Malaysia Visa Guide
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Independent · verified against official sources

Malaysia's
long-stay visas,
explained plainly

PVIP, MM2H, Sarawak MM2H and DE Rantau all let you live in Malaysia long term — and they differ enormously in cost, tenure and who they suit. Every figure here is checked against its official government source.

  • Six programmes covered
  • Costs in full
  • Reviewed monthly
Check what you qualify forCompare programmes

What this guide is

Not a brochure — a reference you can check

  • Every figure checked against its official source

    Fees, thresholds and tenures are traced to the government page that sets them, with the date we last looked.

  • PVIP and MM2H compared side by side

    The same fields, the same units, one table — so the trade-offs are visible instead of buried in prose.

  • Written to inform, not to close a sale

    Where a programme is the wrong fit, the guide says so. The commercial relationship is disclosed on every page.

Choose your route

Which Malaysian visa
actually fits you

The three long-stay programmes differ by an order of magnitude in cost, and the work and study passes solve a different problem entirely. Start with the one that matches why you are coming.

Work & study

Coming for a job,
a course, or remote work

These are not residence programmes — they are tied to an employer, an institution, or a foreign paycheque. Different rules, different timelines.

A Malaysia Visa Guide graphic: a Malaysian flag and an approval stamp over a visa application form, with passports and the Petronas Towers.

Trust & authority

Every fee and threshold
last checked 28 July 2026

Malaysian visa rules change often — and most sites quietly go stale. When a figure here moves, it moves in one place, and the review date tells you exactly how fresh what you are reading is.

Sources

Where these figures
actually come from

Every number on this site is traceable to a government document. Below are the ones it is traced to — read them yourself if a figure matters to your decision.

Malaysia's long-stay visas are governed by several different bodies, and that is the root of most of the confusion around them. PVIP sits with the Immigration Department of Malaysia; MM2H is administered through the Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture and its One Stop Centre. Confusing the two is the single most common error in secondary coverage. Sarawak MM2H is a state programme with its own ministry, its own deposit and its own approvals — which is why an S-MM2H figure quoted from a federal page is usually wrong. DE Rantau sits with MDEC, the Employment Pass with the Expatriate Services Division, and the Student Pass with Immigration and EMGS.

When a figure is checked here, it means someone opened the document in the list beside this paragraph, found the fee, threshold or tenure stated in it, and recorded the date. That date is published on the programme guide. Where a rule was announced by press release but never written into the official document, the guide says exactly that instead of quietly picking whichever number reads better.

This matters more than it should, because these programmes are revised often and the internet does not keep up. MM2H alone has been restructured twice in recent years; deposit tiers, minimum stay and the agent requirement all moved. Pages that were accurate in 2023 still rank today, and agents restate old thresholds because the old thresholds were easier to sell against. A figure without a date and a source is not information you can plan around — it is a claim.

So: read the documents. If one of them contradicts something written here, that is a bug in this site, and the contact page exists partly so you can say so. The editorial policy sets out how corrections are handled and what the commercial relationship behind this site is.

Tools

Work out where you stand

Three minutes with these beats an hour of reading — they run on the same verified figures as the guides.

1:1 consultation

Still not sure
which visa fits?

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