Last reviewed:
USTravelDocs: Which Country Site Is Yours, and How It Fits With the DS-160
USTravelDocs is not the DS-160. The DS-160 is the application form itself, filled in on the Department of State's CEAC site. USTravelDocs is a separate applicant service platform that many U.S. embassies and consulates use for the steps after the form: paying the visa application fee, booking the interview, and arranging document return.
It is not used everywhere. A large group of posts, including most of the Americas and the United Kingdom, use a different platform at ais.usvisa-info.com. Using the wrong one is the most common reason people cannot find their appointment options.
Check your post first. The system in use for a given country can change. Confirm on the embassy or consulate website for the place you will interview before creating any account.
The site was rebuilt, and your old link probably lands on the homepage
If a saved bookmark or a link from another site drops you on the USTravelDocs
front page instead of your country's payment or appointment page, nothing is
broken and you have not gone to the wrong place. USTravelDocs was rebuilt as a
single-page application, and the old .asp addresses no longer open the page
they used to. Checked across 40 of them: 39 now redirect to the homepage.
The current shape is ustraveldocs.com/<country code>/<language>/<section> —
for example /in/en/payment-options for India's bank and payment options, or
/vn/en/ for Vietnam's front page. Country and language are both in the address
now, where the old form had only the country.
One consequence worth knowing: the new site does its routing in the browser, so those addresses can look broken to anything that is not a browser — link checkers, previews, some in-app browsers. Open them in a normal browser tab.
The systems you might be sent to
| Platform | Address | Role |
|---|---|---|
| CEAC | ceac.state.gov | The DS-160 form itself. Everyone uses this. |
| USTravelDocs | ustraveldocs.com/<country code> | Fee and appointments for much of Asia, the Middle East and North Africa |
| usvisascheduling.com | usvisascheduling.com, sign-in at acs.usvisascheduling.com | Fee and appointments; also the support-email domain for many USTravelDocs countries |
| AIS | ais.usvisa-info.com/<locale> | Fee and appointments for much of the Americas, and the United Kingdom |
CEAC is always in the picture, because that is where the DS-160 lives. The others are alternatives to each other, not to CEAC.
Why more than one name for the same job. Applicant services are contracted
regionally and the arrangements change, so a post can move between platforms
and the older address may keep working, redirect, or stop. Our country guides
for India, the UAE, Japan, South Korea and a dozen others cite
ustraveldocs.com for the payment pages while giving support addresses at
usvisascheduling.com, which is exactly the sort of overlap that makes people
unsure which site is theirs. Treat your embassy's own link as the answer and
this page as orientation.
Which site is yours
The USTravelDocs address always follows the same shape: ustraveldocs.com/, then a two-letter country code, then a language. The table below is the full list of countries USTravelDocs itself routes to a ustraveldocs.com section, read from the country chooser on ustraveldocs.com on 9 September 2026. If your country is not in it, USTravelDocs is not your site — see the section under the table.
A guide link means we have reviewed that country's exact payment route. A dash means the country code is correct but we have not written a guide yet; open ustraveldocs.com/<code>/en/payment-options and read the local instructions there.
| Country | Code | Our guide |
|---|---|---|
| Albania | al | — |
| Algeria | dz | Algeria guide |
| Armenia | am | — |
| Australia | au | Australia guide |
| Austria | at | — |
| Azerbaijan | az | — |
| Bahrain | bh | — |
| Bangladesh | bd | Bangladesh guide |
| Bhutan | bt | — |
| Bosnia and Herzegovina | ba | — |
| Bulgaria | bg | — |
| Cambodia | kh | Cambodia guide |
| China | cn | China guide |
| Croatia | hr | — |
| Cyprus | cy | — |
| Czech Republic | cz | — |
| Denmark | dk | — |
| Egypt | eg | Egypt guide |
| Estonia | ee | — |
| Fiji | fj | — |
| Finland | fi | — |
| Georgia | ge | Georgia guide |
| Germany | de | Germany guide |
| Greece | gr | — |
| Hong Kong and Macau | hk | Hong Kong and Macau guide |
| Hungary | hu | — |
| India | in | India guide |
| Indonesia | id | Indonesia guide |
| Israel | il | Israel guide |
| Japan | jp | Japan guide |
| Jordan | jo | Jordan guide |
| Kosovo | xk | — |
| Kuwait | kw | Kuwait guide |
| Laos | la | — |
| Latvia | lv | — |
| Lebanon | lb | Lebanon guide |
| Lithuania | lt | — |
| Malaysia | my | Malaysia guide |
| Moldova | md | — |
| Mongolia | mn | — |
| Montenegro | me | — |
| Morocco | ma | Morocco guide |
| Nepal | np | Nepal guide |
| New Zealand | nz | — |
| North Macedonia | mk | — |
| Norway | no | — |
| Oman | om | — |
| Pakistan | pk | Pakistan guide |
| Philippines | ph | Philippines guide |
| Poland | pl | Poland guide |
| Qatar | qa | Qatar guide |
| Romania | ro | — |
| Saudi Arabia | sa | Saudi Arabia guide |
| Serbia | rs | — |
| Singapore | sg | Singapore guide |
| Slovakia | sk | — |
| South Korea | kr | South Korea guide |
| Sri Lanka | lk | Sri Lanka guide |
| Sweden | se | — |
| Switzerland | ch | — |
| Taiwan | tw | Taiwan guide |
| Thailand | th | Thailand guide |
| Tunisia | tn | — |
| Türkiye | tr | Türkiye guide |
| Ukraine | ua | Ukraine guide |
| United Arab Emirates | ae | United Arab Emirates guide |
| Vietnam | vn | Vietnam guide |
Territories that share another country's section. Cook Islands, Niue, Pitcairn and Samoa use nz. French Polynesia, Kiribati, Nauru, New Caledonia, Tonga, Tuvalu and Wallis and Futuna use fj. Macau uses hk. Norfolk Island uses au. Liechtenstein uses ch. Libya uses tn. Gaza and the West Bank use il.
If your country is not in the table
You are on a different system. There are three, not two — and one of them is missing from most guides:
-
AIS, at
ais.usvisa-info.com— much of the Americas, and the United Kingdom. Our guides: Mexico, Canada, Brazil, the United Kingdom, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, the Dominican Republic and Spain. -
AVITS, at
usvisaappt.com— the Official U.S. Department of State Visa Information and Appointment Service, operated by Amentum. You create the account, pay the visa application fee and book the interview there, exactly as on the other two systems. It serves 14 countries, listed on its own homepage — read on 9 September 2026 and re-read on 15 September 2026, unchanged:Africa: Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, The Gambia, Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal and Sierra Leone. Europe: Belgium, France and the Netherlands.
If your country is on that list, this is your site — not USTravelDocs, and not AIS. Ghana's mission, for example, sends applicants to
usvisaappt.comand answers atghana@usvisaappt.com.AVITS prints each country's consular exchange rate at the top of its country page, which neither of the other two services does. All fourteen, read on 15 September 2026:
Country Rate to 1 USD Effective date given Nigeria 1,350 NGN 14 September 2026 Ghana 12 GHS 21 April 2026 Cameroon 600 XAF 11 March 2026 Senegal 570 XOF 19 February 2026 Burkina Faso 570 XOF 19 February 2026 Côte d'Ivoire 570 XOF 19 February 2026 Democratic Republic of the Congo 2,500 CDF 12 November 2025 France 0.9 EUR 23 April 2026 Belgium 0.9 EUR 23 April 2026 The Netherlands 0.9 EUR 23 April 2026 Rwanda 1,450 RWD none printed The Gambia 74 GMD none printed Sierra Leone 22 SLL none printed Liberia 1 USD none printed Three things in that table are worth reading twice.
Liberia is priced in dollars. Its page prints "1 USD : 1 USD", which is not a rounding artefact — Liberia uses the US dollar alongside its own currency, so there is no conversion to check.
The rate is set per currency, not per country. Senegal, Burkina Faso and Côte d'Ivoire share one XOF rate; France, Belgium and the Netherlands share one EUR rate. If your country shares a currency with a neighbour, you are on the same number.
Four pages print no effective date, and two use currency codes that are not the current ISO ones — Rwanda's page says RWD where the Rwandan franc is RWF, and Sierra Leone's says SLL, the old leone, where the redenominated currency is SLE. We have quoted what the pages print rather than correcting them, because the figure you will be charged comes from that system and not from us. Treat an undated rate as one you cannot age-check, and confirm the amount in your own account before paying.
The dates span ten months, from November 2025 to September 2026, so these are stepped per currency rather than tracked daily. Nigeria's was one day old when we read it; the DRC's was ten months old.
-
Your embassy's own site, at
<code>.usembassy.gov— the USTravelDocs chooser sends you here, rather than to one of its own sections, for most of the world. Counting the chooser's own links on 9 September 2026: 107 distinct embassy sites, against 67 USTravelDocs country sections — the 67 in the table above.
Being sent to the embassy site does not mean there is no payment portal. The chooser routes every AIS country this way too — Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Peru, Ecuador, the Dominican Republic, Spain, all of Central America and the English-speaking Caribbean all resolve to <code>.usembassy.gov, and those embassy pages then point at AIS. The embassy site is the front door, not the destination.
The countries where we have genuinely been unable to find a central payment portal are a much smaller set — Kenya, Ethiopia, South Africa, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan among them. For those, the embassy page names a local bank or agent and there is nothing else to look up.
Nigeria and Ghana used to be on that list and are not any more. Both are AVITS countries, and the fee is paid at usvisaappt.com as described above. If you have read otherwise here or elsewhere, that advice predates the AVITS routing.
Because the routing is set per country and does change, start from the chooser or from your embassy's site rather than from a bookmarked payment link. A link that worked for someone else's country will not work for yours, and a fee paid into the wrong system is generally not recoverable.
What you actually do there
The order matters, and it trips people up.
- Complete and submit the DS-160 on CEAC. You cannot do anything useful on USTravelDocs without it.
- Keep the confirmation page. It carries a ten-digit confirmation number beginning with
AA, and a barcode. You need that number to schedule. - Create a profile on the applicant service site. This is a separate account from anything on CEAC, with its own email and password.
- Pay the visa application fee through the method that site offers for your country. Amounts and methods are on the fee payment page.
- Wait for the payment to activate. This is not instant. Bank transfers and cash payments commonly take one to two business days before the site will let you book.
- Book the interview, and choose how your passport comes back.
Common problems
"My DS-160 number is not recognised." Most often the form was saved but never submitted, so no confirmation number exists yet, or the number was read from the wrong document. It is on the confirmation page with the barcode, not on the application pages. See how to retrieve your DS-160.
"I cannot book an appointment after paying." The fee has almost certainly not activated yet. Check the activation timing for your payment method on your country guide before contacting anyone.
"I made a profile but there are no appointments." Availability is set by the post, not by the platform, and can be months out. Current waiting times are on visa wait times.
"I used the wrong country site." Profiles are per country. If you started on the wrong one, create a profile on the correct site; the fee receipt from a different country's system is not transferable.
"I need to change my DS-160 after paying." The fee is tied to your passport and the receipt, not to a specific DS-160. A corrected form gets a new confirmation number, which you then use when booking. Nothing about the fee is refunded or reissued.
Which login am I looking for?
There are several, they are unrelated to each other, and mixing them up is a common source of lost time.
- No DS-160 login exists. The form has no account and no password. You get a ten-character Application ID when you start, and that plus your security answer, surname and year of birth is how you return to an unsubmitted form. See retrieving your DS-160.
- The applicant service profile is the one with an email and password. It lives on whichever of the platforms above your post uses, and it is where the fee and the appointment happen.
- The profile is per country. A profile and a paid fee in one country's system do not carry to another.
- The SEVIS account on
fmjfee.comis separate again, and applies only to F, M and J applicants.
If a sign-in page is asking for something you have never created, you are almost certainly on the wrong one of these four.
Frequently asked questions
Is USTravelDocs the official site?
It is the applicant service platform that many U.S. missions direct people to. It is not the Department of State's own website, and it is not where the DS-160 is completed. Always reach it through the link on your embassy or consulate's site rather than a search result.
Is USTravelDocs the same as CEAC?
No. CEAC at ceac.state.gov is the Department of State system where the DS-160 is filled in and submitted. USTravelDocs handles the fee, the appointment and document return for the posts that use it.
Do I need an account to fill in the DS-160?
No. The DS-160 has no account or password at all. You get an Application ID when you start and use it to return to an unsubmitted form. The account comes later, on the applicant service site.
Does it cost anything to create a profile?
No. The profile is free. The visa application fee is separate, and is paid through the site.
Why does my country use a different site?
The Department of State contracts applicant services regionally, so the platform differs by post and occasionally changes. That is why the country guide for your post, and your embassy's own site, are the authority rather than any general list.
Sources
- Department of State, DS-160 information
- Consular Electronic Application Center (CEAC)
- Country payment pages cited individually in each country fee guide