What a study-abroad consultant charges in India — and the question the fee guides never ask
Every fee guide compares prices. None ask the question that decides whether your money was well spent: does paying this person put your application at risk? IRCC can return or refuse an application linked to an unauthorised paid representative.
Every guide to this question compares prices
Search for what a study-abroad consultant charges in India and you will find the same article repeatedly: a table of consultancies, a range of fees, a paragraph on what each package includes.
Those articles are not wrong. They are just answering the smaller question.
They compare what you pay. They do not ask what happens to your application if you pay the wrong person. That second question has a documented answer, it is more consequential than any price difference, and we have not found a single fee guide that raises it.
So this page covers the prices — briefly, because they are easy — and then spends its time on the part that actually decides whether your money did you any good.
The prices, briefly
The honest summary of the Indian market:
| What you are buying | Common range |
|---|---|
| End-to-end support, application to departure | ₹30,000 – ₹1.5 lakh |
| Individual services (visa file preparation, document review) | ₹15,000 – ₹30,000 |
| Specialist admissions consulting for highly competitive universities | several lakh |
| Many consultancies, including us | nothing |
That spread — from zero to several lakh for something described in similar words — is the real finding. Price is carrying almost no information here. A high fee does not indicate expertise, and a zero fee does not indicate carelessness. You have to look at what is actually being done and by whom.
Start with the numbers nobody can change
Before you can judge a fee, you need to know which parts of the cost are fixed. For a Canadian study permit, these are:
| Fee | Amount |
|---|---|
| Study permit application | CA$150 |
| Biometrics | CA$85 |
| Total, most applicants | CA$235 |
Those are IRCC's published amounts. They are the same for every applicant in the world, they go to the government, and nobody has a discounted rate or a faster tier.
This is your simplest test. If you are quoted a single large "visa fee", ask for it to be split: this much to IRCC, this much to you, for these tasks. A straightforward answer is a good sign. Reluctance to separate the two is the first thing worth noticing, because a service charge presented as a government fee is a service charge you were not asked to agree to.
Now the question the fee guides skip
Here is the distinction that governs this entire industry, and it is not about money at all.
Helping you choose a college is education counselling. Comparing programmes, explaining entry requirements, organising your transcripts, preparing you for an English test — that is a real service, anyone may provide it, and plenty of people do it well.
Advising or representing you on an immigration application is a regulated activity. Under section 91 of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, doing that for consideration — for a fee — is restricted to:
- a lawyer or paralegal in good standing with a Canadian provincial or territorial law society
- a notary of the Chambre des notaires du Québec
- a member in good standing of the College of Immigration and Citizenship Consultants
That is it. A study permit application is an application under that Act, so advising on it for a fee falls inside the restriction.
This is not an accusation against consultancies. A great many handle it properly, by employing a licensed representative or partnering with one, and they will tell you who that person is without hesitation. The point is that it is a question with a correct answer, and you are entitled to it before you pay anybody.
What it can cost you, which is more than the fee
This is the part that changes the decision, and it is the reason we think the price comparisons are answering the wrong question.
IRCC deals only with authorised representatives where compensation is involved. An application linked to an unauthorised paid representative can be returned or refused.
Read that again in terms of your own timeline. Not "the consultant gets in trouble". Your application comes back, or is refused. You lose the intake, the fees, and the months.
And it can go further. IRCC's own guidance notes that in serious cases the use of an unauthorised paid representative raises misrepresentation concerns. Misrepresentation under section 40 of the Act carries a five-year bar on entering Canada or being granted status — and intent is not required. You can be caught by something a representative wrote in your file while you believed it was being handled properly. We set out how that lands in when leaving Canada is the better move.
So the fee is not the exposure. The application is.
The paperwork tell
There is one document that makes all of this checkable, and almost no student knows to ask about it.
IMM 5476, the Use of a Representative form. If somebody is paid to represent you, this form must be submitted and must name them.
The consequences of getting it wrong are administrative and immediate: if the IMM 5476 is missing, the application and the fees are returned. If it is incomplete, the form, the application, the supporting documents and the fees are all returned together.
Which gives you a clean question to ask, in ordinary words:
"You are being paid to handle my application. Will you be named on the IMM 5476, and are you registered with the College of Immigration and Citizenship Consultants?"
A properly run consultancy answers that in one sentence. If the answer is that the form is not needed, or that somebody else will sign it, or that this is not how it works in India, you have learned something more useful than any price comparison could tell you.
What happens when it goes wrong
This is not hypothetical, and the best-documented case is close to home for a great many readers.
In 2023, roughly 700 students from India were found to have been issued false letters of acceptance to Canadian post-secondary institutions. They had applied through a consultancy based in Jalandhar. A CBSA investigation led to criminal charges.
The point of raising it is not the fraud itself. It is who carried the consequences. The letters were fake, the students had paid in good faith, and it was the students who faced removal proceedings years later, after building lives in Canada.
That asymmetry is the whole reason the two questions in this article are different questions. The fee is what you risk when a consultancy is poor value. Your application, your status and five years of your future are what you risk when it is unauthorised.
What a fee legitimately buys
To be fair to an industry that is not uniformly bad, here is what people are genuinely paying for, and where a fee can be entirely reasonable:
- Time and administration. Assembling a complete, coherent file is real work, and doing it badly is one of the commonest reasons applications fail.
- Test preparation. Coaching is a service with an obvious deliverable.
- Licensed immigration advice, from somebody who is actually licensed to give it. This has a market price and it is worth paying.
- Someone who knows the institutions. Familiarity with what a particular college expects is worth something.
And here is what a fee should never buy:
- A guaranteed visa or admission. Nobody controls either. An outcome promise is the clearest signal available that something is wrong.
- A document you have not read, or a job offer you paid for. That is the trade we described in what an LMIA actually involves, and it ends with the five-year bar landing on you.
- A mark-up on the CA$235, presented as a government fee.
What we charge, plainly
We charge students nothing. No sign-up fee, no service fee, no application fee, no charge for the AI matching or the AI counsellor, and no fee to apply to any programme through us. Every programme carries cashback on your college fees, so money moves towards you rather than away.
We are also clear about the boundary this article is about. We provide education counselling, not immigration advice. We will tell you what a programme costs, what it requires, how long it runs, whether it carries a post-graduation work permit, and what the government's own published rules say. We will not advise you on your permit application, because that is a licensed professional's to give — and every guide we publish says so at the bottom.
That is a smaller promise than "we will get you a visa." It is also one we can keep.
The five questions to ask anybody, including us
- What exactly does your fee cover, itemised, with the CA$235 in government fees shown separately?
- Who is the licensed representative on my file, and are they registered with the College of Immigration and Citizenship Consultants, a Canadian law society, or the Chambre des notaires du Québec?
- Will you be named on the IMM 5476?
- What is refundable, and when?
- What are you promising? If any answer is a visa or an admission, stop.
You do not need to be adversarial to ask these. A good consultancy is glad to answer them, because the answers are what separates it from the rest.
Study permit and biometrics fees of CA$150 and CA$85 are IRCC's published amounts. The restriction on advising or representing a person for consideration on an application under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act is section 91 of that Act; authorised representatives are lawyers and paralegals in good standing with a Canadian provincial or territorial law society, notaries of the Chambre des notaires du Québec, and members in good standing of the College of Immigration and Citizenship Consultants. IRCC's published guidance on the use of representatives provides that applications involving unauthorised paid representatives may be returned or refused, and that a missing or incomplete IMM 5476 results in the application, documents and fees being returned. The five-year inadmissibility for misrepresentation is section 40 of the Act. The case of approximately 700 students issued false letters of acceptance, and the resulting CBSA investigation and criminal charges, was reported in 2023. Indian consultancy fee ranges are market observations, not official figures, and vary widely. Checked 8 August 2026. Fees and rules change without notice — confirm against IRCC. Nothing here is advice about your own application, and nothing here predicts an outcome.