Beyond Federal Express Entry Fees: The Extra Bill for a Provincial Nomination
You’ve budgeted carefully for the federal side: processing fees, the Right of Permanent Residence Fee, biometrics. Then a provincial nomination lands in the plan, and a line you hadn’t priced in appears — the actual cost of a provincial nomination on top of express entry fees that provinces charge in addition to, not instead of, everything IRCC already bills you.
What the federal side costs, as a baseline
For a family of two adults and two children, the federal-only total sits at $3,890: $1,590 each for the principal applicant and spouse, covering processing plus the Right of Permanent Residence Fee, $270 per dependent child, and $170 in biometrics for a family of two or more applying together. That figure excludes language tests, the Educational Credential Assessment, medical exams, police certificates, translations and courier costs — the government fee is genuinely a minority of what a move actually costs.
What a province adds on top
Provinces set and charge their own separate application fees, and they vary sharply. British Columbia is the clearest recent example: the bc skills immigration application fee increase took its Skills Immigration application fee from $1,475 to $1,750, effective 22 January 2026 — paid to the province, on top of every federal dollar above, and non-refundable regardless of the federal outcome.
Not every province charges the same way
Newfoundland and Labrador moved in the opposite direction: it waived its provincial application fees entirely as at 5 December 2025, alongside a stated 25-business-day provincial processing target. Two provinces, two completely different cost pictures for what is structurally a similar nomination step — which makes “what does a PNP cost” a genuinely unanswerable question without naming the specific province first.
Provincial nomination fee versus federal PR fee — why both matter
The distinction isn’t academic. The provincial fee buys the nomination itself — the 600 CRS points, or the base-stream approval. The federal fee is what IRCC then charges to actually process the permanent residence application the nomination unlocks. Paying the provincial fee doesn’t reduce, waive or credit against the federal one; they’re billed by two different governments, for two different steps, and both are due before you land.
Total cost of an enhanced PNP application, roughly assembled
Take BC’s Skills Immigration as a working example: $1,750 provincial fee, plus $3,890 in federal fees for a family of four, before language tests, ECA, medicals and police certificates enter the picture at all — none of which are optional if the application is to succeed. That’s north of $5,600 in government fees alone, for one specific province, at rates current as of this writing.
That’s the realistic picture of what a province adds on top of your federal Express Entry bill, not the federal number by itself — a separate line item, billed separately, and just as real as anything IRCC charges. Fees change — BC’s own 2026 increase is proof of that — so treat every figure here as dated, and check the current one on the specific province’s own site before budgeting against it. A licensed RCIC or a Canadian accountant can walk through the fuller cost picture for your own family’s situation; this piece only covers what the government fee schedules themselves say.
Our cost-of-moving worksheet lets you plug in your own province and family size against the current federal fee table.