The sticker price of a Skilled Worker visa is £819. The real cost of sponsoring someone on one is several times that, and most of it lands on you, the employer, not the worker. If you're budgeting a sponsored hire and working off the visa fee alone, you're planning for a fraction of the bill.
This guide breaks the Skilled Worker visa down the way an employer needs it: what it is in a sentence, then every cost split by who actually pays it, the salary you have to meet, and how to budget a hire without a nasty surprise at the CoS stage. If you're not licensed to sponsor yet, that's the first cost of all, and it's covered in our sponsor licence application guide.
What is the Skilled Worker visa?
The Skilled Worker visa is the main route for a UK employer to hire someone from overseas, or to sponsor someone already here on another visa. It replaced Tier 2 (General), so "Tier 2 sponsorship" and "Skilled Worker sponsorship" mean the same thing. To use it, you need a sponsor licence, the job has to meet a skill level and a salary floor, and you issue the worker a Certificate of Sponsorship so they can apply.
A Skilled Worker visa can be granted for up to five years before the worker extends or, after five years, applies to settle. That length matters, because several of the costs below scale with it.
Who pays what: the Skilled Worker visa cost split
This is the part employers get wrong. Some Skilled Worker costs are legally the sponsor's and cannot be passed to the worker. Others are the worker's, though many employers choose to cover them as part of the package. Here's the 2026 split.
Costs the employer must pay (and cannot recoup from the worker)
- Sponsor licence, small sponsor: £611, paid once every four years.
- Sponsor licence, large sponsor: £1,682, paid once every four years.
- Certificate of Sponsorship: £525 per worker.
- Immigration Skills Charge, small sponsor: £480 for the first year, then £240 per further six months.
- Immigration Skills Charge, large sponsor: £1,320 for the first year, then £660 per further six months.
Costs the worker usually pays (though employers can choose to cover them)
- Skilled Worker visa, up to three years from outside the UK: £819.
- Skilled Worker visa, over three years from outside the UK: £1,618.
- Immigration Health Surcharge: £1,035 per year.
The line you can't cross: the sponsor licence fee, the Certificate of Sponsorship fee, and the Immigration Skills Charge are yours by law. Passing any of them to the worker, or deducting them from wages, can trigger a compliance action or cost you your licence.
The Immigration Skills Charge is the number that reshapes budgets
Of all the employer costs, the Immigration Skills Charge (ISC) is the one that catches finance teams out, because it scales with the length of the visa and it's paid upfront when you assign the Certificate of Sponsorship.
For a large sponsor, the ISC is £1,320 for the first year and £660 for every further six months. Sponsor a worker on a five-year visa and that's £6,600 in ISC alone, per worker, on top of everything else. A small sponsor pays £480 plus £240 per further six months, so £2,400 across five years. It's the single biggest variable in a sponsored hire, and it's an employer cost you can't offset. Our Immigration Skills Charge guide explains how it's calculated, who's exempt, and how to budget for it across a hiring plan.
What salary do you have to pay a Skilled Worker?
You can't sponsor a Skilled Worker below the salary floor, however senior or junior the role. In 2026, the general threshold is £41,700 a year, or the going rate for the specific occupation, whichever is higher. The occupation going rate is the one people forget: for a lot of roles it sits above £41,700, so the threshold that binds you is the job-specific rate, not the general one.
Some categories pay less. New entrants at the start of their careers can qualify from £33,400, and eligible health and care roles start from £25,000. Getting the right threshold for your specific role is the difference between a clean application and a refusal, so it's worth checking the exact figure before you make an offer:
Check the salary with our Skilled Worker Minimum Salary Calculator
Budgeting a Skilled Worker hire: a worked example
Put it together for a large sponsor hiring one worker on a three-year visa from overseas:
- Certificate of Sponsorship: £525.
- Immigration Skills Charge (three years): £1,320 + £660 + £660 + £660 + £660 = £3,960.
- Employer subtotal, per hire: £4,485, plus a share of the £1,682 licence fee spread across every worker you sponsor in the four-year licence period.
That's before the worker's own £819 visa fee and £3,105 health surcharge (three years at £1,035), which many employers fold into the offer to land the hire. The all-in figure for that single three-year hire, if you cover everything, comes to roughly £9,000. It's a real number, and it's why sponsorship is a budgeting decision as much as a hiring one.
To model your own hire, fees and surcharge together, our calculator does the maths:
Try the UK Visa Fees Calculator
Do you need a solicitor to sponsor a Skilled Worker?
No, and this is where a lot of employers overpay. The instinct is to hand the whole thing to an immigration solicitor, but the fees above aren't where the real money hides: solicitors routinely charge £4,000 or more per visa on top of the Home Office costs, and you pay it again for every hire.
Most of the work is process, not legal argument: the right documents, the right occupation code, the right salary on the Certificate of Sponsorship, and the reporting deadlines hit on time. Borderless does that same work through software and in-house immigration expertise, for a set fee and a predictable monthly platform cost instead of an open-ended hourly bill. You get the expertise without the solicitor's mark-up, and one system that keeps the compliance running after the hire lands, which is the part a one-off legal engagement leaves you to manage alone.
How long does a Skilled Worker visa take?
Once you've assigned the Certificate of Sponsorship, a worker applying from outside the UK usually gets a decision within about three weeks. In-country applications (extensions and switches) take longer, around eight weeks, with priority options to speed either up. The longer pole in the tent is usually getting your licence in the first place, which takes around eight weeks unless you pay £750 for priority processing. Our timing guide maps the full sequence.
Skilled Worker visa FAQs
How much does a Skilled Worker visa cost in 2026?
The visa application fee is £819 for up to three years from outside the UK, or £1,618 for more than three years. On top of that, the applicant pays the Immigration Health Surcharge at £1,035 a year. Separately, the employer pays the Certificate of Sponsorship fee (£525) and the Immigration Skills Charge, which for a large sponsor is £1,320 for the first year plus £660 per further six months.
Who pays for a Skilled Worker visa, the employer or the worker?
It's split. The sponsor licence fee, the Certificate of Sponsorship fee, and the Immigration Skills Charge are legally the employer's and can't be passed to the worker. The visa application fee and the health surcharge are usually the worker's, though many employers choose to cover them.
What's the minimum salary for a Skilled Worker visa?
In 2026 the general threshold is £41,700 a year, or the going rate for the specific occupation if that's higher. New entrants can qualify from £33,400 and eligible health and care roles from £25,000. Always check the going rate for the exact occupation code, as it often sets the real floor.
What is the Immigration Skills Charge?
It's a fee the sponsoring employer pays when assigning a Certificate of Sponsorship. Large sponsors pay £1,320 for the first year and £660 per further six months; small and charitable sponsors pay £480 and £240. It cannot be recovered from the worker.
Is the Skilled Worker visa the same as Tier 2?
Yes. The Skilled Worker visa replaced Tier 2 (General). If you see "Tier 2 sponsorship" or "Tier 2 visa", it's referring to what's now the Skilled Worker route.
Can a Skilled Worker visa lead to settlement?
Yes. After five continuous years on the route, and provided the salary and other requirements are met, a Skilled Worker can apply for Indefinite Leave to Remain. The ILR application fee is £3,226 per person in 2026.
Every fee, every hire, one view
The Skilled Worker visa isn't one cost, it's a stack of them landing at different moments and split across two payers, with penalties for getting the employer-only ones wrong. Budget off the £819 headline and the ISC bill at the CoS stage comes as a shock.
Borderless Immigration gives sponsors one place to see the true cost and manage the process: every Certificate of Sponsorship, every fee, every reporting deadline that follows. Employers who join score 95% on average for compliance within 90 days. Book a demo to see the full picture of your next hire before you commit to it.
Automate Home Office Audits with Borderless
The Borderless platform provides a centralized system for all sponsorships, automating reminders for key tasks and ensuring best practices across your organization, simplifying audit preparation and ongoing compliance.
