immigrate.ioUK

What a Skilled Worker visa costs

Two things get confused with each other on this topic, so they are separated here: the fees you pay the Home Office, and the money you must be able to show you have. Both come from GOV.UK’s published guidance, re-read daily.

Your application

This follows your certificate of sponsorship, which your employer issues — it is not something you or we choose. GOV.UK also publishes rules for visas that are not a whole number of years; this works in whole years only rather than applying a rounding rule you can’t check.

Nothing here is saved to an account unless you choose to. It stays in this browser.

Fees paid to the UK government

Application fee
Standard rate for a stay of up to 3 years, applying from outside the UK. Charged per person, including a partner or child who applies.
GOV.UK — Skilled Worker costs →		£819£819
Healthcare surcharge — you
Standard yearly rate × 3 years.
GOV.UK — Healthcare surcharge →		£1,035/yr × 3£3,105
Total paid to the government£3,924

Amounts read from GOV.UK’s published guidance on 2026-09-19.

Money you must have available — not a fee

This is savings you must be able to show, not money you hand over. It is deliberately not added to the total above.

For you£1,270
Total to show£1,270

GOV.UK states exceptions — including where your employer certifies on your certificate of sponsorship that they will cover your costs, and where you have already been in the UK for 12 months. Read them on GOV.UK.

What this is and isn’t

  • · It adds up GOV.UK’s published amounts for the people and length you entered.
  • · It doesn’t decide whether your job is on the Immigration Salary List, or how long a visa you’ll be granted.
  • · It doesn’t apply the healthcare surcharge exemptions. GOV.UK lists them; whether one applies to you is not ours to conclude.
  • · It doesn’t convert currencies, and it isn’t a prediction of total cost.
  • · GOV.UK’s own words: “You’ll be told how much you need to pay when you apply.”

Where these amounts come from

GOV.UK publishes the fees in the text of its Skilled Worker guidance, not as a machine-readable fee table. We read that guidance through GOV.UK’s own Content API once a day and store what it says. If GOV.UK rewords a sentence so an amount can no longer be found, the read fails as a whole and this page keeps showing the last values it read, labelled with their date — it never fills a gap with a number of our own.

GOV.UK — Skilled Worker visa: how much it costs →

Questions this page answers

Documents you’ll need →All UK pathways →