Golden Visa Costs 2026: Portugal vs Greece vs UAE vs Malta

Golden visa cost comparison 2026 at a glance

Key takeaways

• Portugal has the lowest qualifying investment of the four at 250,000 euros, and by far the highest government fees: 842.80 euros to analyse an application and 8,418.90 euros to grant the permit, charged per person, family members included.
• Greece has the cheapest state fee in this group by an order of magnitude. The published charge is 2,000 euros for the permit plus 16 euros for the electronic card, and the investment threshold is 250,000, 400,000 or 800,000 euros depending on the route and the location.
• The Dubai Land Department publishes the whole golden visa bill as a single itemised list totalling 9,884.75 dirhams, against a property threshold of 2 million dirhams. No other programme here is that transparent.
• Malta no longer sells citizenship at all after the Court of Justice ruling of 29 April 2025. Its residence programme costs 82,000 euros in non-recoverable fees if you buy property and about 182,000 euros across five years if you rent.
• Comparing headline investments is the wrong comparison. Portugal's 500,000 euro fund route sinks around 9,300 euros of state fees for one applicant; Malta's rental route sinks 182,000 euros. The gap between them is the whole decision.

The four programmes below are the ones most often shortlisted together, and they are genuinely different products rather than four prices for the same thing. Two are European residence permits with a long road to any passport question, one is a Gulf residence permit with no citizenship road at all, and one is a permanent residence certificate from a country that used to sell passports and no longer does.

What follows is built only from figures the relevant authority publishes. Where an official source is silent, this page says so rather than filling the gap with an advisory firm's estimate. Professional fees are excluded throughout because they are commercially negotiated and no honest published number exists for them.

What this guide covers

1. Portugal, where the investment is small and the government bill is not
2. Greece, and the three price zones created in 2024
3. The UAE, and the only fully itemised fee list of the four
4. Malta, and the buy-versus-rent trap
5. Why non-recoverable cost is the only honest comparison
6. What moves the number more than the country does
7. Where to read the detail on each programme

Portugal: the smallest investment, the largest government bill

Portugal removed property from its golden visa, and AIMA now states the exclusion bluntly: the investment activity may not be directed, directly or indirectly, at real estate investment. What is left is a transfer of 250,000 euros or more into artistic production or the recovery of national cultural heritage, 500,000 euros or more into research, 500,000 euros or more into Portuguese collective investment undertakings that are not real-estate funds, 500,000 euros to incorporate a company alongside five permanent jobs, or the creation of at least ten jobs, which drops to eight in a low-density territory.

That 250,000 euro cultural transfer is the lowest qualifying figure anywhere in this comparison. It is also the only one on this page that buys you no asset at all, which is exactly why the fund route at twice the price is the more popular choice among people who expect to see their capital again.

The part that catches families is the fee table AIMA has applied since 1 March 2026. Receiving and analysing an application costs 842.80 euros. Granting the residence permit under Article 90-A(1) costs 8,418.90 euros. Renewing it under Article 90-A(2) costs 4,210.30 euros. A reduced rate for in-person and digital service under point XIV of the table brings those to 632.10, 6,314.20 and 3,157.80 euros. Every one of them is charged per person, and a family member reunified with the principal applicant pays the principal rate rather than a dependant rate.

Read the bottom row of that table next to Greece's 2,016 euros and the ranking of these programmes by cost changes completely. A Portuguese family of four pays more in state fees before a single renewal than a Greek applicant pays for the entire permit, eighteen times over. The full working, including what to demand of a lawyer's quote, is in our Portugal golden visa cost breakdown.

Greece: the cheapest state fee in Europe, and three price zones

Greece went the other way. Law 5100/2024 kept the fee trivial and raised the price of entry, splitting the country into zones. In the Region of Attica, the Regional Unit of Thessaloniki, Mykonos, Thira and every island with more than 3,100 inhabitants, the minimum property investment is 800,000 euros. Everywhere else it is 400,000 euros. Both tiers require a single property with at least 120 square metres of main living area, and the investment cannot be split across several properties.

A 250,000 euro tier survives, but only as a narrow exception. It applies where a property built for industrial or other non-residential use is converted to residential use, and the official service description confirms that the 120 square metre floor does not apply to that route. A listed building being restored or reconstructed qualifies at the same 250,000 euros. The change-of-use route may be used once per investor.

Against those thresholds, the state's own charge is almost an afterthought. The published fee for the initial issuance is 2,000 euros for the residence permit plus 16 euros for the electronic permit printout, and the procedure carries a 50-day completion deadline: up to ten days to check documents and up to forty to examine the application and take biometrics. The legal basis is Article 100 of Law 5038/2023, the Migration Code, as amended by Article 64 of Law 5100/2024.

Two conditions do real work here and are missed by most comparisons. Reselling the property while the permit is valid revokes the seller's permit automatically, so the asset is not freely tradeable during the holding period. And properties acquired through the scheme on or after 1 September 2024 cannot be let on short-term rental platforms, which removes the yield assumption a lot of Greek golden visa spreadsheets were built on.

The framework moved again in 2026. Law 5275/2026, published in the Government Gazette on 6 February 2026, reworked the Migration Code: it allocates applications automatically to the migration office with the smallest backlog, sets a statutory 90-day processing obligation, and runs the five-year validity from the date the card is issued rather than from completion of the investment. If you were quoted a timeline before February 2026, it is out of date.

The UAE: one threshold, no fund route, and a fee list you can actually read

The UAE golden residency does not work like the European programmes. There is no fund, no donation and no cultural transfer. The investor route the UAE government portal describes is a minimum capital of 2 million dirhams, held either in a public investment or in property, alongside a separate route for anyone contributing at least 250,000 dirhams a year in taxes through an establishment. Entrepreneurs, specialised talents, outstanding students and frontline workers each have their own criteria, and none of them require the 2 million dirham figure at all.

For the property route specifically, the Dubai Land Department states the threshold as a property worth 2 million dirhams wholly owned by the investor, across one property or several, and issues a ten-year renewable residence permit. Mortgaged property qualifies if the bank provides a no-objection letter stating the amount paid and the balance. Applications are processed in seven to ten business days, and the applicant must be physically in the UAE to apply.

Then comes the thing no European authority in this comparison does. Dubai publishes the entire government bill as one itemised list, to the fils.

At the dirham's long-standing peg of 3.6725 to the US dollar, that total is roughly 2,690 dollars for a ten-year permit. Portugal charges more than three times as much, in fees alone, for one person, and charges it again at every renewal. If your comparison is being run on government cost per year of residence, the UAE is not close to the others: it is in a different bracket.

One caveat worth stating plainly, because the sources are not consistent. The UAE government portal's golden visa page lists real estate investors under a five-year validity in one place while the Dubai Land Department service and the portal's long-term residence pages describe the 2 million dirham property route as a ten-year permit. Confirm the validity that applies to your file with the Federal Authority for Identity and Citizenship or the relevant emirate authority before you rely on either number. Our dedicated UAE golden visa cost page goes further into the emirate-level differences.

Malta: residence only now, and the buy-versus-rent trap

Malta belongs in this comparison mainly because so many people still search for it as a citizenship programme. It is not one. On 29 April 2025 the Grand Chamber of the Court of Justice of the European Union held in Case C-181/23 that Malta's investor citizenship scheme breached Article 20 TFEU and Article 4(3) TEU, because nationality was being granted without prior verification of a genuine link to the state. There is no price for a Maltese passport to quote, and no reformed replacement to point at.

What Residency Malta Agency still runs is the Malta Permanent Residence Programme, which the judgment left untouched. Its costs are published rather than negotiated: a non-refundable administrative fee of 50,000 euros, a government contribution of 30,000 euros if you purchase property or 60,000 euros if you lease, 10,000 euros for each dependant, and a 2,000 euro donation to a registered Maltese NGO. The property requirement is a purchase of at least 375,000 euros in Malta or Gozo, or a lease of at least 14,000 euros a year, held for five years. Applicants must also show capital assets of at least 500,000 euros, of which 150,000 must be financial.

The trap is that the cheaper-looking option is the expensive one.

Renting has the smaller opening cheque and more than twice the true cost, because the contribution is 30,000 euros higher and none of the rent comes back. The gap widens every year you stay past five. Whether buying is right still depends on what you think Maltese property will do, not on the programme, and the full Malta breakdown sets out the eligibility floor alongside the fees.

Non-recoverable cost is the only honest comparison

Put the four side by side on headline investment and Portugal looks cheapest at 250,000 euros. Put them side by side on what you never get back and the order inverts almost completely. This is the table to build before you talk to anyone, and it is the one no advisor's brochure contains.

Three things fall out of that table. Portugal's cultural route is the single most expensive way into any of these programmes, because a quarter of a million euros leaves and does not come back. Greece is startlingly cheap in state fees and expensive in locked capital, since reselling voids the permit. And the UAE is the only route here where the sunk cost is small in both absolute and relative terms.

None of this makes one programme better. It makes them comparable, which the headline figures do not. A reader who wants an EU base and expects to recover capital reads this table very differently from one who wants a ten-year Gulf permit and a property they can live in, and both readings are correct.

What moves the number more than the country does

Family size is the first multiplier, and it is where the comparison usually breaks. Portugal charges every family member the principal rate, so a spouse and two children multiply the 8,418.90 euro grant fee by four. Malta charges a flat 10,000 euros per dependant on top of a contribution that does not change with family size. The UAE lets a golden residence holder sponsor spouse, children and parents. Run your own household through each fee table before you rank them, because the ranking for a single applicant is not the ranking for a family of five.

Renewals are the second. A ten-year UAE permit and a two-stage European permit are not the same commitment, and Portugal's renewal round costs a family of four over 20,000 euros each time it comes around. Any comparison that stops at the initial grant is comparing the cheapest year of a long obligation.

The third is currency, and it is the one nobody budgets for. AIMA is paid in euros, the Dubai Land Department in dirhams, and the fees are large enough that a poor exchange rate and a wire fee on a 37,000 euro payment is a real number rather than a rounding error. Price the transfer as a line item, the same way you would price the translation of a criminal record certificate.

Health cover is the fourth. Portugal, Greece and Malta all require evidence of health protection as part of the file, and the acceptable form differs by country and by route. Our guide to golden visa health insurance requirements sets out what each authority actually asks for, and the Schengen insurance rules that apply while you are travelling for appointments.

Where to read the detail on each programme

This page is deliberately a comparison rather than a manual. Each programme has its own arithmetic, its own document set and its own recent rule changes, and the country pages below carry the full working with the official sources attached.

• Portugal golden visa cost — the AIMA fee table in force since 1 March 2026, applied per person, and what to demand of a lawyer's quote
• Portugal golden visa funds — the 500,000 euro fund route and why the real-estate exclusion reaches further than it looks
• Malta citizenship cost — what the April 2025 judgment closed, and the MPRP figures that remain
• UAE golden visa cost — the emirate-level detail behind the Dubai fee list above
• Cheapest golden visa — the same question asked across a wider set of countries
• Golden visa countries — which programmes are still open in 2026, and which have closed
• Citizenship by investment vs golden visa — the distinction that decides which of these two lists you should be reading at all

Whichever you shortlist, ask any advisor for a quote that separates the qualifying investment, the published state fees at their official amounts per person, and the professional fee, as three lines. Every figure in the first two of those is public. If a quote arrives as one number, the part you cannot check is the part you are being asked to pay most for.