Guide
The true total cost of a second passport, fees included
The number in the headline — "citizenship from $200,000" — is the official minimum, and it is almost never what you pay. Government fees, due-diligence charges per person, and professional costs sit on top, and they scale with family size. This guide breaks down where the real total comes from, so the figure you plan around is the one you actually pay.
Start with what the headline actually is. The advertised minimum — a donation figure or a property price — is the qualifying investment set in law. It is real and verified, but it is only the first line of the invoice. Everything else is added on top, and most brochures quote the first line alone.
The largest add-on is government fees. Programmes charge processing and application fees, and — critically — due-diligence fees levied per adult, sometimes with reduced rates for children. This is why a single applicant and a family of four paying the "same" programme end up with very different totals: the investment may be identical, but the per-person charges are not. A realistic estimate always starts from your actual household, not from a single applicant.
Then come the costs that never appear in a headline: mandatory agent or legal fees, government due-diligence carried out by third parties, passport and certificate issuance, translation and courier, and — on the real-estate route — transfer taxes and ongoing charges. Individually small, together they routinely add tens of thousands of dollars. A donation advertised at a round number can clear well above it once every line is counted.
This is why every cost figure on Orvelion is a total, not a minimum. Our calculator takes the official investment and applies a deliberately cautious fee estimate for your family size — an estimate, clearly labelled, never a quote. We would rather show you a number that turns out slightly high than one that surprises you halfway through the process. Where a route can return capital, we say so separately, because a recoverable outlay and a sunk cost are not the same total even when the headline matches.
The practical takeaway is simple. Ignore any single number offered without a family size and a fee breakdown attached. Ask for the total for your exact household, insist on seeing the per-person due-diligence line, and confirm the current schedule with the programme unit before you commit — fee tables are revised, and last year's total is not a quote for this year.
Jurisdictions covered