Travel guides

Crossing into Argentina from Paraguay: the four routes

Paraguay and Argentina share more than a thousand kilometres of border, but for a traveller leaving Asunción there are only four real options, and they are not interchangeable. Here are all four, with the distances we measure ourselves and the opening hours the Argentine state publishes.

The short answer

Leaving Asunción, the natural crossing is Clorinda: it is 190 kilometres to Formosa and the bridge is open around the clock. If you are heading for Misiones, the crossing is Encarnación–Posadas. If you want the Argentinian side of the falls, the real road goes through Brazil. And there is a ferry, the only one of the four with limited hours.

Crossing is not one thing: it is four different doors

The question “how do I get from Paraguay into Argentina?” has four answers, and the right one depends on where you are going, not on where you are. The four crossings sit at very different distances from Asunción, and none of them works for all three destinations.

The closest is Clorinda, in the province of Formosa. You take the Remanso Bridge, pass through Villa Hayes and José Falcón, and cross on the San Ignacio de Loyola International Bridge. From Asunción to the city of Formosa is 190 kilometres and 2 h 30 min to 3 h counting the border, according to our own Asunción to Formosa distance page.

The second is a ferry, not a bridge: it crosses the river from Puerto Itá Enramada, inside Asunción itself, to Puerto Pilcomayo on the Argentinian side. It is the only one of the four with restricted hours, which is exactly why it ruins more plans than the other three put together.

The third is Encarnación–Posadas, 370 kilometres south of Asunción, and it is the door to Misiones. The fourth is not strictly a border with Argentina at all: to reach Puerto Iguazú overland from Paraguay you enter Brazil first and only then cross into Argentina. That is two borders, not one.

The four crossings, side by side

What each one connects and when it is open. The hours are those published by argentina.gob.ar in its Pasos Internacionales section, checked on 21 September 2026.

These are the Argentine hours. On a land crossing it is worth checking the neighbouring country as well, because the two do not always match. None of these hours are set by us and all of them can change: check the official source in the month you travel.

Look at the asymmetry: three of the four are open around the clock and the fourth is not. The ferry closes at 19:00 Monday to Friday, at 15:00 on Saturdays, and the official page lists no Sunday service. If your plan depends on it, the timetable is the fact that decides everything else.

The other thing the table shows is that the Tancredo Neves Bridge does not connect Paraguay with Argentina: it connects Brazil with Argentina. That is why going from Asunción to Puerto Iguazú means two immigration checks rather than one.

How far each door is from Asunción

The kilometres and times are those of the real route, measured on the trips we run every week.

All times are for a private vehicle in normal traffic with no exceptional border queue. The Asunción–Encarnación leg has no border: immigration only appears when you cross into Posadas, which is a separate leg.

The comparison that surprises people is the top row against the bottom one. Formosa is less than half the driving time of Puerto Iguazú, and both of them are Argentina. If all you want is to set foot in the country, or to deal with something on the other side, the Clorinda crossing saves you three and a half hours on the road.

If what you want is the falls, there is no shortcut: the Argentinian side of the park is in Puerto Iguazú and you get there through Brazil. We compare the two sides in which side of the Iguazu Falls is better.

How to pick your crossing in five steps

The order matters: destination first, door second. Doing it the other way round is how people end up driving hundreds of kilometres they did not need to.

1. 1
   

   Look at the destination, not the map

   If you are going to Formosa or Clorinda, your crossing is San Ignacio de Loyola. If you are going to Posadas or into Misiones, it is Encarnación. If you are going to the Argentinian falls, it is Puerto Iguazú through Brazil. The nearest crossing is the wrong one if it leaves you six hundred kilometres from where you are headed.

2. 2
   

   Check the opening hours

   Three of the four are open 24 hours, according to argentina.gob.ar. The ferry is not: Monday to Friday 07:00 to 19:00 and Saturdays 07:00 to 15:00. Check the official source in the same month you travel, because these are not our hours to set.

3. 3
   

   Count the borders, not the bridges

   To Formosa you cross once. To Puerto Iguazú you cross twice: first into Brazil on the Friendship Bridge and then into Argentina on the Tancredo Neves. Two immigration checks mean two queues and the same paperwork twice.

4. 4
   

   Get the documents together before you leave

   A valid passport for every passenger, and minors with their own documentation. If anyone in your group needs a visa for Argentina or for Brazil, that is a consulate matter, not a driver matter, and it cannot be fixed at the bridge.

5. 5
   

   Choose the vehicle, and in one case you cannot

   To Formosa we run sedan only: the border permits do not cover our larger vehicles. To Puerto Iguazú and to Encarnación we run the sedan, the Hyundai H1 minivan and the Mercedes Sprinter. If there are more than three of you and the destination is Formosa, raise it before you book.

There is a sixth step that is not on the list because it is a habit rather than a decision: cross early. We do not publish waiting times, because they change every day with the holiday calendar, the exchange rate and the hour, but early morning is always the shortest queue.

And a warning about step 1: plenty of people reach Clorinda assuming it is a comfortable hop onwards to Misiones. It is not. Clorinda and Posadas are in different provinces and a long way apart; if your destination is Misiones, the crossing is Encarnación.

What we charge for the long legs

Priced per vehicle and not per passenger, agreed before you travel. Fuel, tolls and the driver are inside the figure.

Prices are per vehicle in US dollars, current as of August 2026, with fuel, tolls and the driver included. Booking the return together costs less than two separate legs. A 30 per cent deposit holds the date, payable by card, bank transfer, digital wallet or crypto, and 48 hours notice is enough in most cases.

Two numbers are missing from this table, and the absence is deliberate. We do not publish a fixed price for the Encarnación–Posadas leg or for the Ciudad del Este–Puerto Iguazú leg, because they depend on the exact pick-up point, the time of day and the crossing used. Ask on WhatsApp and we send back a closed price: what we will not do is invent a figure here for you to discover a different one later.

Luggage: three suitcases in the sedan and one per passenger in the H1 minivan. Since Formosa is sedan only, that leg is capped at three passengers with three suitcases, and it is the detail most worth checking before you book.

The official numbers, and what we will not publish

What follows belongs to the Argentine state and to the operators, not to us. Where we are not certain, we say how to check rather than risk a figure.

• Crossing hours. All four sets of hours in this post come from argentina.gob.ar, Pasos Internacionales section, checked on 21 September 2026. They are the Argentine side.
• Clorinda – José Falcón. Open 24 hours, on the San Ignacio de Loyola International Bridge.
• Posadas – Encarnación. Open 24 hours for private vehicles and 7:00 to 19:00 for freight, on the San Roque González de Santa Cruz Bridge.
• Puerto Pilcomayo – Itá Enramada. Ferry and tugboat, Monday to Friday 07:00 to 19:00 and Saturdays 07:00 to 15:00. We do not publish the fare: it is set by the operator and the sources that circulate it are not official. Ask at the port on the day.
• The Posadas – Encarnación international train. The service exists and appears on Trenes Argentinos, but the official page does not make clear whether it is running today or how often. We publish neither times nor fares: check Trenes Argentinos before you build a plan around it.
• Documents. A valid passport for every passenger, and minors with their own documentation. Some nationalities need a visa for Argentina, for Brazil or for both: the consulate confirms that, and it is worth doing weeks ahead.
• Tolls. Included in the private transfer price. There is nothing to pay along the way.
• Border queues. We do not publish waiting times because they change every day with the holidays, the exchange rate and the hour. What we do is cross early, which is the only variable in our hands.
• Third-party prices. We do not publish bus fares, border taxi fares, Argentine car-hire rates or the ferry fare. We do not set them and they change without notice.

Private transfer, or under your own steam

Both columns are true. Your trip decides which one is yours.

The detail that surprises people: Formosa is sedan only

This is the fact we explain most often on WhatsApp, and it is written on our own route page: the Formosa leg runs sedan only, because the border permits do not cover our larger vehicles. It is not a commercial preference or a question of availability: it is what the permit allows.

In practice it means the shortest of the four crossings is also the most limited in capacity. A sedan carries up to three passengers with three suitcases. If there are five of you with luggage and the destination is Formosa, the honest answer is not “we will send the minivan”: it is that this needs solving another way, and it is worth raising before you book rather than on the day.

Encarnación and Puerto Iguazú are different. There we run the sedan, the Hyundai H1 minivan for up to seven passengers and the Mercedes Sprinter for groups of eight to fourteen. That is why a large group wanting to set foot in Argentina often ends up going via Puerto Iguazú even though it is further: not for the falls, but because the vehicle fits.

The same reasoning applies to the Asunción–Formosa remis and to the Asunción–Formosa taxi: same route, same bridge, same vehicle limit, under a different commercial name.

When you should not hire us

If you live in Asunción and want to nip over to Clorinda in the afternoon to buy something or deal with an errand, do not hire us. Thousands of people make that trip every day, there is scheduled transport, and we would not be adding anything that justifies the difference in price.

If you are travelling alone and the budget rules, the bus to Formosa takes 4 hours with a change against our 2 h 30 min to 3 h, and the difference per person is enormous. We say so on our own distance page, where the bus column reads “per passenger, far cheaper”. It is true and we are not going to hide it.

We are also not the right choice if what you need is a fixer. The driver knows the road and the crossing, and carries the vehicle paperwork in order, but he does not obtain your visa, does not answer for the requirements of your nationality and cannot make the queue move faster. That is a consulate matter, handled with time to spare.

We are worth it when the arithmetic or the clock turns in our favour: three or more passengers splitting the vehicle, an itinerary that crosses two borders, a flight into Asunción with 350 kilometres ahead, real luggage, children, or the need to be on the other side at a fixed hour. Outside of that you would be paying for a certainty you do not need, and someone who overpays once does not come back.

Frequently asked questions

What people actually ask us on WhatsApp before they cross.

Tell us which Argentine city you are heading to

With the date, the number of passengers and the destination city we tell you which of the four crossings is yours, how long the drive really takes, and a fixed price per vehicle.

Prices are per vehicle in US dollars, current as of August 2026, with fuel, tolls and the driver included. The kilometres and times are those of the real route. The border crossing hours come from argentina.gob.ar, Pasos Internacionales section, checked on 21 September 2026: they are not ours to set and they change without notice, so confirm them before you travel.