What the PLAB Route Actually Costs in 2026 — Including the Fees People Forget

Getting GMC-registered through PLAB costs far more than the two exam fees, and the items people miss are usually bigger than the ones they budget for. On the 1 April 2026 fee schedule, PLAB 1 is £283 and PLAB 2 is £1,036 — so the exams alone are over £1,300 before you've paid for an English test, a visa, flights, accommodation in Manchester, or your first month in the UK without a salary.

This is the full breakdown, including the costs that wreck budgets: resits, the refund cliff on a cancelled sitting, the gap between arriving and being paid, and one substantial saving most guides get wrong.

On the figures: every amount below is dated, because these change — the GMC's registration fee regulations were revised effective 1 April 2026, and visa and test fees move independently. Verify anything decision-critical at gmc-uk.org and gov.uk before you rely on it. We'd rather date-stamp a number than have you budget from a stale one.

Table of contents

1. The unavoidable fees
2. The costs people forget
3. The cost of failure
4. The saving most guides get wrong
5. A worked total
6. Where you can genuinely save
7. Where not to save
8. Has the return changed?
9. FAQ

1. The unavoidable fees

Everyone on this route pays these.

That's roughly £1,900–£2,000 in fees alone, first-attempt, before you have travelled anywhere.

Note that PLAB 2 costs nearly four times PLAB 1. This matters strategically: the cheap exam is the one you can afford to resit, and the expensive one is sat in person in the UK, so a PLAB 2 failure costs a fee and a second trip. Budget accordingly — and prepare for PLAB 1 well enough that you arrive at PLAB 2 with money left.

2. The costs people forget

This is where budgets break.

Travel and accommodation for PLAB 2. PLAB 2 is an OSCE sat in Manchester. You need flights, and accommodation for at least one to two weeks — longer if you're doing a preparation course there, which many candidates do. Depending on where you're travelling from and how early you book, this is comfortably a four-figure sum in pounds.

A visa to sit PLAB 2. A UK Standard Visitor visa is around £115, and you'll need it before booking flights.

Preparation resources. Question banks, courses, books. A PLAB 2 course in Manchester is often the single largest discretionary item on the whole route — frequently more than the PLAB 2 fee itself. Q-bank subscriptions for PLAB 1 are comparatively minor, though they add up if your sitting slips and a subscription keeps renewing. (Our own pricing is a one-off purchase precisely because dates slip; the comparison of options covers everyone honestly.)

Document verification and certification. Certifying primary medical qualifications, translations where needed, courier costs for documents. Individually small, collectively not.

The relocation itself, once you have a job. Visa for the work route, flights, initial accommodation deposit and first month's rent, and living costs before your first NHS pay date. UK employers pay monthly, in arrears — so plan for four to eight weeks of living costs with no income after you arrive. This is the item that most often forces people to borrow at the worst moment, and it's almost never in the fee tables.

Time not earning. If you take unpaid leave to revise, or leave a job before relocating, the foregone income belongs in the calculation. For many candidates it's the largest single number on the page and it never appears in any published breakdown.

3. The cost of failure

Model this explicitly, because the route has hard limits and they got tighter.

Each attempt is a fresh fee. £283 for PLAB 1, £1,036 for PLAB 2. There is no discounted resit.

A PLAB 2 resit means a second trip. Fee, flights, accommodation, possibly another visa. Realistically it can double your PLAB 2 spend.

The refund cliff. Cancel a PLAB 1 booking early enough and you get a full refund; leave it late and you get nothing. Reported thresholds are a full refund at roughly 83+ days before the exam, about 50% between roughly 83 and 57 days, and nothing inside about 57 days — confirm the current version on the GMC's cancellation pages. There is no reschedule function, so a date change is a cancel-and-rebook. Diarise your full-refund cut-off the day you book and make an honest readiness decision while cancelling is still free. The booking and refund mechanics in detail.

Waiting time is a real cost. From February 2027 there are three international PLAB 1 sittings a year instead of four, and Dhaka, Alexandria, Accra and Chennai no longer offer it. A missed window can mean several months, during which you're not earning UK income and any subscription you're paying for keeps running.

Attempts are capped. Four failed attempts, then you must apply for a fifth and final one — and the GMC requires at least 12 months of additional learning and development after that fourth fail before it will consider the application. After five failed attempts you're ineligible, and everything spent to that point is unrecoverable.

The blunt arithmetic: a first-time pass on both parts is dramatically cheaper than a route with two resits — not by a percentage but by a multiple, once you add trips and lost months. Preparation is the cheapest line item on this page and the one with the highest leverage over every other line.

4. The saving most guides get wrong

The Immigration Health Surcharge is £1,035 per year for most adult applicants — and it's charged for the whole visa length up front, so on a three-year visa that's over £3,000 in one payment.

But holders of the Health and Care Worker visa are exempt from the IHS. For a doctor taking an NHS post, that's a saving in the thousands, and it's routinely missed or misstated in cost guides that simply add the IHS to the total.

Two things to be precise about:

• The exemption attaches to the Health and Care Worker visa, which requires a job offer from an approved sponsoring employer. It does not apply to the Standard Visitor visa you use to come and sit PLAB 2.
• So the sequencing matters: you pay for the visitor visa yourself for PLAB 2, and the IHS exemption only becomes relevant later, once you have an NHS job offer and are applying for the work visa.

Check your own eligibility on gov.uk rather than assuming — and be aware that the wider settlement rules are in flux. The Government has confirmed plans for an "earned settlement" system that would raise the standard qualifying period for indefinite leave to remain from five years to ten, expected in autumn 2026, with transitional arrangements not finalised. That doesn't change your upfront costs but it substantially changes the long-run picture, so take regulated immigration advice rather than relying on any blog.

5. A worked total

First-attempt pass on both parts, travelling from outside the UK, on the fees above:

Read the ranges rather than the midpoint. The controllable variables are the PLAB 2 course and how early you book travel. The uncontrollable ones are fees and your own resit risk.

And an honest framing on preparation spend. Preparation is a small fraction of this total — often 5% or less — while it largely determines whether you pay the exam fees once or three times. That's the case for preparing properly, and yes, we sell preparation, so weigh that accordingly. It's also the case for not overspending on it: a £1,500 course is not automatically better than free official material plus one good question bank and disciplined review.

6. Where you can genuinely save

Use the free official material. The GMC publishes the MLA content map free. The Medical Schools Council publishes practice material for the AKT. NICE, NICE CKS and the BNF — the sources your answers are marked against — are free. Free mock options, free resources.

Buy one question bank, not three. You will use one properly. Comparison.

Prefer a one-off purchase to a subscription if your date might move. Subscriptions keep charging through delays; PLAB dates slip often.

Book PLAB 2 travel early. Flights and Manchester accommodation are among the most price-elastic items here, and you know your date well in advance.

Consider whether you need a paid PLAB 2 course. Many candidates pass without one, using peer practice groups. It's the biggest discretionary item on the route — make it a decision, not a default.

Sit your English test once. Prepare properly for it; a retake is pure waste.

Check whether you qualify for the discounted GMC registration rate for newly qualified doctors.

7. Where not to save

Don't sit an exam you're not ready for to save waiting time. A resit costs more than the delay did, especially for PLAB 2, and burns one of four attempts.

Don't skip a full timed mock. Timing failure is preventable, and discovering your pace in the exam room is the most expensive way to learn it.

Don't buy recalls. Declining in value since the content map changed, they train recognition rather than reasoning, and sharing exam content is misconduct under the terms you sign. Why.

Don't cut the post-arrival buffer. Four to eight weeks without income while you wait for your first NHS pay date is the single most common cash-flow crisis on this route.

Don't use an agent to book your exam. Book through your own GMC Online account and never share your login.

8. Has the return changed?

You should ask this before spending, because the honest answer changed in 2026.

The Medical Training (Prioritisation) Act 2026 prioritises UK graduates and certain other groups for foundation and specialty training. In the 2026 specialty round, non-prioritised acceptances fell from 2,168 to 163, and from 2027 prioritisation applies at shortlisting as well as at the offer stage.

This doesn't change what registration costs. It changes what registration reliably buys. If your plan is a UK specialty training number soon, with no qualifying immigration status and no UK experience, the expected return on this spend is materially lower than the guides written before March 2026 imply. If your plan is NHS work in a non-training post — which the Act doesn't touch — or you hold a qualifying status, the picture is much closer to what it always was.

We've laid the numbers out in full in is PLAB still worth it in 2026. Read it before you pay the first fee, not after.

9. FAQ

How much does the PLAB route cost in total? On the 1 April 2026 fees, roughly £2,750–£5,800 for exams, tests, travel, preparation and registration if you pass both parts first time — plus relocation and several weeks of living costs before your first NHS pay. The range is wide mostly because of the PLAB 2 course and travel.

How much is PLAB 1? £283 per attempt. PLAB 2 is £1,036 from 1 April 2026.

How much is GMC registration? £408 for full registration with a licence to practise from 1 April 2026, with a discounted rate of £157 for newly qualified doctors — check whether you qualify.

Do I have to pay the Immigration Health Surcharge? Not on a Health and Care Worker visa, which is exempt — a saving in the thousands. But that visa needs a sponsored job offer, so it doesn't cover the Standard Visitor visa you use to sit PLAB 2. Check gov.uk for your own case.

Is there a discount for resits? No. Each attempt is the full fee.

Can I get a refund if I cancel PLAB 1? Partly, depending how early — reported as full at roughly 83+ days, about 50% between roughly 83 and 57 days, nothing inside about 57 days. Confirm on the GMC's cancellation pages. Exceptional circumstances such as visa refusal or ill health are considered separately, with evidence, after you cancel.

What's the most expensive part? Of the fixed costs, PLAB 2 at £1,036. Of everything, usually the combination of PLAB 2 travel, accommodation and a course — or, if you count it honestly, the income you don't earn while preparing and relocating.

How much should I spend on preparation? Less than most people assume. Free official material plus one question bank with real analytics and full-length mocks covers PLAB 1. Preparation is typically under 5% of the route's cost while heavily determining whether you pay the exam fees once or repeatedly.

Can I do this without a course? Many do, for both parts. PLAB 2 courses are more commonly considered worthwhile because the OSCE format is harder to self-rehearse — but it's a decision, not a requirement.

Are the fees cheaper than USMLE? Historically yes, substantially, and that remains the UK's main cost advantage at the licensing stage. What changed is what follows the exams, which is the part that determines whether the spend pays back.

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The cheapest thing you can do right now is find out where you stand. Sit the free 50-question mock — map-aligned, NICE/BNF-referenced answers, per-specialty breakdown, no card. Knowing your baseline before you pay a £283 exam fee is the highest-return five minutes on this page. Or ten questions with no account.

The summary: budget around £2,750–£5,800 for a first-time pass through both parts on the 2026 fees, then add relocation and four to eight weeks of living costs before your first pay date. The items that break budgets aren't the exam fees — they're resits, the refund cliff, PLAB 2 travel, and the unpaid gap after arrival.

Preparation is the smallest line and the highest-leverage one. And check the current fees yourself, because everything here has a date on it for a reason.

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Further reading

• Is PLAB still worth it in 2026?
• PLAB 1 exam dates 2027 and booking mechanics
• How to pass PLAB 1 in 2026
• The cheapest way to revise
• Best PLAB 1 question bank 2026

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