UK Visa Fee Calculator

UK visa fees vary by category and are set by the Home Office. They include the application fee itself plus the Immigration Health Surcharge (IHS), currently £1,035 per year for most categories. Many applications also bring priority processing charges, appointment fees at application centres abroad and the cost of an English language test, none of which appear in the headline figure you first see quoted.

From 8 April 2026, common fees for applications from outside the UK run from £819 for a Skilled Worker visa of up to 3 years, or £1,618 for longer, through £558 for a Student visa and £2,064 for the initial 2 years 9 months on a partner visa. A Visit visa starts at £135 for 6 months, rising to £506 for 2 years, £903 for 5 years and £1,128 for 10 years. Health and Care Worker applications are cheaper, from £324, and the Graduate visa, applied for from inside the UK, is £937 for 2 years (3 for PhD graduates). At the other end of the journey, settlement costs £3,226 and citizenship £1,709 plus a £130 ceremony fee. Fees are higher when applying from within the UK than from overseas in some categories.

The health surcharge does most of the damage to a family budget. Adults pay £1,035 a year while children under 18, students and their dependants, and Youth Mobility Scheme applicants pay £776, all of it upfront for the whole length of the visa. A 5-year Skilled Worker visa therefore carries £5,175 of surcharge for the main applicant, the same for a partner and £3,880 for each child, which pushes a couple past £10,000 before a single application fee is counted. EEA nationals have paid on the same terms as everyone else since Brexit. Health and Care Worker visa holders and their dependants are exempt from the surcharge altogether, as are ILR and citizenship applications.

This calculator totals the Home Office fees for each visa type, including IHS and priority options, and it separates the main applicant from adult and child dependants, since each dependant pays their own application fee and surcharge. Third-party costs are not included, and the extras are where budgets tend to slip. An English test runs £150 to £200, a tuberculosis test £80 to £200 if you are applying from a high-TB country, visa application centres abroad may charge for premium appointments, and document translation costs £30 to £100 apiece.

Speed costs money too, and every applicant in the family pays separately. Priority service costs £500 per person and usually brings a decision within 5 working days, or 30 working days for family visas from outside the UK and for citizenship. Super priority costs £1,000 per person for a decision usually by the end of the next working day, and it is not available for citizenship. A solicitor charges £1,000 to £3,000 or more on a complex case, and document couriers £150 to £300. Once travel to an application centre is added, the real cost runs from a few thousand pounds for one person to £20,000 or more for a family.

Employers carry costs of their own on the Skilled Worker route. A Certificate of Sponsorship costs £525, and the Immigration Skills Charge runs at £480 a year for small or charitable sponsors and £1,320 a year for medium and large ones, so sponsoring someone for 5 years costs a small employer £2,925 and a large one £7,125. Passing those costs to the employee is permitted for the surcharge but not for the certificate or the skills charge. Plenty of UK employers cover the lot as part of a relocation package, which makes it worth asking who pays before you accept an offer.

Adding it up for a family of four moving on a 3-year Skilled Worker visa gives a sense of scale. The sponsor spends £4,485 on the certificate and three years of the skills charge at the medium or large rate. Fees and surcharge for the main applicant come to £3,924, and a partner costs the same again. Two children add £6,294, since their surcharge is £776 a year. Priority processing for all four applications is £2,000, which brings the family's Home Office bill to £16,142. An English test for the main applicant is about £170 and a solicitor perhaps £2,500, so the total passes £23,000 once the employer's costs are counted, before flights or accommodation. ILR at today's fees would add £12,904 for the four of them.