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A New Zealand visa is paid for before anyone reads your file, and the price of each is published. On Immigration New Zealand's own visa pages a visitor visa starts at NZD $441, a student visa at NZD $850, an Accredited Employer Work Visa at NZD $1,540, a partner residence visa at NZD $5,360, and the Skilled Migrant Category resident visa, the main points-based route to permanent residence (usually shortened to PR), at NZD $6,450. Those are government fees only: an English test, a qualification assessment, a medical examination and police certificates go to other organisations and sit inside none of them. This post takes each in turn, with the official page beside every number. It is the New Zealand twin of our post on Canada's immigration fees.
You have seen a figure somewhere and want to know whether it is the real one, what lands on top of it, whether a refused application gets its money back, and whether you must pay somebody to apply for you. Everything below comes from Immigration New Zealand (INZ, the government department that decides visa applications), in New Zealand dollars.
Because INZ prints a starting price, not your price. Its visa pages say "from" an amount, and INZ states that "your country of citizenship and where you are now will also affect the cost" (INZ, how much visa applications cost). So the same visa can cost one amount for somebody applying in India and another for somebody already inside New Zealand. INZ runs a fee finder giving the figure for your visa, your citizenship and your location, and that is the number to trust over any figure here.
The rates on this page took effect on 1 October 2024 and are the ones INZ publishes as current (INZ, fee and levy changes). A website quoting less is quoting the rates before that date.
Your application fee, in INZ's words, "goes towards the costs of deciding your visa application". A levy is a separate charge added to some visas on top of that.
Both quotes come from the INZ cost page linked above.
New Zealand's points-based route to residence for skilled workers, explained in our Skilled Migrant Category post. INZ lists it at from NZD $6,450, the largest fee here. It buys the residence application itself, not the expression of interest that comes before it and not the checks other organisations charge you for.
The Accredited Employer Work Visa (AEWV) is the temporary work visa for a job with an employer INZ has approved, explained in our AEWV post. INZ lists it at from NZD $1,540. What the employer pays is covered below, because it must never reach you.
Which one you need depends on who your partner is: a New Zealander, a work visa holder, or a student. Each carries its own fee. The one most people mean, the Partner of a New Zealander Resident Visa, is listed at from NZD $5,360. For the temporary partner visas there is no single figure to print, and the fee finder above gives yours.
The Fee Paying Student Visa, for a course you pay for yourself, is listed at from NZD $850; the course fees go to the education provider and are not part of it. The Visitor Visa is listed at from NZD $441.
You do not get it back. INZ puts it plainly: "We do not refund the fee, even if we decline your application." The IVL is treated the same way.
INZ's refund page lists the narrow situations where you can ask for money back: your application has not been processed yet, you withdraw an expression of interest (the short first stage of a residence application, where you register your interest before being invited to apply), you paid a fee you did not need to, you paid the wrong one, or your application was returned to you unaccepted. Changing your mind earns nothing back, nor does withdrawing after lodging, which "does not mean you will receive a refund on any fees or levies paid".
So the government fee is the one cost you cannot recover, and it is the last one to pay, after the documents supporting the application are in hand. INZ does waive fees for some groups, among them refugees, refugee claimants, protected people and victims of family violence.
None of this goes to INZ, and each provider sets its own price, so we name the category and the official page rather than inventing a total.
An employer who hires you on an AEWV pays INZ to become accredited and to have the job checked. Those costs stay with the employer. INZ's AEWV page states that "New Zealand employers or agents cannot charge you fees for a job or make you pay any of their recruitment costs", and that it will decline an application where it considers you or your agent "has offered or promised money to the employer (or their agent) in exchange for a job offer". A job offer arriving with an invoice attached is the commonest New Zealand version of the scam our post on how to spot immigration scams describes.
No. You may apply for any New Zealand visa yourself, and INZ's online system is built for people doing exactly that. Paid help is optional, and its fee sits on top of everything above rather than replacing any of it. INZ's page on who can give immigration advice explains who may charge for it and how to check them first.
The difficulty this post exposes is that the money is spread across five organisations and lands in an order nobody tells you in advance. Our report puts that order in one place. On the New Zealand routes the checklist names the steps that carry a cost, an English test result, the NZQA qualification assessment, the medical examination, a police certificate from each country you have lived in, and then the visa application itself, in the sequence you meet them. It reads that sequence from your answers about your qualification, your work and where you have lived, so the steps are yours rather than a generic list.
The report states no government fee: fees change, a report you keep would go stale, and the fee finder above is the government's own answer. It prices neither the doctor, the test nor the translator either. And it never tells you whether you will be approved.
Before a fee matters you need to know which visa you would be paying for. Our New Zealand page lists the routes we assess, and our free questionnaire shows which fit your situation. The questionnaire is free, the eligibility summary at the end of it is free, and unlocking the full report with its ordered checklist is your choice afterwards.
Answer our free questionnaire and see your eligibility summary instantly. You only pay to unlock your full personalized immigration report.