Golden Visa Cost: What the Real Total Includes

Three layers of cost, and only one of them comes back

A golden visa quote usually shows one number: the qualifying investment. That number is the least useful part of the total, because in most programmes it is the part you still own afterwards. A EUR 500,000 fund subscription is capital moved, not capital spent. The money that is genuinely gone is the second layer — government fees — and the third layer, the charges that return at every renewal for as long as you hold the permit.

Separating those three layers is the whole exercise. The tables below give the published figures for the three programmes people compare most often: Portugal's ARI, Greece's permanent investor permit, and the Dubai property route into the UAE golden visa. They are not equivalent products. Portugal and Greece are European residence permits with a naturalisation question at the end; the UAE route is a renewable ten-year residence with no naturalisation path attached. See citizenship by investment vs golden visa if the passport, rather than the residence, is what you are actually buying.

One warning before the numbers. Government fee schedules in this sector are revised without much notice, and comparison sites copy each other rather than the source. Every figure here is dated and attributed; check it against the linked authority before you move money.

Portugal: AIMA publishes an exact table, and the grant fee is charged again for every family member

Portugal's ARI (autorização de residência para atividade de investimento, Article 90.º-A) no longer has a real estate option. AIMA states the investment may not be directed, directly or indirectly, at real estate. What remains is five routes:

The fee table is where the real money hides, because AIMA charges the grant fee once for the investor and again for every reunified family member. These are the rates in AIMA's published Tabela de Taxas under Portaria n.º 307/2023. The second column is the reduced rate that applies to in-person and digital service under point XIV of the same table.

AIMA also sets the physical presence requirement, and it is light: a minimum of seven days in Portugal in the first year and not less than fourteen days in each subsequent period. The table notes a 50% reduction on certain residence titles issued to minors; whether it reaches a specific child's ARI-linked permit is a question for AIMA or your lawyer, and the worked examples below do not assume it.

Greece: the threshold depends on the map, not on your budget

Greece rebuilt its investor permit in 2024. Article 64 of Law 5100/2024 amended Article 100 of the Migration Code, and the Ministry of Migration and Asylum's circular of 24 September 2024 sets out the resulting thresholds. The key change most comparison pages still miss is that the investment must now be in a single property, and built property generally has to have at least 120 square metres of main areas.

The 120 m² floor does not apply to unbuilt land or to a plot with no building permit issued. The industrial-building conversion route also escapes the 120 m² rule, provided no industry has operated in the building for at least five years.

On fees, Greece is much less forthcoming than Portugal. The ministry's own Golden Visa page names two: an electronic fee of EUR 2,000 under Article 132 of Law 4251/2014 and Article 38 of Law 4546/2018, and EUR 16 for printing the residence permit as a separate document. That page has not been rewritten for the 2024 thresholds and still describes the old EUR 250,000 nationwide regime, so treat it as a fee source rather than a rules source. It does not publish a separate figure for family members, and we are not going to invent one.

Greece consolidated its migration legislation again in Law 5275/2026 (Government Gazette A' 17, 6 February 2026). That law restates the investor permit types, including a new B.6 permit for investment in a start-up, but the text does not restate the property thresholds, which continue to come from the 2024 amendment. Confirm the current figures with the ministry before committing.

The UAE is the only one of the three that publishes a single all-in total

The federal portal sets the eligibility: a minimum capital of AED 2 million for the public-investment category, which carries a ten-year visa, with property ownership and entrepreneurship treated as separate categories. For the property route specifically, the Dubai Land Department publishes both the qualifying threshold and a complete fee list, which is rarer than it sounds.

The qualifying condition is a property worth AED 2 million wholly owned in the applicant's name, which may be one property or several. A mortgaged property is allowed if the bank provides a no-objection letter stating the amount paid and the balance. The applicant has to be inside the UAE, and the department quotes a service time of seven to ten business days — an order of magnitude faster than any European route.

The annual golden visa cost breakdown: what recurs, and when it lands

Almost every published comparison stops at the first-year total, which is exactly the number that misleads. A golden visa is a permit you keep renewing, and the renewal charges are large enough to change which programme is actually cheaper over ten years. Here is what recurs, and on what cycle.

Two honest gaps in that table. Neither the Greek ministry nor the UAE authorities publish an insurance premium, because you buy it on the open market and the price depends on your age and history — so no figure belongs there. And Portugal's renewal cadence depends on the permit issued to you rather than on a single published rule, which is why the table gives the amount per renewal rather than a per-year average that would only look precise.

Worked examples: what AIMA alone charges a single applicant, a couple and a family of four

These are Portuguese government fees only. They exclude the qualifying investment, the fund's own subscription and management charges, legal fees, translations, apostilles and Portuguese tax registration. They use the standard column of the AIMA table; the reduced point XIV figures are in brackets.

The arithmetic is simple and worth seeing: EUR 842.80 for reception and analysis, then EUR 8,418.90 for the investor's grant and EUR 8,418.90 again for each family member granted a permit under Article 98.º. A family of four therefore pays four grant fees. On the EUR 500,000 fund route that is roughly a further 7% of the investment in fees that never come back, before a lawyer has invoiced anything.

The comparison that follows from this is not the one most sites make. Against a Dubai file at AED 9,884.75 for the investor and AED 5,774.50 for each dependant, Portugal's fee load for a family is an order of magnitude larger — but Portugal is a European permit with a route to an EU passport, and the UAE permit is not. You are paying for different things. Our golden visa cost comparison and cheapest golden visa pages take that trade-off further.

The costs that sit outside the advisor quote

Three items almost never appear on a golden visa quote and still have to be paid. The first is health cover for the months you spend travelling for appointments before a local policy or public system is available to you. The second is the operating structure behind whatever income supports the application. The third, and the largest for anyone using the Portuguese fund route, is the fund's own subscription fee, annual management fee and any performance fee — charges levied by the fund manager, not by AIMA, and therefore absent from every government schedule on this page.

None of the three counts toward a qualifying investment. Treat them as ordinary running costs of relocating, and confirm any insurance you buy is accepted for your specific country and route before you rely on it.