UK visa fees: current costs and the impact of price hikes

The latest Home Office fee schedule took effect on 8 April 2026. It raised the Electronic Travel Authorisation from £16 to £20, pushed a six-month Standard Visitor visa to £135, and maintained a structure in which the headline application fee is often only the first charge.

The answer to "how much is UK visa fees" is therefore not one number. It depends on the immigration route, the length of permission requested, whether the application is made inside or outside the UK, and whether the Immigration Health Surcharge applies. Priority processing can add another £500 or £1,000.

The policy direction is clear. The Home Office is using the fee schedule as a material funding mechanism, not merely as an administrative price list. The April 2025 package was forecast to raise £425 million in 2025–26, while allowing for the possibility that higher prices could marginally reduce application volumes. That is a revenue assumption, not evidence that fee rises themselves reduce migration.

The 2026 Home Office fee landscape: a layered cost model

The published Home Office application costs should be read as a sequence of liabilities, not a single checkout figure.

For many routes, the financial structure has four moving parts:

• the visa or immigration application fee;
• the Immigration Health Surcharge (IHS), where applicable;
• sponsorship-related charges borne by an employer or education provider in some cases;
• optional Priority or Super Priority processing charges, if available.

This matters particularly for work and study routes. A three-year visa can carry an application charge measured in hundreds of pounds, then attract an IHS bill measured in thousands. The difference is not cosmetic. It changes employer budgets, student funding calculations and the financial case for applying from overseas rather than switching from inside the UK.

The application fee is the visible number. The immigration cost is the full liability created when the application is submitted.

The present schedule also follows a recent pattern of frequent intervention. The April 2025 package increased the ETA from £10 to £16, increased many visit-route fees by around 10%, and raised immigration, nationality and passport fees by around 7%. The certificate of sponsorship charge rose from £239 to £525.

Then came the 8 April 2026 schedule. The ETA increased again, from £16 to £20. Applicants should not treat an older UK visa price list from 2024 or 2025 as a current authority. A figure can be historically accurate and operationally useless.

The key date is the date of the completed application. For the Immigration Health Surcharge, the current annual rates apply to applications submitted on or after 9:00am GMT on 6 February 2024. For application fees, the relevant question is whether the submission falls under the schedule effective from 8 April 2026.

Visitor travel: £135 for a visa, £20 for an ETA — not interchangeable products

Short-term travel now has two distinct systems. Confusing them creates boarding risk.

A Standard Visitor visa is for travellers who need advance entry clearance under the UK's visa rules. An ETA is a digital travel permission for eligible non-visa nationals. It is not a visa and it does not guarantee admission at the border.

Since 25 February 2026, non-visa nationals have needed an ETA, an eVisa or another form of valid permission before travel. Carriers may refuse boarding where the required digital permission is absent.

The core visitor charges from 8 April 2026 are as follows:

The six-month visitor visa therefore costs £135 as the published application fee, not necessarily £135 as the entire transaction cost. Currency conversion, commercial service-centre charges and optional processing services may vary by location and service availability. The sterling fee schedule is the stable baseline; country-specific payment arrangements are not.

Long-term visitor visas require a more disciplined calculation than the simple annualised comparison suggests. A 10-year visa costs £1,128, but it does not eliminate the need to meet the visitor rules on each entry. It buys a period in which travel may be requested; it does not create residence rights, a work entitlement or a guarantee of admission.

The ETA is cheaper, but it serves a different legal category. It should not be described as a £20 UK visa. The distinction is central to carrier checks and border decision-making.

Skilled Worker pricing: the in-country premium is explicit

The Skilled Worker route shows most clearly how Home Office fee design can shape application strategy.

For applications submitted from outside the UK, the headline application fee is lower than for applications made in-country. The difference is £124 for permission of three years or less, and £247 for permission exceeding three years.

These are application charges. They do not settle the full cost of a sponsored move.

A standard three-year Skilled Worker grant illustrates the point. At the £1,035 annual IHS rate, the surcharge alone is £3,105. Add the out-of-country visa fee of £819 and the applicant-facing total reaches £3,924 before optional fast-track processing and before considering any other route-specific costs. An in-country application at £943 produces a £4,048 figure on the same basic assumptions.

That comparison is useful, but it is not a universal quote. Permission length drives IHS liability. The exact period requested and granted matters. Sponsorship documentation also matters. So do any exemptions, reductions or employer reimbursement arrangements.

Health and Care Visa applicants who qualify for the reduced rate sit in a different position. The published table specifies in-country application fees of £324 for applications of up to three years and £628 for applications over three years. That reduction should not be casually extended to every healthcare worker. The Home Office wording is route-specific: the lower figure applies to people who qualify for the Health and Care Visa.

Fee pressure is now part of sponsorship compliance

For sponsors, the financial impact is broader than the worker's invoice. The certificate of sponsorship fee increase in April 2025, from £239 to £525, altered the cost base before the applicant reaches the application stage.

The practical consequence is that recruitment budgets need to separate:

• mandatory sponsor-side charges;
• visa application fees paid by the worker or reimbursed by the employer;
• IHS exposure for the worker and eligible dependants;
• discretionary premium-processing costs;
• costs created by delayed or defective applications.

This is not simply an accounting exercise. It affects offer design, relocation packages and whether a sponsor can realistically maintain a recruitment pipeline in salary-sensitive sectors.

A sponsored visa is not priced by the application form alone. The relevant unit is the whole sponsored move.

Student and Graduate Route fees: lower entry prices, substantial continuing exposure

The in-country Student or Child Student application fee is £558 from 8 April 2026. The Graduate Route application fee is £937.

Those numbers are often quoted as if they describe the cost of student immigration. They do not. The IHS has a major role in the final amount.

Students, student dependants, Youth Mobility Scheme applicants and under-18s are charged the reduced IHS rate of £776 per year, rather than the general £1,035 rate. That is a meaningful distinction, but it remains a significant upfront liability when permission is issued for multiple years.

The calculation is made in six-month blocks. Part-years are rounded up. A grant of 16 months can therefore create IHS liability for 18 months. Applicants who estimate only by counting whole calendar years will understate the required funds.

The Home Office's cost architecture produces several practical effects for education providers and their advisers:

1. Course duration is a financial variable. The immigration cost does not necessarily track tuition fee payment cycles. It follows the period of immigration permission and the six-month rounding rules.

2. The Graduate Route is a separate expenditure event. A student who has already paid for student permission and the associated IHS faces a new £937 application fee when moving onto the Graduate Route, alongside the relevant surcharge position for that application.

3. Dependants change the arithmetic quickly. IHS is generally assessed per person. A family's exposure can exceed the principal applicant's visa fee by a substantial margin.

4. In-country applications should not be assumed to be administratively cheaper. The fee schedule frequently distinguishes between applications made within the UK and those made abroad. The route and procedural posture matter.

For institutions, this is a communications issue as much as a compliance issue. Students need cost information early enough to plan cash flow. Publishing only the application fee gives an incomplete picture and creates predictable disputes later in the process.

Family visas, settlement and the high price of permanence

The most consequential fee on the current published schedule is the application for indefinite leave to remain: £3,226 from 8 April 2026.

That number matters because settlement is not an optional upgrade for many people who have built their lawful life in the UK through a time-limited route. It is the point at which repeated temporary-permission costs meet the price of permanence.

The figure also demonstrates why generic searches for family visa fees UK can be misleading. Family routes contain several categories and procedural stages. The correct fee can depend on the specific route, whether the person is applying from outside the UK or extending permission in-country, and the status being sought. There is no defensible single price for every family application.

The same caution applies to visitor extensions. A visitor extension costs £1,172 under the 8 April 2026 schedule. That is a sharp reminder that an in-country immigration application can carry a substantially higher charge than the original short-term visitor application. It does not establish that an extension is available in every case. Eligibility is determined by the Immigration Rules, not by the existence of a line in the fee schedule.

Applicants and advisers should keep the legal and financial questions separate:

• Is the route legally available?
• What is the applicable application fee?
• Does IHS apply, and at which rate?
• Is there a route-specific reduction, exemption or waiver?
• Does the intended application date fall before or after a new fee schedule takes effect?

Conflating those questions is how a plausible cost estimate becomes a failed application plan.

The Immigration Health Surcharge is usually the largest variable

The IHS remains the dominant charge for a large share of time-limited immigration applications.

The standard rate is £1,035 per person per year. The reduced rate is £776 per person per year for students, student dependants, Youth Mobility Scheme applicants and under-18s. Not every applicant pays it. Exemptions and route-specific rules exist. No analysis should state that every UK visa applicant is liable.

For those who are liable, the calculation mechanics are not intuitive:

• the surcharge is based on the period of immigration permission sought;
• it is charged in six-month blocks;
• a partial period is rounded up to the next six-month block;
• the applicable rate is determined by when the completed application is submitted.

A three-year Skilled Worker grant at the standard rate creates an IHS charge of £3,105. A 16-month period is charged as 18 months. These mechanics are more important than minor differences in the application fee because they can add hundreds of pounds to an estimate.

This is also where data-led policy analysis has limits. Fee schedules can be measured precisely; the behavioural effect of a higher upfront liability is harder to isolate from wage levels, sponsor demand, processing times and changing immigration rules. The Home Office's own 2025 costing did not claim a proven migration effect. It allowed for a possible slight reduction in demand. That is the appropriate level of confidence. Fees influence decisions, but they do not operate in a vacuum.

Priority processing: £500 or £1,000, but not a standard component

The published fee table lists Priority service at £500 and Super Priority service at £1,000, both for applications made in the UK and for the corresponding listed services outside the UK.

These are additional charges. They are not part of the standard visa fee, and they should not be included automatically in a cost estimate.

Availability can vary. A service may be offered for a particular route, location or application type, then become constrained by operational capacity. The payment is for faster processing under the relevant service terms; it is not a substantive advantage in the legal assessment of the application.

The distinction matters because applicants often see a headline figure for a skilled worker visa fee or student visa UK cost, then add premium processing as though it were compulsory. It is not. Conversely, organisations with fixed start dates can underbudget by ignoring it entirely.

The sensible approach is to treat expedited processing as a contingent operational cost. Include it in planning scenarios, but do not treat it as a universal tax.

What the price hikes change in practice

The 2026 fee schedule does not rewrite the Immigration Rules. It does, however, alter the cash-flow threshold for travel, study, work and settlement.

For visitors, the immediate shift is the £20 ETA and the £135 six-month Standard Visitor fee. For employers, the central issue is the combination of Skilled Worker application charges, the IHS and higher sponsorship costs. For students, the £558 in-country student application fee is only a starting point once the surcharge is calculated. For long-term residents, the £3,226 settlement fee puts a substantial price on the final stage of the immigration journey.

Government fee schedules are often presented as straightforward tables. They are not. They are implementation instruments with direct consequences for recruitment, enrolment, family budgeting and travel compliance.

The immediate compliance actions are straightforward:

1. Use the 8 April 2026 fee schedule for any new estimate. Remove legacy figures from 2024 and early 2025 planning documents.

2. Identify the correct immigration route before pricing it. ETA, visitor visa, Skilled Worker, Health and Care Visa, Student and settlement applications have different legal functions, different eligibility tests and different downstream consequences. Pricing them as a single category guarantees miscommunication.

3. Calculate the IHS separately and on the actual permission period. The six-month rounding rule can change the bill by a full surcharge block. A 12-month quote for a 16-month grant is wrong on the day it is issued.

4. Treat priority processing as a contingency, not a default. It is sometimes unavailable, sometimes unnecessary, and sometimes essential. Build it into scenario planning rather than the base case.

5. Recheck the position at the point of submission. Fee schedules, IHS rates and route-specific rules change. The number that matters is the number applicable to the date the application is actually completed.

The Home Office schedule is doing what fee schedules increasingly do in the UK immigration system: it is a working policy instrument, not just a price list. The right response from applicants, employers and advisers is to read it as such, and to budget, recruit and plan accordingly.