Our methodology

Where the numbers come from

Every mandatory government fee on this site is sourced directly from the relevant immigration authority's official fee schedule — USCIS and the U.S. Department of State for the United States, UKVI/gov.uk for the United Kingdom, IRCC for Canada, and the Department of Home Affairs for Australia. We link the official source next to every fee so you can verify it yourself before you rely on it.

How we classify mandatory vs. optional

A fee is marked mandatory when every applicant in that category must pay it to file a valid application (e.g. the base petition or application fee). It's marked optional when it only applies in specific circumstances — premium processing, biometrics for consular cases, or a dependent's additional application. Fees that are currently in legal dispute or apply only to a narrow subset of cases (like the H-1B supplemental fee) are shown separately with an explicit status note rather than folded into a total, so they never inflate an estimate that doesn't apply to you.

Attorney fee ranges

Attorneys set their own fees, so the ranges shown here are market estimates for typical case complexity in each city, not quotes from any specific firm. Treat them as a planning benchmark, not a guarantee.

How often we re-check the data

Government fees change — sometimes annually, sometimes mid-year following a policy or regulatory change. We periodically cross-reference every fee in our database against the current official schedule and update any figure that has moved, including the effective date shown with each fee. Our most recent full review across all four countries was completed in August 2026.

Fee schedules can change faster than any third-party site can track in real time. Always confirm the current amount on the official government page linked next to each fee before you file or pay anything.