Cambodia Visa Overstay Fines for US Travelers: Costs and How to Avoid Them

When the fine stops being a fee and becomes a problem

The $10-per-day number can lull you into thinking an overstay is always just math. It is not. There is a threshold — in practice somewhere around the 30-day mark — where Cambodian Immigration stops treating your overstay as a fee to collect and starts treating it as an offense to act on. Past that line, the cost is no longer measured in dollars per day.

A long overstay can lead to detention at the airport while your case is processed, deportation at your own expense, and an entry ban that keeps you out of Cambodia for a stretch of years. None of that is automatic at day 31, and there is no published bright line you can game — the point is that the longer you stay, the more discretion an officer has to escalate, and the worse the downside gets. By the time an overstay is measured in weeks, you are no longer negotiating a fee; you are hoping an immigration officer chooses leniency.

For US citizens, a serious overstay also pulls in the US Embassy in Phnom Penh, which can help with a replacement passport or welfare contact but cannot waive a Cambodian fine, reverse a deportation, or lift a re-entry ban — those are entirely Cambodia's call. The practical takeaway is that a short overstay is a cash inconvenience and a long overstay is a genuine travel emergency, so the moment you realize you might run long, the right move is to fix your stay legally rather than let the days accumulate. If your trip is open-ended, our guide on whether you can still extend a Cambodia tourist visa explains why the answer changed in late 2025.

Where your 30-day clock actually starts

The single most common reason Americans overstay by accident is mixing up two different dates: when the eVisa is valid until, and how long you are allowed to stay. They are not the same number, and confusing them is how a careful traveler ends up at the counter owing a fine they never saw coming.

Your Cambodia eVisa is valid for 3 months from the date it is issued. That is the window in which you must enter the country. But the moment you enter, a separate 30-day stay clock starts — and that 30-day stay is what an overstay fine measures against. The 3-month validity is your deadline to arrive; the 30 days is your deadline to leave. An American who enters on the last day of the 3-month window still gets a full 30-day stay from that entry date. Both visa types are single entry, so leaving and coming back does not reset the clock — it ends the visa.

The number that matters for overstay purposes is the entry stamp in your passport. Count 30 days from that stamp and that is your last legal day. Do not count from your eVisa email, your flight booking, or the day you applied. Because the eVisa is single entry, there is no re-entry buffer and no grace period built into the stay — day 31 is an overstay even if your eVisa technically still shows months of validity left. Our breakdown of single-entry versus multiple-entry Cambodia visas for Americans explains why that single-entry rule is the trap that catches the most travelers.

How to avoid the overstay fine entirely

The cheapest overstay fine is the one you never trigger. Avoiding it costs nothing and takes about two minutes of planning, and it comes down to four habits that returning travelers learn fast and first-timers usually learn the hard way.

• Count from the entry stamp. The day you clear Immigration is day one. Add 30 days on your phone calendar and that is your last legal day in the country. Set a reminder for day 28 so you have a buffer to get to the airport, not a panic on day 30.
• Pick the right visa before you fly. If there is any real chance your trip runs past 30 days, the Tourist eVisa is the wrong choice — it is a hard ceiling now. The Business eVisa is the only one you can extend from inside Cambodia.
• Build in airline and weather buffer. A canceled flight or a missed connection on day 30 turns into an overstay on day 31 through no fault of your own. If your departure is tight to the end of your stay, leave yourself a day of slack.
• Do not rely on a land-border hop. All seven Thailand-Cambodia land borders have been closed since June 2025, so the old trick of nipping across to reset a stay is not available — and it never reset a single-entry visa anyway.

If you already know your trip might run long, the fix is to plan for length before you leave home rather than improvise at day 28. A Business eVisa can be extended in-country for 1, 3, 6, or 12 months, and arranging that extension is dramatically cheaper and calmer than an overstay that tips into offense territory. Our Cambodia visa extension cost guide for Americans lays out what each extension path actually costs, so you can compare it against the $10-per-day meter and the risk that sits behind it.

For most vacationers, none of this is a problem — a 30-day stay is far longer than a typical Cambodia trip, and a phone reminder is all the protection you need. The travelers who get caught are the ones who picked a Tourist eVisa for an open-ended trip, then realized too late that the 30-day ceiling was firm. Choosing correctly at the start removes the whole question. When you are ready, you can apply online in about ten minutes, and for the complete set of entry rules and fees our Cambodia visa cost guide for Americans is the canonical reference.

Next steps and related reading for Americans: apply for your Cambodia eVisa when you are ready to lodge, bookmark our Cambodia visa guide for United States citizens as the single canonical reference, skim the FAQ on Cambodia visa cost for quick answers, and use our glossary of Cambodia visa terms to decode any acronym in this guide.