Why We Won't Give You One Number
Every cost component here is set by a different party — the Government of India, your mission's outsourced service provider, the FRRO, your advisers, your relocation vendor — and several vary by nationality, category, city and case. A single headline figure would be wrong for most readers on the day they read it.
What we can give you is the structure: every line that appears in a real budget, who sets it, what moves it, and where to get the current number. That's the thing HR actually needs at planning stage.
The Cost Stack
1. Government visa fee
Set by the Government of India, country-wise and category-wise — reciprocity means two candidates on the same package can cost different amounts based on passport alone. Current figures come from your mission's published schedule (or its outsourced centre's site), not from third-party tables. Our visa fees guide explains how the structure works.
2. Outsourced service-centre charges
Most missions run intake through VFS/BLS. Their service fee sits on top of the government fee, and optional extras (courier, premium lounge, SMS tracking) sit on top of that. Some missions also collect a small community-welfare charge. All published on the centre's site for your country.
3. FRRO / e-FRRO services after arrival
Registration within 14 days, then extensions, address changes and — eventually — exit formalities. Individually small; the real cost is administrative time and the risk of missing a deadline, not the fee.
4. Professional support
Immigration advisers, and for complex cases lawyers. Priced per case or per assignment. The honest framing: this is worth paying for where a refusal, a delay, or a compliance failure would cost more than the fee — senior hires, first-time sponsorship, previously refused candidates, or anything with a hard start date.
5. Document preparation
Attestation, apostille, notarisation and certified translation of qualifications and personal documents. Predictable, and routinely underestimated because it involves multiple countries' processes.
6. Relocation and the employment package
Flights, shipping, temporary accommodation, school fees, tax equalisation. Usually the largest part of the total by a wide margin, and governed by your mobility policy rather than immigration rules.
7. Ongoing compliance overhead
The recurring line that never appears in the business case: tracking expiry dates, filing extensions 60+ days ahead, reporting changes, and repeating parts of the cycle annually. For one employee it's an HR afternoon; across a cohort it becomes a role.
The Costs That Don't Show Up as Invoices
Delay. A start date that slips because a query came back is paid in project time, not fees.
Rework. A refused or deficient application means preparing much of it again — plus a non-refundable fee already spent.
Compliance failure. Missing FRRO registration or letting a visa lapse converts an administrative task into a regularisation problem — with penalties assessed by the authorities and, in serious cases, exit permit complications for your employee. See what happens when the registration deadline is missed.
Dependants. Spouse and children need X Visas, each with its own fee, its own registration, and its own expiry to track. A "one hire" budget is often a four-person immigration file.
Building a Defensible Budget
- Pull the current government fee for that nationality and category from the mission's schedule
- Add the outsourced centre's published service fee and any extras you'll use
- Add document preparation — attestation and translation, priced by the candidate's home country
- Add professional support if the case has any complexity
- Add FRRO services for the employee and every dependant
- Add relocation per your mobility policy
- Add an annual compliance line — extensions and reporting, recurring for the assignment's life
- Hold a contingency for rework, because fees are non-refundable and queries happen
The Comparison Nobody Runs
Before approving the budget, compare it against the alternatives honestly: hiring locally, engaging the person remotely from their own country, or an arrangement that doesn't require your own entity. Sometimes the immigration route is clearly right. Sometimes the exercise reveals the role didn't need a relocation at all — and that is a legitimate outcome of doing the sums properly.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does an India employment visa cost an employer?
There is no single figure — the government fee alone varies by nationality and category, and the outsourced centre's fee varies by country. Build from the stack above using your mission's current published schedule.
Who pays, the employer or the employee?
Commercial, not legal, in most cases — practice varies by company and seniority. What matters is that your policy says so explicitly before the offer, because unallocated costs surface as friction at the worst moment.
Is the visa fee refundable if we're refused?
No. Government fees pay for processing regardless of outcome. That's the main argument for getting the application right first time rather than treating a refusal as a retry.
What's the most underestimated cost?
Ongoing compliance and dependants. Budgets are built for one person and one application; the reality is a family, an annual extension cycle, and a tracking obligation that runs for the whole assignment.
Does an EOR make it cheaper?
Different cost shape, not automatically cheaper — you trade entity setup and internal administration for a recurring per-employee fee. Whether it works for a foreign national also depends on the provider's ability to sponsor. We cover that trade-off separately.
Disclaimer
India Visa Experts is an independent private consulting firm, not affiliated with the Government of India or any mission. Fees are set by the authorities and service providers, vary by nationality, category and location, and change — the schedule published at the time of your application governs. We deliberately do not publish fee amounts that would be out of date before you read them. General guidance, not legal or tax advice.