Can you work on a UK visitor visa or an ETA? No — and unpaid work counts too
A Standard Visitor cannot do paid or unpaid work for a UK company or as a self-employed person. The only exception is a permitted paid engagement. An ETA does not change this: it is permission to travel, not permission to work, and the visitor rules apply the moment you land.
An ETA is not a visa and it is not a work permit. It authorises a visa-exempt traveller to board. What governs you after you land is the Standard Visitor permission — and that permission carries a work ban that is wider than most people assume.
What the ban actually says
The Home Office wording is short. As a Standard Visitor you cannot do paid or unpaid work for a UK company or as a self-employed person, unless you are doing a permitted paid engagement or event.
Unpaid counts. This is the line people miss. Helping at a friend’s shop, an unpaid internship, building a website for a UK company for free, trialling a few shifts to see if a job suits you — none of that becomes acceptable because no money changed hands. The rule bans the work, not the wage.
Self-employment is named too. Remote freelance work invoiced to UK clients is not made lawful by the fact that you do it from a laptop in a rented flat.
What you are allowed to do
The permitted list is real and reasonably generous:
- Tourism — a holiday, or seeing family and friends.
- Volunteering for up to 30 days with a registered charity.
- Passing through the UK in transit.
- Certain business activities, including attending a meeting or an interview.
- Study on a course of up to 6 months.
- A permitted paid engagement or event.
The interview line is worth reading twice. You may come to the UK as a visitor and attend a job interview. You may not then start the job. Getting the offer does not convert your permission — you leave, and you return on whatever route the job requires.
Three other things a visitor cannot do
The same rule lists them alongside the work ban:
- Claim public funds (benefits).
- Live in the UK for long periods through frequent or successive visits.
- Marry or register a civil partnership, or give notice of either — that needs a Marriage Visitor visa.
What you have to be able to show
A visitor must be able to demonstrate that they will leave at the end of the visit, that they can support themselves and any dependants, that they can pay for the return or onward journey, and that they will not make the UK their main home through repeated stays.
That last test is why back-to-back visits attract attention. There is no published maximum number of trips per year. An officer is judging a pattern, and a pattern that looks like residence is refused on the pattern, not on any single trip.
Where this leaves the ETA. An ETA gets a visa-exempt traveller to the border for tourism, family, business meetings and short study. It confers no right to work of any kind. If the plan involves earning in the UK, the ETA is the wrong document and no amount of care at the border changes that. We handle ETA applications and nothing else — for a work route, take advice from a regulated UK immigration adviser.
Checked against the official sources below on 12 September 2026.