How Long Can You Stay in the US? The 90-Day Rule and Overstays, Explained

The number depends on how you were admitted

If you entered on the Visa Waiver Program with an approved ESTA, you are admitted for tourism or business for a maximum of 90 days per visit. This is a hard cap: it cannot be extended, and you cannot change to a different immigration status (for example to study or work) from inside the US on a Visa Waiver admission.

If you entered on a B-1/B-2 visitor visa, there is no automatic 90-day limit. The CBP officer decides how long to admit you and usually grants up to six months, and — unlike the Visa Waiver route — a B-2 stay can in some cases be extended by applying to USCIS before it expires.

Note the difference between how long your authorisation is valid and how long each visit can be. An ESTA is generally valid for two years and a visa for several years, but that is the window in which you may travel, not the length of any single stay.

The date that actually matters is on your I-94

Neither the expiry date of your ESTA nor the date stamped in your passport tells you when you must leave. The controlling date is the “admit until” date on your electronic I-94, the official arrival/departure record CBP creates each time you enter. That is the legal deadline to depart.

Occasionally an officer admits a traveller for less than the usual period, so never assume you automatically got the full 90 days or six months. Look it up. You can retrieve your most recent I-94 and admitted-until date for free at the official CBP I-94 website — do it within a day or two of arriving, and screenshot it.

Our separate guide, “What Is the I-94?”, walks through how to read the record and what to do if the details are wrong.

What counts as an overstay — and why it’s serious

You overstay the moment you remain in the US past your I-94 admit-until date, even by a single day. There is no grace period built into the Visa Waiver Program.

An overstay generally voids your ESTA and any visa you used to enter, so you cannot simply travel again on the same authorisation. Longer overstays trigger automatic bars on returning: broadly, more than 180 days of unlawful presence can lead to a three-year bar on re-entry, and more than one year to a ten-year bar. These are set by law, not by an officer’s mood.

Even a short overstay can make future ESTAs or visas harder to obtain, because the record follows you. If something genuinely outside your control (illness, a cancelled flight, a natural disaster) is about to make you overstay, contact CBP or USCIS before your date passes rather than after.

The 90 days is per admission, not per year — but don’t abuse it

Technically the 90-day clock resets on each new admission, but you cannot use back-to-back trips or a quick hop to a neighbouring country to “reset” an effectively permanent stay. CBP watches for people who spend more time in the US than out, and treating the Visa Waiver Program as de facto residence is a common reason travellers are refused at the border on a later trip.

A useful rule of thumb officers apply informally is that your time spent inside the US should be clearly less than your time outside it. If your real intention is to live in, study in, or work in the US, the honest route is the correct visa, not repeated 90-day visits.