We are a private agency, not the UK Government. This is not a UK Government website. We are an independent agency charging a service fee in addition to the official Home Office fee. You can apply directly at gov.uk/eta.
Fees move, rules change, and most of what is written about UK travel was accurate a year ago. Every post here shows the date it was last checked and links the official page it rests on, so you can see for yourself.
An ETA does not allow work. A Skilled Worker visa needs a job offer from a licensed sponsor, usually a graduate-level job paying at least £41,700, or the going rate if higher, and B2 English. From abroad, a 5-year visa costs £7,310.50 per adult: the £1,618 fee (since 8 April 2026) plus 5½ years of health surcharge.
No. An ETA gives Saudi, Emirati, Qatari, Kuwaiti, Bahraini and Omani travellers permission to travel, but eGates also require a listed nationality or Registered Traveller membership, and no Gulf passport qualifies for either.
Anyone carrying £10,000 or more between Great Britain and a country outside the UK must declare it to customs. A family counts its cash together, so splitting it between bags does not help. Failing to declare can mean the whole amount is seized and a penalty of up to £5,000.
Tax-free shopping for visitors ended in England, Scotland and Wales on 1 January 2021, and the Treasury said in December 2025 it has no plans to bring it back. You can still avoid the 20% VAT if the shop posts your purchase to an address abroad. Northern Ireland still runs a refund scheme.
Money in a UK bank is covered by the FSCS up to £120,000 per person per bank. Money in an e-money account, such as Wise, is not: it is safeguarded instead, which is a different and weaker promise. Monzo and Starling require you to live in the UK. Check the FCA register to see which kind of firm holds your money.
On 8 October 2026 the Immigration Rules widened what a visitor may do in the UK — and because an ETA holder enters as a visitor, the change applies to every ETA. The biggest one: the rule that UK training must be unavailable in your home country was deleted. The fee did not change.
Oxford Economics ranked 1,000 cities and put London second and Dublin sixth. Travellers often plan both in one trip. An ETA lets you travel to the UK, Jersey, Guernsey or the Isle of Man — Ireland is not on that list, and Dublin needs its own permission.
A Student visa application needs a passport and a CAS, and usually a lot more besides. The financial evidence is where most confusion sits: GOV.UK requires funds held for 28 days in a row, ending within 31 days of your application, in an account that meets a specific, published test — and an ATM mini-statement is explicitly not good enough.
For most international medical graduates without a UK, EEA or Swiss degree, the route to a UK licence to practise is the PLAB test — a two-part exam that alone costs £1,319 from April 2026, plus £481 to register. A small minority qualify a different way instead, through an acceptable postgraduate qualification, sponsorship, or a recognised equivalent. Either way, passing is not the finish line: what you can then work as depends on whether you have completed an internship.
Which GMC registration you are granted decides what job you can take, and for most international medical graduates the deciding factor is the internship: without one, PLAB leads to provisional registration, which the law restricts to a Foundation Year 1 post and nothing else. Registration is also not permission to work in the UK, and not a job. A recruitment agency may never charge you to find you work — and the sponsor licence, Certificate of Sponsorship and immigration skills charge are your employer's to pay.
PLAB is the General Medical Council's two-part test for doctors who qualified outside the UK. PLAB 1 is 180 questions in three hours; PLAB 2 is a sixteen-station OSCE held only in Manchester. Together they cost £1,319 from 1 April 2026. Passing gives you the right to apply for registration — not a job, not a visa, and not a licence until the GMC approves you.
A Standard Visitor cannot do paid or unpaid work for a UK company or as a self-employed person. The only exception is a permitted paid engagement. An ETA does not change this: it is permission to travel, not permission to work, and the visitor rules apply the moment you land.
A Student visa may allow some work, but self-employment is banned outright and the hours depend on your course — GOV.UK does not publish one figure, so the binding number is the one on your own permission. After the course, the Graduate visa lasts 2 years if you apply on or before 31 December 2026 and 18 months if you apply on or after 1 January 2027.
The Innovator Founder visa costs £1,357 to apply from outside the UK. But you cannot apply at all without an endorsement, and endorsement costs £1,000 plus £500 for each of at least two mandatory meetings — £2,000 before you touch the visa fee, and before the healthcare surcharge.
Visitors can drive on their own licence for 12 months and need nothing else. If you move to Great Britain, a 12-month clock starts from the day you become resident, and whether you can exchange your licence or must sit both driving tests depends entirely on where you passed your test.
Almost everyone calls it a CAS letter. It is not a letter — it is a reference number your university issues after an unconditional offer, and you must apply for your visa within 6 months of receiving it.
Three changes landed in 2026: the ETA became mandatory to board on 25 February, eGates opened to children aged 8 and 9 from 8 July, and physical immigration documents were replaced by eVisas.
Tap the contactless card you already own. A day in Zones 1–2 is capped at £8.90, while the paper Day Travelcard for the same journeys costs £16.60 — nearly double for nothing extra.
An ETA costs £20, a Standard Visitor visa £135, and a Student visa £558. Long-term visitor visas run £506 for 2 years to £1,128 for 10 — but none of them lets you stay longer than 6 months per visit.
High-street banks must run an immigration status check and normally require a UK address, which a six-month visitor does not have. Students are the exception. For a holiday, your own contactless card does everything a UK account would.
There is no sticker and no card any more — your permission exists only as a record tied to a passport number. If the passport you turn up with is not the one in your UKVI account, the airline's check fails and you may not board.