Before we proceed, please know that as we try to estimate the cost of moving, each case is unique - it depends on where you're from, your language level, the size of your family and so on. 

1. Language test

IELTS costs around $300 Canadian dollars per test. TEF Canada is $440 per test. If you feel you need tutoring to level up your English beforehand, you'll have to spend additional money on tutoring, and maybe even take the test more than once.

2. Educational Credential Assessment report

This report is used to verify that your foreign degree, diploma, or certificate (or other proof of your credential) is valid and equal to a Canadian one. 

The cost of your degree credential evaluation is ~$220. Now, here’s a life hack for you - if you have several credentials, you should send them all at once, since they charge you per request, so you’ll still pay 220$ even if you submit several documents in one go. If you do need to do an additional evaluation once your evaluation has started, it'll cost you an additional ~$100. You will also have to pay $200-250 for things like delivery fees and translations if your documents are not in English or French.

So how much will your ECA cost?
$450-500 for everything included.

3. Translation fees

Apart from your education credentials, you’ll need to get a whole bunch of other documents, like a police certificate, birth certificate, passport or travel document, job references and pay stubs. All these are necessary for your final application.

If your documents aren't in English, you'd need to have them translated by a certified translator.

The price of retrieving all these documents differs by country, but our research shows most spend around $400 on that.

4. Medical exam

The final step before getting a visa is doing a medical exam. Canada wants to make sure that it takes in healthy individuals not to burden its medical services and government insurance with more patients. 

The medical exam would cost you around $250. You might need to travel to see the physician in another city because not every doctor can do the medical exam specific for immigration. 

5. Biometrics

At the same stage, we would recommend you also do biometrics (fingerprints) which would cost you $85 per person.

Depending on which city you live in, you might need to travel to a bigger one, since only big cities have support for the required medical exams and biometrics scans.

So let's add another $250 for plane tickets. As always, this price may differ depending on travel costs within your country.

6. Application processing and the Right of Permanent Residence

Once you’ve received an invitation to apply, you'll need to pay $825 for application processing and $500 for the Right of Permanent residence, which is essentially your permanent residence visa. So this comes up to $1,325 in total per adult.

Adding a child to your application would cost another $225.

If for whatever reason you get rejected for the PR visa, you'll get the 500$ fee returned back to you. The processing fee is non-refundable.

7. Medical insurance

Depending on the province you're planning to settle in, you might want to consider getting medical insurance for the first 3 months, until you qualify for your health care card. It'll roughly cost you $300.

8. Proof of funds

Now, this is big. Canada requires you to have a minimum amount of money in your bank account for at least 6 months before you apply for your visa. The amount required for you to hold is updated every year and it's based on 50% of the lower limit of income paid in Canada. Why 50% you might ask? It will allow you to have 5-6 months to find your first job in Canada. Proof of funds size depends on your family size as well. 

Let's use round numbers. For one person it's about $13,000. For 2 people it's about $16,150. If you're a family of three you'll need to have almost $20,000. The more the better, of course, but those are minimal requirements.

9. Plane tickets

The cost will depend on many factors, like how big your family is, where you're flying from, how many layovers you'll have, how long your trip is going to take, what airline you prefer and so on. 

The good news is that it's a one-way ticket. So the cost could be from $300 up to $2000 per person.

10. Accommodation

Last but not least, you need to find a place to stay. Usually, people start with hotels, Airbnb or look for friends who can provide some accommodation.

And here we’d like to suggest you visit numbeo.com. This website shows the cost of living in different cities. So you can see how much are groceries, utilities, transportation, sports and leisure, clothes, childcare, and rent. It's super useful and gives you a pretty accurate picture of how much money you'll be spending in the city you’re going to.

Summing it all up

OK, let's sum it up. Once again we are going to use round numbers for a person from a non-English or French speaking country, who took a language test once, got a successful credential assessment and didn't have any bumps and additional expenses along the way. 

For such a person, immigration process would cost around $3,500 plus proof of funds of $13,000 plus a plane ticket and accommodation for the first few weeks. 

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