. By then you’ve already typed in your passport details.

The Dirección General de Migración (DGM) — the Dominican Republic’s migration authority — issued an official advisory about this. They confirmed they’re working with the country’s National Cybersecurity Center to combat the fake sites. The advisory has had modest reach. The scam sites remain up and running.

Punta Cana is one of the most visited destinations for Americans in the entire Caribbean. The volume of travelers who hit those fake portals every week is real.

Quick Facts — Dominican Republic eTicket 2026

Detail	Info
Who needs it	All passengers entering or departing the Dominican Republic
Americans	Visa-free up to 30 days, but eTicket still required
Cost	Free
Official portal	eticket.migracion.gob.do
Domain to verify	Must end in .gob.do — the Dominican Republic’s official government extension
Timing	Can be completed months ahead; must be done before you reach the airline check-in counter
Required for	Both arrival in and departure from the DR
What you get	QR code reviewed by airline check-in and DR immigration
Scam site example	eticket.portalmigracion.com — copies the official design, charges $79
DGM advisory	Issued June 2025, confirmed partnership with National Cybersecurity Center

In one sentence: The Dominican Republic eTicket is a free, mandatory pre-departure form at eticket.migracion.gob.do — any site charging for it is unauthorized, and the DGM has officially warned travelers about fake portals that mimic the government design.

What Is the Dominican Republic eTicket?

The eTicket replaced the paper customs and migration cards that used to be handed out on the plane (the ones you’d fill in with a dull pen on a tray table while turbulence made your handwriting illegible).

The digital version, launched by the DGM, consolidates the entry and exit information that the Dominican Republic’s migration, customs, and public health authorities collect from travelers. Instead of separate paper forms at the border, the data goes in once, online, before you board.

You enter your passport details, flight information, travel purpose, and accommodation address. The portal generates a QR code. Airlines reference it at check-in. Dominican immigration reviews it on arrival. Same information as before — just collected earlier and in one place.

No documents to upload. No waiting period. No fee. The DGM’s official eTicket page describes the service as “available 24 hours a day, every day at no cost.”

The Scam — How It Actually Works

The mechanics are worth understanding because the execution is genuinely good.

A site like eticket.portalmigracion.com looks, at first glance, like the official portal. Same color scheme. Same step-by-step form layout. Detailed information about the eTicket requirement. Guidance that sounds authoritative. Nothing in the design signals that you’re on a third-party site rather than a .gob.do government domain.

You work through the form — passport details, flight info, accommodation. The UX is smooth. You get to the final step: generate your QR code. That’s when the payment screen appears. Charges documented at $79 per person. By the time you see the price, you’ve already entered your passport details into a form you thought was run by the Dominican government.

Some travelers pay it and get a functional QR code in return. Others pay and get nothing. Either way, they’ve handed over passport data and credit card details to a site with no accountability to any government and no published contact information. The DGM has officially documented that its real platform has not been compromised — the fake sites are entirely separate operations.

The $79 figure is at the high end. Charges as low as $15 per person have been documented. Some sites offer “family packages.” The number varies; the model is the same.

The DGM Advisory

In June 2025, Dominican Today reported that Dominican migration authorities had formally warned travelers about the scam — the DGM issued an advisory confirming the problem and stating it was coordinating with the National Cybersecurity Center and other authorities to shut down fraudulent sites.

The advisory made one point clearly: the eTicket service is free. Any site charging for it is not operating on behalf of the Dominican government.

This isn’t the first time the DGM has had to say this. An earlier wave of fake sites drew similar warnings in 2024, with a Dominican Today report from June of that year covering travelers who had been scammed by a fake entry portal. The problem persisted and evolved. By mid-2025, the sites were buying Google ads.

The paid search placement is the detail that makes this different from older versions of the scam. Previously, a fake site might appear organically below the real one. Now sponsored results appear above the real portal. Someone doing a quick Google search for “Dominican Republic eticket” may see the paid result first and never reach the actual government site.

How to Apply at the Official Portal

How do I complete the Dominican Republic eTicket?

The free official process at eticket.migracion.gob.do takes under five minutes. No account required.

1. Go to eticket.migracion.gob.do. Verify the URL. The domain must be .gob.do, the Dominican Republic’s official government extension. If you see anything else (migracion.com, portalmigracion.com, dominicanrepublic-eticket.com, or any variation), close the tab.

2. Select your travel type. Entry into the Dominican Republic or departure from it. The form covers both directions.

3. Enter your passport details. Full name as it appears on your passport, passport number, nationality, and date of birth. Exact matches matter — discrepancies between your form and your travel document can create delays at check-in.

4. Enter your flight details. Airline, flight number, travel dates, departure airport.

5. Enter your address in the Dominican Republic. For arrivals: hotel name and location. For departures: your home address. A hotel name and city is sufficient.

6. Complete the health and customs declaration. Brief and factual — items you’re carrying, purpose of travel.

7. Submit. No payment screen appears. If one does, you are not on the official portal. Close the tab, go back to eticket.migracion.gob.do, and start again.

8. Save your QR code. Screenshot it. Email it to yourself. Save it somewhere accessible without a wifi connection. That QR code is what check-in agents look for.

The form can be completed months ahead of your trip — as soon as you have your flight details confirmed. There’s no short submission window like some other countries impose. Complete it whenever you have a few minutes after booking, save the QR, and you’re done.

Who Needs It

Every passenger on a flight entering or departing the Dominican Republic must submit the eTicket. That covers:

• All US citizens entering the DR (including those using the 30-day visa-free arrangement)
• All travelers departing the DR on any outbound flight
• Dominican nationals traveling internationally (check DGM guidance for your specific case)

The visa-free part is what creates the information gap. Americans can enter the Dominican Republic without applying for a visa — no forms to submit, no pre-approval required, just show up with a valid passport. That ease of entry leads a lot of travelers to assume there’s no paperwork at all. There is. The eTicket exists independently of the visa question and applies regardless of how simple your entry status is.

No visa required does not mean no pre-departure form required. Those are two different things.

The Google Ads Problem

This scam runs a pattern that’s become familiar across Caribbean and Latin American destinations — Sint Maarten’s ED Card, Colombia’s Check-MIG, Thailand’s TDAC, the Philippines eTravel system — but the paid search angle makes the Dominican version particularly aggressive.

The playbook: find a destination with a free government form that looks bureaucratic, build a site that passes visual inspection as official, charge $15–$79 to complete it, run Google ads targeting the form name so you appear above the actual government portal. The investment in ad spend is paid back within a small number of conversions. Most travelers have no baseline to compare against — they’ve never filled out the DR eTicket before, they have no idea what the real site looks like, and the fake site confirms their assumption that international travel requires fees at every step.

The tell is always the same: government web services in the Dominican Republic end in .gob.do. That suffix is controlled. A private company cannot register a .gob.do domain. If the URL you’re on doesn’t contain .gob.do, it’s not the Dominican government — regardless of how official the design looks, what it claims about official partnerships, or how high it ranks in search results.

What the eTicket Is Not

The eTicket is not a visa. It does not grant entry to the Dominican Republic and cannot substitute for any visa requirement.

Americans have it simple here: no visa required for stays up to 30 days. The $10 tourist card fee is included in the price of your airline ticket. So for most American travelers, the eTicket is the only form involved, and it’s free. But it’s worth knowing the eTicket and visa status are separate questions — completing the eTicket does not mean you’re cleared for entry, and entry clearance depends on what Dominican immigration decides when you arrive.

Extensions beyond 30 days require applying through the DGM in Santo Domingo. The eTicket form covers the arrival registration only.

The DR in the Broader Picture

The Dominican Republic isn’t unusual in having a mandatory pre-departure digital form — the Philippines requires eTravel registration, India has its e-Arrival Card, Colombia requires the Check-MIG before every flight in both directions. What the DR shares with most of these destinations is that the form is free, and the scam ecosystem knows that free forms with bureaucratic names create exactly the uncertainty that makes travelers pay for reassurance.

The DGM’s formal partnership with the National Cybersecurity Center signals the problem has reached a scale that warranted an institutional response. That’s the same pattern that played out with Vietnam’s digital arrival card — official government warnings issued after fake sites had already captured significant search traffic.

The Cancun and Tulum VISITAX scam follows the same template: a real government fee that legitimate third-party sites inflate and fake sites replicate. The DR eTicket differs from VISITAX in one key way — there’s no underlying cost to inflate. The real thing is zero dollars, which makes the scam even cleaner. You’re not paying a markup on a real fee. You’re paying for something that’s free.

The Dominican Republic Is Worth Every Step of the Prep

Punta Cana’s beaches rank among the best in the Caribbean for a reason. The north coast around Cabarete draws kitesurfers from across the world. Samaná is a different place entirely — quiet, whale-watching season from January to March, waterfalls you actually have to hike to. The DR has more than one version of itself.

None of that gets affected by the eTicket. It’s five minutes at a laptop, zero dollars, one QR code. The travelers it catches are the ones who’ve done everything right — flights booked, hotel confirmed, passport valid — and then either find a fake site on Google and pay $79 they didn’t need to spend, or find out at the check-in counter that the form exists and they haven’t done it.

This post exists to prevent both versions of that scenario.

The Bottom Line

The Dominican Republic eTicket is free at eticket.migracion.gob.do — that’s the only legitimate portal, run by the DGM on a .gob.do government domain. It’s required for all passengers arriving in and departing from the Dominican Republic. Americans are visa-free for 30 days, but the eTicket still applies. Fill it out before you reach the airline check-in counter, save the QR code, and you’re done.

Any site not on a .gob.do domain is not the Dominican government. eticket.portalmigracion.com and similar sites have been documented charging $79 per person for this free form — they mimic the official design and only reveal the fee at the final step when you request your QR code. The DGM issued an official warning in June 2025 and confirmed it is working with the National Cybersecurity Center to shut these sites down.

Go directly to eticket.migracion.gob.do. Free. Five minutes. Done.

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eTicket official portal: eticket.migracion.gob.do. DGM official eTicket page: migracion.gob.do/en/e-ticket-electronic-ticket-of-entry-and-exit-of-the-dominican-republic/. DGM cybersecurity advisory: migracion.gob.do/en/the-dgm-reports-that-its-e-ticket-platform-has-not-been-affected-at-present-and-ensures-users-can-use-it-confidently/. Dominican Today coverage of June 2025 advisory: dominicantoday.com/dr/local/2025/06/04/migration-authorities-warn-of-e-ticket-scams-targeting-travelers/. Dominican Today coverage of June 2024 fake portal scam: dominicantoday.com/dr/local/2024/06/19/tourists-scammed-by-fake-dominican-republic-entry-portal/. Information current as of June 2026 — verify requirements with the DGM before travel.