UK visa fees: what a British visa actually costs

The four parts of a UK visa bill

Most people underestimate the total because they only price the first part.

The application fee and the surcharge are both payable when you submit, and an application that is not paid for is not valid. Everything else is either optional or depends on where you are applying from.

Worked example: Skilled Worker

Fees in force from 8 April 2026.

From outside the UK, up to 3 years

£819

From outside the UK, more than 3 years

£1,618

From inside the UK, up to 3 years

£943

From inside the UK, more than 3 years

£1,865

Immigration Health Surcharge

£1,035 per year of permission

Priority / super priority

£500 / £1,000

Where costs are avoidable, and where they are not

The parts worth planning around.

• The application fee is fixed by route and length, and is not refunded on refusal
• The health surcharge is refunded if you are refused, withdraw, or are granted less time than you paid for
• Health and Care Worker applicants and their dependants are exempt from the health surcharge
• Priority and super priority buy speed only, never a better chance of approval
• Sponsors must pay the Certificate of Sponsorship fee and the Immigration Skills Charge themselves
• Getting the documents right first time is the only reliable way to avoid paying the fee twice

How the fee is actually calculated

The application fee is not a single flat number, it is a lookup against three variables.

The Home Office fee table is organised by route, by the length of permission you are asking for, and by whether the application is made from outside the UK or from inside it. Get any one of the three wrong and you will quote or budget the wrong figure. Length is usually split at three years, so a Skilled Worker grant of up to three years sits in a lower band than a grant of more than three years, and the same split appears across most work and study routes.

Whether you apply from inside or outside the UK is a separate variable from length, and the two combine, so there are effectively four bands for a single route: outside and short, outside and long, inside and short, inside and long. In-country applications are almost always the more expensive of the pair, which is one of the few consistent patterns across otherwise very different routes.

Dependants are priced separately again. On most work and study routes a partner and each child pays their own application fee, generally calculated on the same route, length and location basis as the main applicant, plus their own Immigration Health Surcharge for the same period. There is no family discount built into the standard fee table, so the total for a family of four scales close to linearly with the number of people in the application, not just the main applicant's circumstances.

Immigration Health Surcharge in detail

The surcharge is often the single largest line item after the fee itself, especially on longer grants.

The surcharge buys access to NHS treatment on broadly the same basis as a resident, for the length of the permission being applied for. It is calculated in whole years and charged up front as a single payment with the application, not billed annually, so a five-year grant means paying for five years of surcharge in one go before you ever set foot in the country.

Students and those on youth mobility routes pay a reduced annual rate rather than the standard adult rate, which is one reason study routes can look cheaper on the surcharge line even before comparing tuition costs. Children pay the same rate as the adult they are a dependant of on most routes, which is why the multiplier effect on family applications is so significant.

The clearest full exemption is for Health and Care Worker visa applicants and their dependants, who do not pay the surcharge at all. That exemption, combined with a lower application fee band on that route, is a substantial part of why total cost comparisons between Skilled Worker and Health and Care Worker routes for the same eligible role can differ by a significant margin once dependants are included.

Costs beyond the headline fee

Budgeting only for the application fee and surcharge is the most common way applicants underestimate the total.

• Biometric enrolment, sometimes bundled into the application fee and sometimes charged separately by the visa application centre
• Optional priority or super priority services, which speed up the decision but never change the outcome
• Certified translation of any document not already in English or Welsh
• An approved English language test, where the route requires one and you cannot rely on a prior qualification
• A tuberculosis test, required for applicants from certain countries applying for permission of more than six months
• Courier or document return services offered by some visa application centres
• Travel and accommodation to attend a biometrics appointment where there is no local centre

None of these is huge on its own, but together they can add several hundred pounds to a total that was budgeted only against the headline application fee. Building a full list before you start, rather than discovering each item as the application progresses, avoids last-minute cost surprises close to a submission deadline.

Sponsor-side costs, kept separate from the worker's costs

Employer costs sit alongside, not instead of, the worker's own fees.

A sponsoring employer has its own set of costs that are entirely separate from what the worker pays. These include the sponsor licence application fee, the fee for each Certificate of Sponsorship assigned, and, for medium and large sponsors employing a worker on certain routes, the Immigration Skills Charge, which is charged per worker per year of sponsorship. None of these can lawfully be passed on to the worker or recovered from their salary.

What can be agreed between employer and worker is who pays the worker's own application fee and Immigration Health Surcharge. Many employers cover both as part of a recruitment package, but this is a commercial choice rather than a legal requirement, and it should be recorded in writing, including what happens to any reimbursement clause if the worker resigns shortly after the visa is granted.

Common budgeting mistakes

The same handful of errors account for most fee-related surprises.

• Pricing only the application fee and forgetting the health surcharge entirely
• Assuming a family fee is a flat multiple rather than pricing each dependant individually
• Quoting the outside-UK fee for an application that will actually be made in-country, or vice versa
• Not checking whether the fee table has changed between quoting a client and the actual submission date
• Treating priority and super priority as a way to improve the chance of approval rather than only the speed of the decision
• Assuming a refusal refunds the application fee, when in most cases only the surcharge is returned

Settlement, citizenship and what comes after

The two applications after a work or family visa have their own fee logic.

Indefinite leave to remain is charged as a single, one-off application fee with no Immigration Health Surcharge attached, because the grant carries no time limit and therefore no further period to charge surcharge against. It is typically the largest single application fee most applicants ever pay, which is worth planning for well ahead of the qualifying date rather than discovering the figure at the point of submission.

Naturalisation as a British citizen is a further, separate application made after settlement, with its own fee and its own supporting requirements, including the Life in the UK Test. There is no discount for having already paid visa and settlement fees on the way to citizenship, so a full route from initial visa through to citizenship involves several distinct fee payments spread over a number of years.

Getting the total right before you apply

Where to check figures and where to get help with the wider application.

Because fee bands depend on route, length and location, and because dependants are priced individually, the safest way to reach a reliable total is to work through the specific figures for your case rather than relying on a headline number quoted for a different scenario. The visa fees calculator does this for application fees, the health surcharge and dependants together, and the sponsor licence calculator does the equivalent for employer-side costs.

If your case involves an unusual combination, such as switching routes mid-permission, a mixed household of dependants on different visas, or a sponsor considering more than one worker at once, a short paid consultation before you submit is usually cheaper than paying twice for the same application because of an avoidable document issue. See our book a consultation page to arrange that.