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The true cost of PLAB in 2026, end to end
The Core Revision Team
Written with the IMG Hub · 9 min read
Published 11 July 2026 · Checked against sources current July 2026
Nobody should start the PLAB route without knowing what the whole journey costs — not just the exam fees on the GMC’s website, but the English test before it, the travel around it, the verification behind it and the registration after it. Here is the honest, end-to-end budget at April 2026 prices, including the cancellation traps and the one adjustment almost everyone should make.
Core Lens
The cost of PLAB in six points
- Exam fees. PLAB 1 costs £283 and PLAB 2 £1,036 per attempt, at the GMC fees in force since 1 April 2026.
- Registration fee. The application to register costs £481, or £184 within five years of qualifying; if it is refused or withdrawn, you lose £110 as a scrutiny fee.
- The income discount. With worldwide income below £38,500, the annual £481 retention fee halves to £240.50; that discount does not reduce the application fee.
- The 42-day line. Cancelling over 42 days ahead costs £28.30 for PLAB 1 or £103.60 for PLAB 2; from 42 days out the charge climbs steeply, up to the full fee.
- Budget for a resit. The GMC’s published pass rates make a resit a real possibility; repeating PLAB 2 costs another £1,036, plus a second trip to Manchester.
- Before you pay. Pay for each stage only when the one before is done, check which discounts you qualify for, and note each booking’s 42-day mark in your diary.
Figures checked against the GMC’s own pages on 28 September 2026; the Deep Dive has the detail and the sources.
You are reading the Core Lens — the points that matter. Open the Deep Dive for the full article.
Before you spend on anything else, try twenty questions free.
Twenty original PLAB 1 questions, two from each of the ten clinical areas, with the reasoning after every one and a marked report. Free, no card and the first five are open to all.
Fees quoted below took effect on 1 April 2026; the GMC’s fees page on gmc-uk.org is the primary source, and it is worth a two-minute check before every payment, because prices move.
The headline numbers
- PLAB 1
- £283 per attempt (up from £273 in 2025-26).
- PLAB 2
- £1,036 per attempt (up from £998 in 2025-26).
- GMC full registration application
- £481 (up from £463) — or £184 if you apply within five years of your primary medical qualification being awarded (the GMC’s fixed-term discount). A non-refundable £110 scrutiny fee is retained if the application is refused or withdrawn.
- Annual retention fee (with a licence)
- £481 per year, or £240.50 with the 50% income discount below the same threshold.
- Everything else
- English test, travel, Manchester accommodation, visitor visa, EPIC verification — real money, no fixed GBP figures; budgeted honestly below.
Two fixed exam fees (£283 and £1,036), one fixed registration fee (£481, or £184 if you apply within five years of your primary medical qualification; the income discount applies to annual fees, not to this one), and around them a ring of variable costs — English test, EPIC, visa, flights, Manchester — that depend on where you start from and how long you stay. The fixed part is easy to plan; the variable part is where budgets are won and lost.
The April 2026 fee changes, for the record
All three GMC fees rose on 1 April 2026: PLAB 1 from £273 to £283, PLAB 2 from £998 to £1,036, and the full registration application from £463 to £481. If you are reading a guide, a spreadsheet or a forum thread quoting the old numbers, it predates April 2026 — a useful freshness test for everything else it says. We deliberately do not quote fee history from before 2025-26; sources conflict, and it does not change what you will pay now.
Before the exams: English and EPIC
IELTS or OET comes first — your English evidence must be verified before you can even open the PLAB 1 booking service. Prices vary by country and test centre, so budget a few hundred pounds and check the current fee where you will sit it. Remember the result is valid for 2 years; if your journey stretches, a repeat test is a real budget line, not a hypothetical. The eligibility checklist covers the score requirements.
EPIC verification of your medical diploma, via ECFMG, is required before registration is granted. Fees are set by ECFMG in US dollars and vary — check the EPIC site for current amounts and factor in the exchange rate at the time you pay.
The exams themselves
PLAB 1 costs £283 per sitting. You can sit it overseas — 16 countries, including multiple cities in India, Pakistan, Nigeria and Egypt (from 2027 six overseas centres close and the February sitting is UK/EU only) — which for many candidates removes an entire flights-and-visa layer from part one of the journey. PLAB 1 explained has the full venue list and format.
PLAB 2 costs £1,036, and there is no overseas option: both GMC Clinical Assessment Centres are in Manchester. That single fact drives most of the non-fee spending below.
Refugee doctors living in the UK: the GMC makes your first two PLAB 1 attempts free and halves the PLAB 2 fee for your first two attempts.
The Manchester trip: the costs without price tags
Because PLAB 2 only happens in Manchester, most candidates face one unavoidable trip built from several costs the GMC does not control — and we will not invent numbers for them:
- The Standard Visitor visa, if you need one. It covers sitting PLAB 2 in the UK (you will need the GMC letter confirming your test registration). Check the current fee on GOV.UK. Two useful features are built in: if you fail, you may extend your stay by up to a further 6 months to retake; if you pass, you can apply to stay up to 18 months in total for an unpaid clinical attachment.
- Flights — hugely variable by origin and season; many candidates also pad the trip by several days to visit a PLAB 2 preparation course or academy.
- Accommodation and living costs in Manchester — for the exam itself and for any preparation time before it. A stay of days is a very different budget from a stay of weeks; decide which trip you are planning before you price it.
One free but important detail while you are booking: the two assessment centres are at 3 Hardman Square (M3 3EB) and 3 Hardman Street (M3 3AW), and the GMC itself warns the addresses look nearly identical. Check your booking confirmation carefully — turning up at the wrong Hardman is an expensive way to lose an exam fee. PLAB 2 explained covers the day itself.
What this guide will not price: preparation
Question banks, courses, PLAB 2 academies, textbooks — preparation spending ranges from nearly nothing to more than the exam fees themselves, and it is entirely your choice. We will not invent an “average” figure, because there is not one. Two honest observations instead: the free layer is bigger than most candidates realise (the GMC publishes the exam guides and the MLA content map that defines the syllabus, and our own IMG Hub is free), and spending on preparation is the one line in this budget that directly reduces the risk of the most expensive event in it — a resit. If you are going to economise, economise somewhere else. For scale, our PLAB Pass bank of 1,500 PLAB 1 questions is £29.99 for six months, extended free if you fail.
After the exams: registration and staying registered
The full registration application costs £481, or £184 with the GMC’s fixed-term discount if you apply within five years of your primary medical qualification being awarded. If your application is refused or withdrawn, the GMC retains a £110 scrutiny fee — a good financial reason to apply only when your documents are genuinely complete. The 50% income discount (worldwide income below £38,500) applies to your annual retention fee once registered, not to the application fee.
Registration is not a one-off: keeping your registration with a licence costs £481 a year, halved to £240.50 below the same income threshold.
The cancellation tables — where careless booking burns money
Both exams punish late changes, and the thresholds are worth memorising before you book:
- PLAB 1: cancel more than 42 days before the exam and you lose £28.30; cancel at 42 days or less and you lose the full £283.
- PLAB 2: cancel more than 42 days out and you lose £103.60; 42 to 29 days before, £518; at 28 days or less, the full £1,036.
The practical rule: never book a PLAB 2 date you are less than sure of — half the fee evaporates a month and a half out. Book when your preparation, travel and visa are genuinely aligned.
Published pass rates for both parts hover around six in ten candidates in recent sittings — which means a large minority of perfectly good doctors resit something. A budget that only works if you pass everything first time is not a budget; it is a bet. Plan the money assuming one resit somewhere — if that is a second PLAB 2 attempt, it means another £1,036 plus the Manchester trip around it. If you never need it, you have a head start on the registration fee. The resit rules and the two 2-year clocks that constrain them are in attempts, resits and the clocks.
Making the budget behave
Spend in the order the process runs
English test, then PLAB 1, then PLAB 2 and the trip, then EPIC and registration. Each stage is a checkpoint: if a stage goes wrong, you have not yet spent the later stages’ money. Paying for things out of order — a PLAB 2 course before a PLAB 1 pass — moves risk in the wrong direction.
Claim every discount you are entitled to
The fixed-term discount (£184 instead of £481) covers applicants within five years of qualifying, and the 50% income discount below £38,500 worldwide income applies to your annual retention fee. Refugee doctors living in the UK get their first two PLAB 1 attempts free and a 50% reduction on their first two PLAB 2 attempts. None of this is applied automatically by wishful thinking — check the criteria on the GMC fees page and claim it.
Treat cancellation deadlines as booking rules
The fee tables above mean a booking is only cheap to change while it is far away. Diary the 42-day mark for any PLAB booking the moment you make it — that is your last low-cost exit if the visa, the preparation or life itself is not ready.
PLAB is a serious financial undertaking, and pretending otherwise helps nobody. But notice what the money buys: the fees are one-off, the registration is renewable, and the career on the other side is real. Budget with a resit built in, claim the discounts, respect the 42-day line — and the spreadsheet stops being frightening and starts being a plan.
The exams are the start — the Hub covers the rest
The IMG Hub is our free collection of guides, tools and videos for doctors joining the NHS — including the Payslip Decoder for when the spending finally reverses direction, plus the jargon, the first 90 days and the exams.
Sources & the small print. GMC PLAB fees and registration fees pages (April 2026 rates); GMC PLAB 1 and PLAB 2 guides (cancellation terms); GOV.UK Standard Visitor visa guidance; ECFMG EPIC fee pages. General careers information, not immigration or legal advice — always check the GMC’s current PLAB and registration guidance, GMC Online and GOV.UK before acting. Written by the Core Revision team.
