Right Timing: When the Fee Tied to Permanent Residence Is Due, and When It Is Refunded

Here’s a genuinely unusual fact about federal immigration fees: out of everything IRCC charges an Express Entry applicant, there is exactly one fee the department will actually hand back if things don’t work out. It’s called the Right of Permanent Residence Fee, and understanding right of permanent residence fee timing correctly saves you from either paying too early out of anxiety or getting caught short at the wrong moment.

What it costs, and how it sits inside the total

The RPRF is $600 CAD, separate from the $990 processing fee charged per adult applicant. Add them together and a principal applicant’s full federal fee comes to $1,590, and the same $1,590 applies to a spouse or partner included on the application. Dependent children pay $270 each, and — worth flagging early — the RPRF doesn’t apply to them at all, only to adult applicants.

When it’s actually due

The RPRF becomes payable when your application is approved, before you become a permanent resident — in other words, it’s the fee that stands between “approved” and “landed,” not part of the initial application package. In practice, though, IRCC lets applicants pay it upfront, alongside the processing fee, and this is worth doing deliberately: paying both together at application stage avoids a delay later in the process where IRCC would otherwise have to stop and wait for the RPRF before finalising your Confirmation of Permanent Residence. So the honest answer to rprf paid before or after copr is: it’s legally due before you become a PR, but the smart, common practice is to pay it at the same time as everything else, well before that point.

When it comes back

This is the genuinely rare part. IRCC states plainly that the RPRF is “the only fee that we can refund after we start processing your application.” If you withdraw your application, or if it’s refused, the $600 comes back to you. Nothing else in the federal fee schedule works this way — the processing fee itself is not refundable once assessment has begun, regardless of outcome.

Who never pays it at all

The RPRF doesn’t apply to dependent children of a principal applicant or sponsor, to the sponsorship of adopted children, to the sponsorship of an orphaned sibling, niece, nephew or grandchild, or to protected persons — including people approved on humanitarian and compassionate grounds and Convention refugees. If your case falls into one of those categories, don’t budget for a fee that was never yours to pay.

If the timing is a real cash-flow problem

An RPRF loan exists for applicants who qualify for one, which is worth knowing about rather than assuming the $600 has to come from savings at exactly the moment your other moving costs are also landing.

Fee amounts and eligibility categories are exactly the kind of detail that shifts with policy updates, so treat the figures here as accurate as at mid-2026 and confirm the live number on IRCC’s own fee page before you pay anything. Getting right of permanent residence fee timing right the first time avoids a scramble at exactly the point your application is closest to the finish line. For how the RPRF interacts with your specific application timeline, a licensed RCIC can walk through the sequencing with you — this piece only explains how the fee itself is structured.