Do You Need an ESTA for the USA?
Travellers from Visa Waiver Program countries — the UK, most of Western Europe, Japan, Australia and dozens more — need an approved ESTA before flying to the United States, including for transit. It costs $21 on the official site, is normally approved within hours, and lasts two years or until your passport expires.
Do You Need an ESTA for the USA?: questions people actually ask
How long does an ESTA take to be approved?
Most are approved within minutes to hours, but apply at least 72 hours before travel — the official guidance — because flags and manual reviews happen.
Can I extend a 90-day ESTA stay?
No. The Visa Waiver Program has no extension. Changing status from inside the US is narrow and rarely available to VWP arrivals.
Do children need an ESTA?
Yes — every traveller, including infants, needs their own ESTA linked to their own passport.
Who needs an ESTA
Nationals of Visa Waiver Program countries visiting the US for tourism or business for up to 90 days. Anyone else — other nationalities, longer stays, work, study — needs a visa, and no ESTA fixes that. The detail most travellers miss: because every US arrival clears immigration at the first port of entry, transit passengers need an ESTA too. A connection through Dallas or JFK to somewhere else is a US entry in the eyes of the border, whatever your ticket says.
How to apply without overpaying
The official application lives on the US Customs and Border Protection site and costs $21. Dozens of lookalike services charge three to ten times that for filling in the same form. Apply once, directly, and screenshot the approval — ESTA status is electronic, but a personal record beats a support queue in another timezone.
The 90-day rule and the reset myth
The Visa Waiver Program allows up to 90 days per visit, and side-trips to Canada, Mexico or the Caribbean do not reliably "reset" the clock — border officers judge the trip as a whole, and near-consecutive 90-day stays invite questioning. If your pattern of travel looks like living in the US on visits, the correct tool is a visa, not a sixth ESTA trip.