What Migration Advice Should Cost, and What You Get for Each Price

Imagine you are a nurse in Manila. You have saved for two years. Your plan is Canada or Australia, where the same shifts would pay enough to send money home and still keep some.

You ask around and collect four quotes. One agent wants $400 for a consultation. Another wants $6,000 to run your Express Entry file. A third asks for "15 percent of your first year salary". A fourth says the fee is "all inclusive" but will not say what that includes.

Your savings are real. Every wrong choice here costs you months you cannot get back. So which quote is normal, and which one should make you walk away?

The short answer: Most price gaps come from three tiers of service. Tier one is a plan: someone tells you which routes fit you and in what order. It costs a few hundred dollars. Tier two is full lodgement, which commonly runs into the low thousands per adult. Tier three is legal work after a refusal, and it costs the most. Government visa fees sit outside all three. An honest adviser shows them as a separate line.

The tiers work the same way for Canada, Australia, the UK, Germany, New Zealand, Ireland and the Gulf. Only the currency and the regulator change. All price bands here are planning ranges checked in August 2026. Confirm each figure on the issuing authority's own fee page before you budget or apply. This is general information. A licensed or registered adviser should confirm your own case.

The three tiers, plainly

Think of it like building a house. Tier one is the architect's drawing. Tier two is the builder who puts up the walls. Tier three is the lawyer you call when the council says the house must come down. Do not pay a builder before you have a drawing.

Tier one: assessment or roadmap

You get information and a plan. A good tier one service tells you:

• which visa routes fit your job, age, qualifications, language level and family
• which routes you are close to, and what would close the gap
• the order of steps: skills assessment, language test, registration, then visa
• what the whole thing will cost in government and third-party fees

Nobody fills in your forms. Nobody lodges anything. You do the work. You get the map.

Why pay for a map? Many failed attempts fail at the plan stage. People spend a year chasing a route their job was never on, or sit a language test before checking the score their registration body needs. A few hundred dollars that saves you one wasted year is the cheapest thing in this market.

Tier two: full lodgement and representation

You get a lodged application. A registered agent, consultant or lawyer tells you which documents to get, checks them, drafts the forms and lodges. They are your recorded representative and answer the department's letters until a decision.

Expect the quote to name a specific visa, a number of applicants, and what is included. Check the edges. Many quotes leave out the skills assessment, language test, medicals, police certificates, translation, courier costs, the government charge, and any response to a refusal.

Tier three: appeal, review and court

After a refusal, a cancellation, a misrepresentation finding or a ban, the work becomes legal work with a deadline. In most countries this belongs to a qualified lawyer. In some, consultants who are not lawyers cannot act at the tribunal or court stage at all. Fees are hourly or fixed by stage. The tribunal or court adds its own filing fee.

Appeal deadlines are short, often a few weeks from the date on the letter, and strict. And an appeal is often the wrong tool. For many refusals, a corrected fresh application is faster, cheaper and more likely to work. Our guide on what to do if your visa is refused helps you tell the two apart before you sign a lawyer's retainer.

What it costs

These bands were checked in August 2026 and are in US dollars. Advisers price by complexity, country and seniority. Use them to spot an outlier, not as a quote.

Tier two prices rise with each applicant. The second adult and the children are usually cheaper, because the file is shared. Tier three has no real ceiling. It depends on how far the case runs.

NextMigrate's own plan check is a tier one service. It is $499 in total, and $99 books it.

Government fees are always a separate line

The most useful habit: ask every adviser to split the invoice into two columns. Money that goes to them, and money that goes to a government or third party.

Think of a restaurant bill. The food and the tax are listed apart. If a waiter refused to show the tax line, you would wonder what else was hidden. An adviser who will not split the columns is either disorganised or adding a margin to costs that should pass straight through.

The second column usually holds the visa charge, the skills assessment fee, the professional registration fee, the language test, the medical, police certificates from every country you have lived in, biometrics, translation, and in some countries a health surcharge or levy.

We point to where each figure lives because the numbers change on a published cycle. Read the authority's own page on the day you budget. To see the full total, read our breakdown of the real cost of migrating abroad.

Health charges are the line people miss. The UK Immigration Health Surcharge is charged per person, for each year of the visa, and paid up front for the whole visa. For a family on a multi-year visa, it can be more than the adviser's entire fee. Check the current rate on UKVI's surcharge page before you compare any UK quote.

Why salary-based and success fees work against you

Three common pricing models pull the adviser's interest away from yours.

A percentage of your first-year salary. Here the adviser earns more if you land the highest-paid job, fast. The fee has nothing to do with the work. The same forms for a nurse and for a specialist doctor produce very different bills. Worse, it pushes the adviser toward routes with the best salary, not routes with the best chance of permanent residence. Those are often different routes.

Success fees and "no win, no fee". This looks like the adviser sharing your risk. In practice it rewards them for filing whatever gets approved. The pressure is worst at the exact moment honesty matters: when your file is weak. They have a reason to overstate a claim, leave out an awkward fact, or steer you to a route that is easier to approve but worse for you later. Decisions also depend on things nobody controls, like invitation round cut-offs and queues. So the adviser adds a risk premium, and you pay it anyway.

Think of a driving instructor who is paid only if you pass. Will they tell you honestly that you are not ready?

Paying for a job offer. This is where the most serious harm happens. It is a different deal from paying a regulated adviser for visa work. In several major origin countries, recruitment is regulated separately, and charging the worker a placement fee is restricted or banned. The Philippine Department of Migrant Workers licenses recruitment agencies and publishes rules on what a worker may be charged. India's Ministry of External Affairs registers recruiting agents through its eMigrate system. The exact fee rules change, so read them on the regulator's own site. Check the licence on the regulator's own register before any money moves. Our guides on how to verify an overseas job offer and avoiding immigration scams cover the common tricks.

The model that works for both sides is simple. A fixed fee, for a named scope, paid in stages as work is delivered. Government charges pass through at cost and are shown apart. You know what you are buying. The adviser knows what they owe you. Nobody's pay depends on a decision neither of you controls.

Before you pay anyone, make sure you are buying help with the right route. The free eligibility check asks 6 questions (age, education, experience, English, target countries) and gives you a quick read on your options in 2 minutes.

Five things to get before you compare quotes

Get these from every adviser, in writing, before you pay a deposit.

1. Their registration number and the register it is on. Not a screenshot. The number, so you can search the public register yourself.
2. A written scope. It should name the visa subclass or route, the number of applicants, and the stages covered. "Migration services" is not a scope.
3. A separate list of government and third-party fees, marked as pass-through and payable to the named body.
4. Refund and exit terms. What happens if you withdraw, if your situation changes, or if the application is refused?
5. Where the money goes. Fees should go to a business account in the firm's registered name. A personal account, a middleman in a third country, or cryptocurrency is a serious warning sign.

How to check a provider with the regulator

• Australia: registered migration agents are on the Office of the Migration Agents Registration Authority register. Immigration lawyers are regulated by their state or territory legal admission body instead.
• Canada: consultants are licensed by the College of Immigration and Citizenship Consultants. Lawyers are licensed by their provincial law society. IRCC publishes who may represent you, and a representative must be declared on the file.
• United Kingdom: advisers must be regulated, either by the statutory immigration advice regulator (formerly the Office of the Immigration Services Commissioner) or as a solicitor or barrister through their own regulator.
• New Zealand: advisers are licensed by the Immigration Advisers Authority, and the register is public. Some exemptions apply, and Immigration New Zealand publishes who may give advice.
• Germany: immigration legal advice is generally reserved for qualified lawyers, admitted through the regional bar (Rechtsanwaltskammer). Consultancies that are not law firms are limited in what they may advise.

Registration is a floor. It means there is a complaints body, not that the adviser is good or the fee is fair.

Three claims should end the conversation at once, registered or not: a guaranteed visa, a guaranteed job, or an offer to "improve" your file with documents you know are false. No adviser controls a decision. A misrepresentation finding brings published bans measured in years across the major destinations.

How long each tier takes

A cheaper adviser who adds three months can cost you an invitation round or an age points bracket.

The department's processing time is published and has nothing to do with your adviser. IRCC, UKVI, the Australian Department of Home Affairs and Immigration New Zealand all publish current service standards. No adviser can shorten a published queue. Treat any claim of "priority access" as a red flag.

The slow parts are usually the skills assessment and professional registration. Our guide to getting your qualifications recognised shows whether an adviser can speed those up at all.

When paying for advice is not worth it yet

Sometimes the honest answer is: do not buy any tier yet.

Your job is not on any list and there is no side route. Representation cannot create eligibility. A tier two fee here buys a well-prepared refusal. Spend on a tier one assessment to see if a nearby occupation code, another country or a study route changes the answer. If not, stop.

Your file is simple and you are organised. One applicant, one country of residence, a clean history, a job clearly on the list and a finished skills assessment? You can often lodge a points-tested application yourself. The rules are fussy but published.

You cannot afford the whole sequence. The total includes tests, assessments, medicals, police certificates, translation, the government charge and money to land with. Arriving broke is worse than waiting a year and arriving funded.

A ban or misrepresentation finding is still running. The route is closed until it ends. Trying anyway wastes the fee and can worsen your record. That is a tier three legal question first.

You are missing a document you cannot get. Missing birth records, name mismatches or police certificates you cannot obtain are document problems. Which substitute evidence is accepted is a tier one question. Paying for full lodgement before that is solved buys nothing.

Common mistakes

• Comparing an all-in quote with an adviser-only quote. One firm says $6,000 including the government charge and medicals. Another says $2,800 plus disbursements. The totals may be the same. Split every quote into adviser fee plus pass-through list first.
• Paying the full fee up front. Staged payment is standard. Paying everything first gives away your only leverage.
• Treating the deposit as the price. Ask for the full total before you pay anything.
• Assuming the skills assessment is included. It usually is not. The assessing body charges separately, and in some professions the registration body charges again.
• Forgetting the family multiplier. Government charges are per applicant. Health surcharges are per person, per year. For a family of four, the government column can dwarf the adviser's fee.
• Buying full lodgement before choosing a country. If you are still torn between Canada and Australia, you will pay twice. The file work does not transfer.
• Not getting the scope in writing. Spoken promises cannot be enforced. Disputes about what was covered are the most common complaint at every regulator listed above.

Frequently asked questions

How much do immigration consultants charge?

Three tiers. A roadmap is a fixed fee of a few hundred dollars. Full lodgement of a points-tested application is commonly in the low thousands per adult, more for employer-sponsored or complex family files. Appeal work by a lawyer costs the most. Government charges are always on top.

Is a percentage of my salary ever a normal way to be charged?

For immigration advice, no. It has nothing to do with the work and pushes the adviser toward the best-paid job, not the strongest visa route. For recruitment fees, check the rules of regulators such as the Philippine Department of Migrant Workers or India's eMigrate system.

Should the visa fee be included in the consultant's price?

It should be shown separately and payable to the government. An all-in number hides the adviser's real margin.

Can I lodge a skilled visa application without a consultant?

Yes. All the major destinations let you apply yourself, and publish their forms, evidence rules and fees. It suits a simple file. Get advice if you have a past refusal, a health or character issue, a missing document or a complex work history.

How do I check that a migration agent is genuine?

Search the regulator's public register yourself, using the adviser's number: OMARA in Australia, the College of Immigration and Citizenship Consultants in Canada, the Immigration Advisers Authority in New Zealand, and the statutory register in the UK. Never pay into a personal account.

Why do advisers ask for a deposit and a balance?

Staged payment splits the risk. You do not pay a large sum before work starts, and the adviser does not work for free. NextMigrate's plan check works the same way: $99 to book, the $400 balance after your session, and a full refund if you cancel 24 hours before.

The bottom line

Picture that nurse in Manila again, with four quotes on the table. Now she can sort them. The $400 consultation is tier one. The $6,000 Express Entry quote is tier two, if it splits out government fees. The salary percentage and the vague "all inclusive" are the ones to question hardest.

You can do the same. Ask for a fixed fee and a named scope. Make government charges their own line. Check the registration number yourself. Be wary of any fee tied to your salary or to approval. Then buy only the tier your file really needs.

Government fees change on a published cycle, usually once a year, and adviser fees move with the market. Reconfirm every government charge on the issuing authority's own fee page before you budget or apply.