Sherpa and SimpleVisa sell into the same moment: a traveler books a trip and turns out to need a document before they can board. Both companies resolve what that document is and both can file it. What separates them is how you buy, how far the vendor carries the application, and who is on the receipt.
The short answer
Choose Sherpa if you are an airline or a large travel group buying through procurement, with a fixed software budget and a preference for a vendor already embedded in carrier and distribution environments. Their published customer list runs heavily to airlines and channel partners, they hold SOC2 certification, and they publish requirements coverage of 200+ countries in 30+ languages.
Choose SimpleVisa if you want to evaluate the product before you meet a salesperson, and if you want the application itself carried: checkout, submission to the government system, traveler support, refunds and chargebacks on our licence. Sandbox keys are issued at signup and partners go live the same day.
What both products do
The overlap is real. Both sell a travel-requirements lookup that resolves what a given passport needs for a given route, multi-leg itineraries included. Both sell an eVisa application flow a partner embeds in the booking path so the traveler applies without leaving the brand. Both ship the same three integration surfaces: a REST API, embeddable front-end components, and a hosted or white-labelled traveler web app. Both sell a document check at check-in or boarding as a separate product, and both publish developer documentation on the open web.
Both also run a direct-to-traveler storefront alongside the partner business. Sherpa's is at apply.joinsherpa.com and carries roughly 8,000 Trustpilot reviews; ours is at apply.simplevisa.net. If your shortlist criterion is "can this vendor resolve requirements and file an eVisa", both clear it. The differences are commercial and operational.
Where they differ
| Dimension | Sherpa | SimpleVisa |
|---|---|---|
| Getting started | Every call to action on their site routes to booking a demo. Sandbox access is not advertised publicly. | Self-serve signup, sandbox keys immediately, co-branded storefront live the same day. Demos exist for larger deals. |
| Published pricing | Two pricing pages exist, though neither is linked prominently. Platform tiers are published at $1,500, $3,000 and $5,000 per month with request caps, plus a post-booking eVisa add-on at $750 to $3,000 per month. Languages beyond the tier allowance are $250 per month each. | Three models on one public page: revenue share at $0 per month with a share of the $39 service fee; Desk wholesale at $29 per application, falling to $19 above 500 per month; Platform licence at $5,000 per month minimum, drawn down against $12 per application. |
| eVisa commercial terms | Revenue share with rates undisclosed; their pricing page invites buyers to get in touch to size the opportunity. A published "Break-Even Accelerator" lets the partner keep 100% of eVisa revenue until the monthly fee is covered. | Rates published on the pricing page. Consular fees are passed through at cost on all three models and never marked up. |
| Fulfilment | Requirements data plus in-flow eVisa submission, published as 120+ eVisa destinations across 64+ government systems. | Requirements data for 190+ destinations, of which 80+ are processed end to end: checkout, government submission, traveler live chat, refunds and chargebacks. |
| Merchant of record | Not addressed on their marketing site. | Stated and selectable: SimpleVisa on revenue share, the agency on Desk, the partner's own gateway on Platform. |
| Agency counter | A "Travel Agents" vertical exists on the site. No agent console, wholesale rate or resell-at-your-own-price model is published. | Desk: an agent console for counter and phone orders at a wholesale rate, free seats, agency sets its own retail price. Desk Embedded mounts the same console inside your portal. |
| Data surface | SOC2 certified, PIPEDA and GDPR. | No passport data enters the partner's stack; travelers upload directly to us. EU-hosted, GDPR. |
Getting started is the sharpest gap
Sherpa's site is built around booking a demo, which is a coherent choice for a company whose named accounts are carriers and distribution channels. It does mean an engineer who wants to look at a response payload has to get through a qualification call first. SimpleVisa issues sandbox keys at signup; the endpoints are documented at /developers and you can call them before anyone here knows your name. For a mid-market buyer running a two-week evaluation, that difference decides which product actually gets tested.
Information and fulfilment
Sherpa's heritage is requirements data, and the published pricing reflects it. Monthly platform fees, request caps and per-language surcharges are how data products are sold; eVisa submission sits on top as an add-on line. SimpleVisa charges per application, because the application is the unit of work and the data is what makes it correct. That distinction stops being abstract at nine in the evening, when a government system rejects a submission, a biometric photo fails validation, or a traveler wants their money back. On revenue share and on Desk, those land with us and the partner hears about them through a webhook.
The agency counter
Neither company's API helps an agent taking a booking over the phone in Lyon or Leeds. Sherpa lists travel agents as a vertical but publishes no console, no wholesale rate and no resell-at-your-price model. That segment is what Desk exists for, and it is the one place where the two products do not compete at all.
Where Sherpa is the right pick
A comparison page that finds no reason to buy the other product is not worth reading. Four hold up:
- Airline and channel credibility. Their published partner list includes British Airways, American Airlines, Star Alliance, Amadeus, Flight Centre, Icelandair and Etihad. If your buying committee needs to see a peer carrier already live, that list is difficult to match.
- Procurement readiness. SOC2 certification, plus SLAs and enterprise onboarding at the top tier. Where a security review has a fixed checklist, clearing it on day one has genuine value.
- Language and requirements breadth. 30+ languages and 200+ countries of requirements data, both published, with hourly change monitoring described on their travel-requirements page. If you want the data layer and will never file an application, they are a straightforward fit.
- A predictable line item. Some finance teams would rather commit to a known monthly fee than a variable per-application cost. Their tiers give them exactly that.
Running both, or moving between them
These are separable systems, and treating them as an either-or decision is usually a mistake in the first quarter. The requirements lookup and the fulfilment flow do not have to come from the same vendor: keep an existing requirements integration driving display in search results and on itineraries, and route only the travelers who need to apply into a SimpleVisa checkout. The application flow does not need to own the data layer to work.
That also makes for a low-risk comparison. Run live volume through one checkout, watch approval rates, support load and refund handling for a month, and decide with your own numbers instead of ours. If you then want to consolidate, the sequencing that causes least disruption is to move requirements first, run both data sources side by side on your real routes for a fortnight, and switch checkout only once the answers agree.
All three commercial models are listed at /pricing. If you would rather see the flow against your own volumes and routes before reading another comparison table, book a demo.
Sourcing note. Every claim about Sherpa on this page comes from their own public website and documentation as observed in August 2026, including their published pricing pages. Vendors change pricing and coverage; check theirs directly before you decide.