How Much Does the SSW Visa Cost from India? Every Official Fee in 2026

Done honestly, the SSW route is not an expensive visa to get. Add up every official fee and most people spend under ₹10,000 before the flight. Two things about that sentence have changed since we last checked these numbers, and both matter.

First, one of the test fees has come down sharply — the construction skills test is now less than half what most pages (including our own earlier version of this one) were quoting. Second, the cheap part is now clearly the getting in part: from 1 October 2026, the fees you pay inside Japan to extend or change your status of residence go up a great deal. Budget for the route, not just the departure.

Figures below were re-verified against the issuing bodies' own pages in September 2026. Fees change; confirm before you pay.

What the tests actually cost in India

Prometric runs most of the overseas SSW tests and publishes one price list by country. For India it quotes a net price and a gross price — the gross figure is what leaves your account.

Three things worth pulling out of that table.

The construction test is now ₹684. Our earlier breakdown said ₹1,298, and that figure is still circulating widely. It is the cheapest skills test on the list by a distance — construction is the lane with the lowest entry cost from India, which is worth knowing if money is the constraint rather than preference. More on the work itself in our construction jobs guide.

The care field is now listed as one line, not two. Prometric's India page shows a single "Long-term Care Evaluation Test (Skills/Japanese)" entry at ₹1,416, where we previously described two ₹696 bookings. Confirm at the booking screen whether the care skills test and the care Japanese test are charged as one payment or two before you budget — and remember the care field still needs general Japanese (JFT-Basic or JLPT) on top of these. Our caregiver route guide has the rest.

There is an SSW-2 test priced in India. The accommodation field's level-ii test appears on the India list at ₹9,200. That is a long way off for a new applicant, but it is quiet evidence that the ladder out of SSW-1 isn't only sittable inside Japan.

A price on the list is not a test date

Food service appears on the India price list at ₹3,422. You cannot sit it here. The Immigration Services Agency's own exam schedule shows the food-service test running within Japan only — no India dates — and the field has in any case been closed to new applicants since 13 April 2026, because its intake ceiling filled. A published fee is a price, not a schedule. If an agent shows you the Prometric price list as proof that a field is open to you, ask them for the test date and the centre, and watch what happens.

This is the single most useful habit in this whole article: check the ISA exam schedule for your field and your country before you pay anyone anything. Which fields are closing next, and how much room each has left, is in our field caps guide, and the sittability question is covered field by field in our application steps guide.

Two India-sittable fields are not on that price list at all

Per ISA's September–October 2026 schedule, seven fields are sittable from India — and two of them, building cleaning and automobile transportation (truck, taxi, bus), are run by different bodies, not Prometric. Both show India dates across effectively every day of the month, and neither appears on Prometric's price table, so their fees are published on their own operators' portals and you should not assume the Prometric range applies.

For automobile transportation, note two eligibility conditions that cost money before the test does: you must be 17 or over and you must already hold a valid driving licence — Japanese or foreign — on the day you sit. The licence is the gate, not the test fee.

The Japanese visa itself is almost free for Indians

From 1 July 2026 Japan revised its visa fees for the first time in decades. For most nationalities a single-entry visa applied for in India now costs ₹8,650, and a multiple or double visa ₹17,350. Indian nationals applying in India pay ₹500 for a single or multiple visa. Transit visas have been abolished.

On top of that, VFS Global charges ₹800 per application, inclusive of taxes, non-refundable — and it is charged even to applicants who are exempt from the visa fee. Return courier, if you want it, is an optional ₹550. The visa fee itself is refunded only if the Embassy refuses the visa; the service charge is not.

Two practical notes. VFS's own Japan-India page was still showing a visa-fee table headed "Effective 01 April 2025" when we checked in September 2026, so trust the Embassy's figure over the outsourcer's page if the two disagree. And the Embassy's visa page carries its own fraud warning in plain terms: everything you have to pay for a visa is the visa fee and the service charge listed there, and the Embassy will never phone or email asking for a payment to verify documents or speed up processing.

If an agent quotes you thousands "for the visa fee," they are inventing it.

The fees that start after you land — and they went up on 1 October 2026

This is the part the old version of this article missed entirely, and it is now the biggest number in your medium-term budget.

Getting in is cheap: your employer applies for the Certificate of Eligibility, and landing on the visa itself carries no further fee. The money starts at your first extension of stay — and SSW-1 is granted in periods of up to a year, so you will be filing those regularly.

From 1 October 2026, the fee for permission to change your status of residence or extend your period of stay depends on the length granted. Filed online, all-in (ISA's designated payment agent adds its own transaction fee):

Until 30 September 2026 the same permission cost a flat ¥5,500 online. Applications received on or before 30 September 2026 still pay the old fee, even if the permission itself comes through later.

Komichi's arithmetic, not a government figure: five years of SSW-1 on one-year periods means roughly four extensions, so about ¥109,320 — near ₹68,000 — in immigration fees across the five years, where the same ladder used to cost about ¥22,000. That is roughly ten times what you spend to get the visa in the first place. Filing at the counter costs more than filing online. Re-entry permits are unchanged at ¥3,500 single and ¥6,500 multiple, plus ¥220 if you pay online. The full table, including permanent residence, is in our guide to the October 2026 fee increase.

One fraud note that is worth more than the fee table. ISA has said that payment instructions for online applications come only from the address @service-dgft.com. Any other sender asking you to pay an immigration fee is a scam. Save that.

The other legitimate Indian-side costs

• Police clearance certificate — ₹750 through Passport Seva. This went up; ₹500 is the old figure and is still widely quoted.
• Passport — standard Passport Seva fees if you don't have one. Use the portal's own fee calculator rather than an agent's quote.
• Medical examination — ISA's required-document list for a first-time SSW applicant includes a medical examination report. It is the item people forget; book it early rather than at the end.
• The JLPT alternative — you can prove Japanese with JLPT N4 instead of JFT-Basic. There is no single national price: each Indian host city sets its own fee, and it rises with level. The trade-off is timing, not just money — JFT-Basic runs in booking windows through the year, while the JLPT sits twice a year, so missing a deadline costs you months. Details city by city in our JLPT in India guide, and the choice between the two exams is set out in which exam should I take and our JFT-Basic guide.
• Photos, courier, translation — minor.
• Japanese preparation — optional but the highest-return spend of all, and free if you self-study.

The big variable — and what Indian law actually caps

The visa and the tests are cheap. What inflates people's costs is third-party placement agents, some of whom ask for lakhs against a promise of a guaranteed job.

Here is the number almost nobody quotes back at them. The Ministry of External Affairs' published guidance for prospective emigrants says plainly: do not pay a recruiting agent more than the equivalent of 45 days' wages under your employment contract, subject to a maximum of ₹20,000 — and take a receipt for it. MEA also says to pay by demand draft or cheque, never loose cash.

The rest of MEA's checklist is just as usable:

• Ask to see the original Registration Certificate issued by the Protector General of Emigrants. Don't deal with an agent who can't produce one, or whose registration is suspended or expired. MEA publishes the active list.
• Do not deal with sub-agents. They are not permitted under the Emigration Act, 1983 — so the friend-of-a-friend layer that most Indian recruitment fraud actually runs through has no legal standing at all.
• Ask for the demand letter and the power of attorney from the foreign employer, and for your employment contract in English.
• An agent may not charge you repatriation expenses.
• Complaints about overcharging or cheating go to the Protector of Emigrants, the Protector General of Emigrants, or the Overseas Workers Resource Centre.

One honest caveat, because it cuts both ways: Japan is not an Emigration Check Required country. It sits on MEA's exempt list, so you will not need emigration clearance and no one at the airport will check your paperwork on the way out. That is convenient — and it also means the state is not doing the checking for you. The ₹20,000 ceiling above is MEA's published rule for registered recruiting agents; if you want to know exactly how it applies to your Japan offer, ask your regional Protector of Emigrants rather than the agent. And if the person asking you for money is not registered at all, the ceiling is not your protection — your refusal is.

The Japanese side of the same trap is covered in how to spot fake Japan job agents and how to verify a Japanese job offer. The short version: a legitimate Japanese employer sponsors your Certificate of Eligibility, and you should not be paying a "guarantee" or "placement" fee to be hired. Never pay a large sum before you have a verified offer and a COE in hand.

Two worked examples

Caregiver route, done honestly: JFT-Basic ₹3,540 + Long-term Care Evaluation Test ₹1,416 + Japanese visa ₹500 + VFS ₹800 + PCC ₹750 = ₹7,006, plus photos, courier, the medical and your flight.

Construction route: JFT-Basic ₹3,540 + construction skills test ₹684 + visa ₹500 + VFS ₹800 + PCC ₹750 = ₹6,274, plus the same extras.

Then, from year two, budget roughly ₹17,000 for each one-year extension you file in Japan.

Set the pre-departure figure — six to seven thousand rupees in official fees — against the ₹2–5 lakh that some agents quote, and against MEA's ₹20,000 legal ceiling on an agent's service charge. That gap is the real cost of a bad decision, and it is the only large number in this article you have complete control over.

Bottom line

Budget for the tests, the documents, your flight, and the extensions that follow. Keep the rest in your pocket. The most valuable investment on this route is still your Japanese ability, which costs nothing but time — and it is also the thing that moves you onto longer periods of stay, which, as of October 2026, is worth real money as well.