Student Visa Requirements and Costs by Country

Four things decide whether a student visa is granted, and they are the same four almost everywhere: you have been accepted, you can pay for the year, you intend to study, and you are who you say you are. This page holds the second of those, country by country, with the authority that sets each figure and the date we read it. Nothing here is an average, an estimate or a range. Where an authority publishes no figure, this page says so instead of inventing one.

What each country requires, and who says so

Application fees are the one column we did not verify at source in this pass. They change more often than any other number on this page and they differ by where you apply from, so rather than carry the old undated figures we have replaced them with the gap. Check the fee on the publisher linked in the last column, which is where it is set.

What this page got wrong before today

Until 5 August 2026 every figure here was undated and had no publisher. Reading the authorities turned up four that were wrong rather than merely stale, and we would rather show you what they were.

• Canada was shown as about CAD 20,635 a year. IRCC has required CAD 22,895 for a single applicant since 1 September 2025. A reader budgeting on the old line would have been short by CAD 2,260.
• France was shown as about EUR 615 a month. The French administration states at least EUR 877.50 a month. That is the largest error on the page, about 43 per cent.
• The Netherlands was shown as about EUR 14,000 a year. The IND figure for 2026 is EUR 1,130.77 a month, which is EUR 13,569 across twelve months.
• The United Kingdom was shown as about GBP 1,334 a month for London. The Immigration Rules set GBP 1,529 in London and GBP 1,171 elsewhere.

Why a fee is not a cost, and a funds requirement is not a budget

Two numbers on this page are routinely misread, and the difference matters more than either figure.

The application fee is what the state charges to consider your case. It is not refunded if you are refused, and it is not the cost of the visa in any wider sense. Several countries add a separate health charge on top: the United Kingdom charges an immigration health surcharge for each year of the permission, and Australia requires health cover for the whole stay. Those are not application fees and they are not in this table.

The funds requirement is a test, not a budget. It is the minimum a caseworker must see before your case can be granted, and every authority in the table above says in one way or another that real living costs may be higher. Australia is unusually blunt about it: the department states that the amount you declare is the minimum for the visa, that actual living costs vary across the country, and that you should not rely on work to support yourself. Treat the figure as a floor you must clear, then build the budget you will actually live on separately.

The three shapes a funds test can take

Once you have read enough of these rules, they fall into three families, and knowing which one you are facing changes what you have to do months in advance.

A balance you must hold. The United Kingdom is the strict version: the money must sit in the account for 28 consecutive days and the balance may not dip below the required figure on any one of them. A single low day resets the clock. Ireland, Finland and New Zealand work on the same principle with different periods.

A sum you must lock away. Germany is the clearest example. The money goes into a blocked account before the visa is issued and is released to you in monthly instalments once you arrive, so you cannot show it and then spend it. The point of the mechanism is that the state does not have to trust the statement.

A monthly rate applied to your stay. The Netherlands, France, Austria, Denmark, Sweden and Spain all publish a monthly figure and multiply it by the length of the permit. Spain does not even publish a euro amount: it publishes a percentage of the IPREM, a national index reset each year in the state budget law, so the number moves without the rule changing. Switzerland goes further and publishes no amount at all, naming three kinds of evidence and leaving the threshold to each canton.

What to do with this page

Read the row for your country, then open the publisher in the last column and read the rule there before you move any money. Every figure above has a date on it because a figure without a date is a rumour, and the authorities in this table change these numbers on their own schedule, usually with a few weeks of notice and no announcement anyone outside the system sees.

If you are still choosing where to apply, the sourced destination table compares twenty countries on tuition, funds, work rights and what happens after you graduate. If you already know where you are going, how the money test works explains the held period, whose name the money can be in, and what counts as an acceptable account.

Where to go next

• Proof of funds, explained, the mechanism behind every row above.
• Proof of funds amounts by country, the same figures with the accepted evidence for each.
• How student visa processes actually work, the sequence every country follows.
• Study abroad costs and visas, 20 destinations, the full reference table.
• Student visa processing times, how long each authority says it takes.
• Recent student visa rule changes, what moved and where.
• The application document checklist, what to gather and when.
• How to choose a destination, a weighted framework rather than a ranking.
• What studying abroad actually costs, built on the figures governments publish.
• How we research, the rules that decide what may appear on this page.
• Our disclosure, who pays us and who does not.

Print this table

This is not immigration advice. It is a record of what named public authorities publish, with the date each was read. Rules change. Confirm on the publisher linked in the table before you act.