Service guide
Thailand retirement visa services: the 1,900 baht official extension fee, the two applications behind a one-year stay, and what a firm does at each stage.
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A Thailand retirement visa is two applications, not one. A Non-Immigrant O for retirement is issued by a Royal Thai embassy or consulate abroad and admits you for 90 days. The one-year permission to stay is a separate extension, filed on form TM.7 at the immigration office responsible for where you live in Thailand. Most people who hire someone are hiring them for the second application, or for the handover between the two.
Whether you qualify, how the 800,000 baht deposit and the 65,000 baht monthly income routes work, and which insurance rules bite is all set out in the guide to retirement visas in Thailand. This page assumes you have read that and are now deciding who does the work, what it costs, and what you are entitled to expect.
The firms that handle it sit across the wider visa agency market in Thailand, and they are not interchangeable. Some are document shops. Some are law firms. The difference matters most on the day something goes wrong.
Abroad, before you arrive, the work is assembly and sequencing. The consular file is built around a passport, financial evidence, an accommodation booking and an itinerary, and the Royal Thai Consulate-General in Los Angeles asks for a minimum of 15 business days to process a Non-O for retirement. A firm's job here is to make sure nothing in that file contradicts anything else, and to book the arrival around the processing window rather than the other way round.
Inside Thailand, the work is different. The extension file is built to one office's published expectations, and those expectations are local. Samut Prakan Immigration, for example, asks for a bank letter certifying more than 800,000 baht held three months before the application, plus an ATM slip dated the day you file. That is the date your firm is working backwards from. A file that is complete on every other point still fails if the bank letter is stale or the balance moved in the wrong week.
Then there is the year that follows. Ninety-day reporting, address notifications, a re-entry permit before you travel, and the next extension. This is the part clients underestimate and the part a retainer is usually really for.
The amounts immigration collects are fixed and public. They are small. The extension of stay is 1,900 baht a year, and the re-entry permit that protects it is 1,000 baht for a single entry or 3,800 baht for multiple entries.
Any figure a firm quotes you above these is its own professional fee, and three of the pages that rank for this topic quote 1,900 baht without saying whose fee it is.
Official immigration fees
Amounts collected by immigration. Professional fees are separate and are set by each firm.
| Item | Fee |
|---|---|
| Extension of temporary stay | 1,900 baht per application |
| Re-entry permit, single entry | 1,000 baht |
| Re-entry permit, multiple entries | 3,800 baht, within the remaining period of admission |
| Re-entry permit endorsement | 1,900 baht per piece |
| Non-immigrant visa, single entry | 2,000 baht |
| Non-immigrant visa, multiple entries within 1 year | 5,000 baht |
| Replacement residence certificate (TM.17) | 1,900 baht per piece |
Source: Samut Prakan Immigration, published fee schedule
Checked August 2026
No official or neutral source publishes what firms charge for retirement work, so this page states no professional-fee figure. What you can do is compare structures before you compare numbers.
Ask whether the quote is a fixed fee for a defined outcome or an hourly rate against an estimate. Ask what is inside it: the extension only, or the extension plus the year of ninety-day filings and a re-entry permit. Ask what happens to the fee if the office asks for a document nobody anticipated, and what happens if the application is refused. Then ask two or three firms the same questions and compare the answers, because the shape of the quote tells you more about the firm than the number does.
Scoping call and route decision
Which route you are on, whether the money is already in Thailand, and where you will be living, since the office that takes your extension depends on your address.
The consular application, if you are still abroadMinimum 15 business days
The file goes to a Royal Thai embassy or consulate for a Non-O for retirement, which admits you for 90 days.
Banking and evidence build-up in Thailand3 months of seasoning
The account is opened and the balance is left alone. One office's published wording asks for the money certified as held three months before you file.
The TM.7 extension filing
Filed in person at the immigration office for your address, with the bank letter, the ATM slip and the completed form. No approved source publishes how long an office takes to decide, so treat any firm quoting you a fixed decision date with caution.
Re-entry permit before you travel
Bought before departure, single or multiple entry, so the permission you just obtained survives the flight.
The compliance yearEvery 90 days
Ninety-day notifications, address notifications, and the file rebuilt for next year's extension.
Your options
A first shortlist from 2 firms on Justenda. Compare them, then message one or several at once.
International boutique law firm in Bangkok and Phuket, providing legal and tax services to investors, businesses, and private clients across Thailand
฿7,000–12,000 / hour
Experts assisting clients in conducting their businesses and protecting their rights and investments in Thailand across a wide range of legal matters.
Warning: What a legitimate firm will refuse to do
Search for retirement visa help in Thailand and you will find agencies advertising that there is no need to hold 800,000 baht in a Thai bank account. What is being offered is a balance that is not yours: money moved into your account long enough to be certified, then moved out again, or a bank letter arranged through a contact.
A firm that does this is not solving your problem. It is creating a document that says something untrue about your finances and filing it with the immigration authorities in your name, on your signature. You are the applicant. The exposure attaches to you, it attaches every year the arrangement is repeated, and it does not expire when the agency stops answering the phone.
A firm worth hiring will tell you plainly that you do not qualify yet, and will explain the income route and the combination route instead. That answer is worth more than the fee, and it is the clearest test you can apply to anyone quoting for this work.
Note: If an insurer will not cover you on the O-A
The O-A's insurance requirement, and the published fallback for applicants insurers refuse, are eligibility rules, and they live in the guide above. What belongs here is the work around them.
A usable rejection letter is one the insurers actually issue in writing, in a form immigration will accept, and the fallback deposit has to be evidenced separately from the 800,000 THB for living expenses, on the terms the embassy publishes.
Collecting that letter and papering the second deposit correctly is exactly the kind of work a firm earns its fee on, and it is worth raising at the scoping call rather than after an insurer has declined you.
For a clean file, an experienced agency and a law firm do much the same work, and the agency is usually cheaper. Four situations change that.
The first is refusal or revocation. Permission to stay can be revoked, and the appeal to the Immigration Commission has to be lodged within 48 hours, after which the order is final. Two days is not enough time to find representation, read a file and draft an appeal, which is why the time to think about visa denial and appeals is before you file, not after.
The second is an overstay already on the passport. Once a lapse has happened, the question is no longer paperwork. It is fines, the re-entry ban schedule, and how the record reads at the counter next time.
The third is entanglement. Retirement that sits alongside a property purchase, a Thai marriage, a business interest or a tax residence question is not a visa job with extras attached. It is a legal matter with a visa inside it.
The fourth is simply that a lawyer can tell you no, in writing, with reasons, and carries professional responsibility for having said it. If a firm's answer to every question is yes, you are being sold to.
Approval is the start of an annual cycle, not the end of one.
Ninety-day notification is the recurring obligation. Samut Prakan Immigration publishes the window as 15 days before to 7 days after the 90-day point, with a 2,000 baht fine for filing late and 4,000 baht if you are picked up not having filed at all. The same page confirms the notification may be made by an authorised person or by registered mail, which is the official basis on which a firm can run these filings for you.
Address notification catches people out more often. The duty to notify immigration within 24 hours of a foreigner taking up residence falls on the house master, with a fine of up to 2,000 baht for homeowners and 4,000 to 8,000 baht for hotel managers. It is not your obligation. It is still your problem, because a missing TM.30 is one of the commonest reasons an otherwise complete extension is turned back.
Then there is the extension itself, rebuilt from scratch each year. If your circumstances change, or you move to an office with different published expectations, the rules that apply to visa extensions generally are worth reading alongside this page, and the fee choice between a single and a multiple re-entry permit is worth making before you book a flight rather than at the airport.
A retirement extension covers one person. A spouse under 50 cannot get one on their own account and is usually admitted as a dependant instead, on a file that stands or falls with yours.
That makes the two applications a single piece of work in practice, with one set of financial evidence supporting both. Worth raising at the scoping call, because a firm that quotes for the retiree alone and discovers the spouse later will requote. The dependent visa route is the one to ask about by name.
This page is general information, not legal advice. Fees, published document lists and office practice change, and immigration offices differ from one another; for a specific case, speak with a qualified professional.
Sources: Where these figures come from
Fees: the published fee schedule of Samut Prakan Immigration, checked on 26 August 2026.
Document requirements for the retirement extension: the same office's published list of documents, which is one office's wording and not a national standard.
Consular processing and the 90-day admission: the Royal Thai Consulate-General, Los Angeles. O-A conditions: the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. O-A health insurance and the insurer-rejection alternative: the Royal Thai Embassy in Madrid.
No approved official source publishes how long an immigration office takes to decide a retirement extension, so no such figure appears on this page. Nor does any official source publish what firms charge, so no professional-fee figure appears either.
Also listed
Every one of these is verified on Justenda and can take on retirement visas work in Thailand.
International boutique law firm in Bangkok and Phuket, providing legal and tax services to investors, businesses, and private clients across Thailand
฿7,000–12,000 / hour
Experts assisting clients in conducting their businesses and protecting their rights and investments in Thailand across a wide range of legal matters.
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International boutique law firm in Bangkok and Phuket, providing legal and tax services to investors, businesses, and private clients across Thailand
฿7,000–12,000 / hour
Experts assisting clients in conducting their businesses and protecting their rights and investments in Thailand across a wide range of legal matters.
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