Guide
Right to work check cost: what is free and what you pay for
Updated
The check itself has no government fee. Anything you pay for is optional service around it, so ask what you are buying, not what it costs per head.
Talk to a specialist One minute in the wizard against a civil penalty of up to £60,000 per illegal worker.
Question 1
What are you trying to do?
This wizard is written for employers. It follows the Home Office employer's guide, which since 1 October 2026 also covers people engaged under a worker's contract, individual sub-contractors and online matching services (see the subcontractors guide).
Email me this result
We will send you these figures and a link back to them. One email, nothing else unless you tick the box.
What costs nothing
- The Home Office online check at Check a job applicant's right to work. No fee, no account, no subscription.
- The worker generating a share code at Prove your right to work.
- A manual document check you do yourself, beyond the few minutes it takes.
- The Home Office employer's guide, the checklist and the codes of practice.
What you might pay for
- A certified digital verification service
- Per-check pricing, usually on a tariff that falls with volume, sometimes with a platform fee. Only usable for British and Irish citizens holding a valid passport or Irish passport card, so it never covers your whole workforce.
- An outsourced onboarding or screening provider
- Bundles right to work with DBS, references and qualifications. Priced per candidate, and the right to work element is rarely the expensive part.
- A file audit
- Someone reviews the checks you already hold and tells you where the excuse is missing. Priced by day rate or by number of files.
- Immigration advice
- Hourly or fixed fee. Worth it for sponsorship, supplementary employment and anything that has already gone wrong.
We have measured one of these. A digital right to work check costs £5.40 to £10, median £7.96. That is from the 6 of 44 providers' pages we read on 12 October 2026 that print a price.
We publish no ranges for the other three because we have not measured them; a made-up range would be worse than none. Get two or three quotes through the form and compare tariff, turnaround and what happens when a check comes back unclear.
What actually drives the price
| Factor | Why it moves the price | What to ask for |
|---|---|---|
| Volume of checks a year | Per-check tariffs are banded, and platform fees are amortised over volume | The tariff at your real annual volume, not the headline rate |
| Mix of nationalities | Digital verification only covers British and Irish passport holders, so the rest still needs the free online check or a manual check | What proportion of your hires the service can actually cover |
| Integration with your ATS or HR system | Build and licensing costs sit outside the per-check price | Setup cost and whether it is one-off or annual |
| Turnaround and support hours | Same-day and out-of-hours coverage costs more to staff | The service level in writing, and what happens on a failed check |
| Audit and remediation of historic files | Priced by effort, and effort depends on how bad the files are | A fixed-price sample audit before committing to the full review |
The cost of getting it wrong
A civil penalty of up to £60,000 per illegal worker applies where you employed someone without the right to work and did not do the correct checks (gov.uk). Knowingly employing someone without the right to work carries up to five years' imprisonment and an unlimited fine.
The employer's guide also lists business closure and compliance orders, director disqualification, loss of the ability to sponsor migrants, and publication in the quarterly list of non-compliant employers. That is the number to hold the quotes against.