How much does an MS abroad cost in total for an Indian student in 2026?

What the total actually includes

Published tuition for the full programme, plus a realistic local living-cost estimate for its full duration, converted at recorded mid-market rates. It does not include your flights, visa fees, health insurance premiums beyond what the university mandates, the one-off cost of setting up a home abroad, or loan interest — all of which are real and none of which appear on a university's fee page.

Duration is the variable most people forget to price. A 12-month UK MSc and a 24-month Australian master's are different products: University of Manchester at 12 months costs about ₹65.3 lakh, while UNSW Sydney at 24 months costs about ₹1.21 crore — and the extra year is also a year of forgone Indian salary that never shows up in either figure.

Check the number you were given

Our whole dataset is published at truthpathms.com/data under CC BY 4.0, with every row's sources and check date attached. If a consultant's estimate for a programme differs materially from ours, one of us is wrong, and both numbers can be traced — ours to the file, theirs to whatever they will show you. Ask.

The specific figure to interrogate is living costs, because it is the one with no official page to cite and therefore the one most often understated to make a total look manageable.

Verify these numbers yourself

• Cost, admission-bar and salary-basis figures for all 14 verified programs: truthpathms.com/data (CC BY 4.0, each row carries its own sources and check date)
• Payback method: total cost ÷ (typical starting salary − ₹8.0 lakh/year India baseline). Ignores loan interest, taxes and the risk of not landing the typical salary — disclosed, not hidden

Costs, salaries, and visa rules change - always confirm against the official program page before making a real decision. TruthPathMS aggregates and cites; it does not originate tuition, salary, or visa data.