UK visa calculators: salary, cost, ILR and citizenship

Fees come from the spreadsheet the Home Office publishes with each change, the immigration and nationality fees table: the site reads all 12 versions since 31 January 2024, so a fee shown here is the line of the table, not a figure copied from an article. Salary thresholds and going rates come from Appendix Skilled Worker and Appendix Skilled Occupations of the Immigration Rules, the absence rules from Appendix Continuous Residence and the Home Office caseworker guidance, the family income test from Appendix FM. The register of licensed sponsors is the CSV file the Home Office posts every working day; the copy on this site is dated 13 October 2026 and holds 127,800 organisations. All of it is public sector information reused under the Open Government Licence.

The rules were last read on 13 October 2026, after the Statement of Changes HC 584. When the Home Office lays a new statement, the parameters are read again before the site is rebuilt; the date at the top of each page tells you which version you are looking at.

The tool first looks at the occupation code. Of the 412 codes in the appendix, 91 are open to anyone, 30 health and education codes follow national pay scales, 170 medium skilled codes are open only through the Immigration Salary List or the Temporary Shortage List (or to workers already in them), and 113 are never eligible. It then takes the going rate, pro-rates it to your weekly hours (the tables assume 37.5), caps the hours counted at 48, applies the floor and the discount of your situation, and compares the result with your guaranteed basic pay.

The printed discounted rates of the appendix (90%, 80% and 70% columns) are used as the Home Office rounds them, so the tool shows the figure your sponsor will see on the certificate screen. Workers sponsored since before 4 April 2024 keep lower, transitional rates until 2030; choose that status in the tool and it switches to them.

An application fee is paid by every person, partner and children included, at the same length of stay as the main applicant. The immigration health surcharge is charged per person for each year of the visa: a part year of six months or less costs half, more than six months a full year, and a visa of six months or less from abroad costs nothing. Children under 18 and students pay £776 instead of £1,035. Health and Care Worker visa holders, visitors and settlement applications pay no surcharge at all.

A Skilled Worker family of four on a five-year visa from abroad pays £24,582; the same family on a Health and Care Worker visa pays £2,512. The cost calculator and the surcharge calculator show the split line by line.

The settlement calculator counts your qualifying years from the start date you give, lets you apply 28 days before they end, and checks every rolling 12-month window for more than 180 days abroad. It counts whole days only, as the Home Office does: the day you leave and the day you return are days in the UK. If a window goes over, the period restarts when you came back from the trip that broke it, and the tool says so instead of showing a date you could not use.

Citizenship then needs five years in the UK (three for the spouse of a British citizen), no more than 450 days abroad in that period (270 on the spouse route), no more than 90 in the last 12 months, presence in the UK at the start of the period, and twelve months on indefinite leave unless you are married to a British citizen. The citizenship calculator finds the first day all of them hold.

Since 11 April 2024 a partner applying for the first time needs a combined income of £29,000 a year, whatever the number of children. Couples first granted under the old rule keep the £18,600 threshold, plus £3,800 for the first child and £2,400 for each other child, when they extend. Savings can replace missing income: the first £16,000 do not count, and each pound above it counts for 1/2.5 of a pound of income (one for one at settlement). With no income at all, the savings needed are £88,500. The financial requirement page explains which income counts.

Each tool applies published rules to the numbers you type. It cannot check that a job really matches its code, that a relationship is genuine, that bank statements are in the format Appendix FM-SE demands, or that a criminal record or a past overstay does not lead to refusal. Absences for compelling reasons can be disregarded at the caseworker's discretion, and nothing here can predict that. The site is not legal advice and has no link with the Home Office; for a refusal, an appeal or an unusual history, speak to a solicitor or an adviser registered with the Immigration Advice Authority.

A worker can only be sponsored by an organisation on the register: 122,416 organisations held a Skilled Worker licence on 13 October 2026, 95 of them with a B rating that stops them issuing new certificates. The sponsor search looks up an employer by name and town; the sponsor licence calculator adds up what the employer pays: the licence (£611 or £1,682), £525 per certificate and the immigration skills charge.