How to Tell if a New Zealand Immigration Website Is Fake
One test settles it: official Immigration New Zealand pages sit on .immigration.govt.nz. Note the t in govt. Logos, Crown copyright lines and real INZ phone numbers can all be copied onto any website and several have been. The domain in the address bar cannot.
Quick Facts
| The only reliable test | The address ends in .immigration.govt.nz |
| Official NZeTA request site | nzeta.immigration.govt.nz |
| Official NZeTA app | Published by MBIE |
| Official adviser register | app.mbieregisters.govt.nz, reached from www.iaa.govt.nz |
| What an NZeTA costs | NZ$17 app / NZ$23 website, plus the NZ$100 International Visitor Levy |
| Sites titled "Official … Service" | A reseller tell, not a credential. Nobody outside INZ is official |
| A legitimate third party | States plainly that it is not affiliated with, endorsed by or associated with the New Zealand Government or INZ |
| Measured in August 2026 | Four of the top eight results for "nzeta apply online" were resellers |
| INZ's own anti-scam page | Returned a 404 error while still ranking in search results |
| Checked | August 2026 |
Check 1: The domain, and only the domain
INZ's own guidance is that only official INZ website links end in .immigration.govt.nz. Everything else on this page is secondary to that.
Read the address from the right-hand end backwards, stopping at the first single slash. That is the real domain. Everything to the left of it can be anything the site owner wants.
| Address | Verdict |
|---|---|
www.immigration.govt.nz/visas/... |
Official |
nzeta.immigration.govt.nz |
Official |
immigrationgovnz.com |
Not a government address. The domain is immigrationgovnz.com |
immigration.govt.nz.visa-apply.com |
Not a government address. The domain is visa-apply.com |
new-zealand-immigration.gov.nz |
Not a New Zealand government address — New Zealand uses .govt.nz, not .gov.nz |
nzeta.nz, nzeta.app, traveleta.nz |
Private sites. A .nz ending means the site is registered in New Zealand, not that it is the government |
Two traps live in that table. The first is .gov.nz versus .govt.nz — a single missing letter, and .gov.nz is not the New Zealand government's domain. The second is that .nz on its own means nothing about who runs a site. Anyone can register a .nz domain.
Check 2: What official branding does and does not prove
This is the check people get wrong, because they are looking for the wrong kind of evidence.
As checked on 20 August 2026, a site at immigrationgovnz.com displayed all of the following:
- a header logo reading "Immigration New Zealand"
- the Ministry of Business, Innovation & Employment logo
- the New Zealand Government shield
- a footer line reading "Crown copyright © 2026"
- INZ's real published phone numbers, 0508 558 855 and +64 9 914 4100
- INZ's Visit / Study / Work / Live navigation structure, with an "Apply now" button
- no disclaimer of any kind
It ranked #10 on Bing for "new zealand visitor visa". An automated page-fetching tool used during our research read that page and concluded it was the legitimate Immigration New Zealand website.
We are describing what the page displayed on a given date. We are not making any claim about the operator, and readers should draw their own conclusions.
The practical lesson is narrow and useful: every one of those signals is an image or a line of text that anyone can copy. A logo is a file. A Crown copyright notice is eleven characters. A phone number is public information. None of them is a credential. The domain is the only element on a web page that has to be bought, registered and pointed at a server, and it is the only one worth trusting.
Check 3: The word "Official" in the title
Two of the sites surveyed in August 2026 — nzeta.app and traveleta.nz — titled themselves "Official NZeTA Application Service". Neither is official.
A genuinely official service does not need to say so, because the domain already says it. In practice, the appearance of the word "official" in a third-party page title is a signal in the opposite direction: it is doing work that a .immigration.govt.nz address would do for free.
nzeta.app is also worth noting for a different reason. The official NZeTA app is real, is published by MBIE, and is the cheapest channel at NZ$17. A domain ending in .app sits very close to that, which is an easy way to arrive somewhere you did not intend.
Check 4: Look for the disclaimer
A third-party service that is behaving properly says so on the page. The clearest example found in our August 2026 survey came from nzeta.nz, which states that it is "an independent travel assistance provider and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or associated with the Government of New Zealand or Immigration New Zealand."
That sentence, or one like it, is what a legitimate agent publishes. Of the resellers surveyed, only one published such a disclaimer clearly. Its absence, on a site that is displaying government logos, is the combination that should stop you.
Check 5: Check the price against the real one
Stale or invented figures are the most reliable tell that a page is not maintained, and they are easy to check because the real numbers are short.
| The real figure, August 2026 | What a stale or wrong page shows |
|---|---|
| NZeTA NZ$17 (app) or NZ$23 (website) | "US$47 government fee" — seen on one aggregator |
| International Visitor Levy NZ$100 | $35 — correct until 2024, wrong since |
| Visitor Visa NZ$441 total ($300 + $41 + $100) | A single unexplained figure with no components |
| No general fee or levy rise in 2025 or 2026 | "2026 fee increase" urgency messaging |
Any page still showing thirty-five dollars for the visitor levy is at least two years out of date, and if it is wrong about that it is likely wrong about the rest. The full official price list is in New Zealand visa fees, and the NZeTA breakdown is in what an NZeTA actually costs.
Check 6: Any offer of faster processing
This one is close to conclusive on its own. Nobody can make a New Zealand visa decision come faster for money. INZ publishes no expedited, premium or paid fast-track service, and no such fee exists in its fee guide.
So a page offering "standard / rush / super rush" tiers is selling something INZ does not sell. It may genuinely submit your request sooner. It cannot move you up a queue that has no paid lane. Speed pricing on an immigration page is not proof of fraud, but it is proof that the page is not a government page. See can you pay to speed up a New Zealand visa.
Why this problem exists at all
Three things happened at once, and they compound.
The official page is hard for machines to read. INZ's NZeTA page runs to roughly 890 kilobytes of HTML that contains none of the strings "$17", "$23", "$100" or "IVL". Those figures are added by JavaScript after the page loads. Reseller pages state their prices in plain text. When a search engine or an AI assistant looks for a price, it finds the reseller.
INZ's own warning page is offline. The INZ page on protecting yourself from immigration scams returned a 404 error when checked in August 2026, while still appearing in search results. The official warning is, in practice, not reachable.
AI answers have repeated the error. A live AI search synthesis during our research described nzeta.nz and traveleta.nz as "official" NZeTA portals. Neither is. This is covered in why AI answers about New Zealand visas are often wrong.
None of that is the reader's fault. It is why a domain check beats a judgement call about how a page looks.
Where the real front doors are
| What you want to do | The only official route |
|---|---|
| Request an NZeTA | nzeta.immigration.govt.nz, or the NZeTA app published by MBIE |
| Apply for a visa | immigration.govt.nz, through Immigration Online |
| Check visa fees | immigration.govt.nz — and note the components, not just the total |
| Check an immigration adviser | app.mbieregisters.govt.nz, from www.iaa.govt.nz |
| Check processing times | immigration.govt.nz. Since 18 March 2026 there is a tool returning an estimated decision date |
| Contact INZ | Through the contact page on immigration.govt.nz. Do not use a number printed on a site you are trying to verify |
That last row matters more than it looks. The impersonation site described above displays INZ's genuine phone numbers. Calling a number you found on a suspect page and reaching a real INZ officer proves nothing about the page — and calling a number that has been altered by one digit reaches whoever bought it.
What to do if you are unsure
Do not try to resolve it on the page. Leave it, open a new tab, and type immigration.govt.nz yourself. If the thing you were about to do exists, it exists there.
If you have already paid, work through you've paid an immigration scammer: what to do now — in order, because the first step changes what the later ones are worth. The wider pattern of what circulates in this market is in New Zealand immigration scams and how to avoid them.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the official New Zealand immigration website?
immigration.govt.nz. Any official INZ page will have an address ending in .immigration.govt.nz. For the NZeTA specifically, the request site is nzeta.immigration.govt.nz and the app is published by MBIE.
Is immigrationgovnz.com the real Immigration New Zealand site?
No. As checked on 20 August 2026 it displayed INZ and MBIE logos, the New Zealand Government shield, a "Crown copyright © 2026" footer and INZ's real phone numbers, with no disclaimer. The domain is immigrationgovnz.com, which is not a New Zealand government address.
How do I check if an immigration website is real?
Read the domain, not the design. Official New Zealand government immigration pages end in .immigration.govt.nz. Then check the price against the published figures and look for a disclaimer. Logos and phone numbers prove nothing, because they can be copied.
Are .nz websites official New Zealand government sites?
No. .nz simply means the domain is registered in New Zealand and anyone can buy one. New Zealand government sites use .govt.nz. Note that .gov.nz — without the t — is not the New Zealand government's domain either.
Why does INZ's own scam warning page not work?
INZ's page on protecting yourself from immigration scams returned a 404 error when checked in August 2026, although it still appeared in search results. That is an INZ website problem, not something you can fix from your end. Use the domain test above instead.
Is it illegal for these websites to charge more than INZ does?
Acting as a paid agent to complete a form is a real service and charging for it is not, on its own, unlawful. Separate questions arise where a site reproduces government branding or describes itself as official. Whether particular conduct crosses a legal line is a matter for the authorities, not for us, and we do not make that claim about any named operator.
Can I get my money back from a lookalike visa website?
Not from INZ. Any markup you paid went to a private company rather than to the New Zealand government, so INZ has no power to refund it. Your realistic routes are the payment provider and the consumer or fraud reporting agencies, which are set out in you've paid an immigration scammer: what to do now.
