One: ETIAS is not a visa, and your passport already decided your lane. Visa-exempt nationalities (the US, UK, Canada, Australia and ~55 more) get the €20 online authorization; visa-required nationalities keep the consulate process they’ve always had — nobody chooses between them, and nobody needs both. Thirty seconds in the checker settles any case, dual passports included.
Two: the price is €20, full stop — and it’s €0 for kids and seniors. Under-18s and over-70s apply completely free, a fact every impostor site hides because it’s the most expensive one to admit. A family of five pays €40 for three years; a site quoting “€79 per applicant, all ages” has told you what it is. The fee, decoded →
Three: nothing extends your 90 days — not ETIAS, not property, not a new passport. The 90-in-any-180 rule pools every Schengen country into one account, counts both travel days in full, and has been enforced to the minute by the EES database since April 2026. The folklore era — border runs, missed stamps, generous officers — is over; the calculator era has begun.
Four: the portal is not open, so every “application” today is theft. No pre-registration, no waiting list, no early access exists — when applications open (Q4 2026, roughly six months’ notice promised), the only doors are travel-europe.europa.eu/etias and the official EU app. Until then, sites “accepting applications” are harvesting fees, passport data, or both. The field guide →
Five: the EU/Schengen map is weirder than intuition. Switzerland and Iceland: not EU, fully covered. The UK: needs its own £20 ETA instead. Ireland: nothing at all. Croatia: counts since 2023, killing a decade of visa-run folklore. And Cyprus — in ETIAS, not in Schengen — is the living asterisk that proves membership lists, not vibes, answer travel questions.