How Much Does It Cost to Study in Italy?

The real cost of studying in Italy (summary)

Italy is cheap to enrol in and moderate to expensive to live in, and those two lines move in opposite directions. Public tuition for a non-EU student with no Italian income is €200–4,200 per year for a bachelor’s and €200–4,200 per year for a master’s, set by the income group of your country rather than by your marks. All nine origin countries we work with fall in a reduced or middle band, never the top one. On top of tuition sits the regional right-to-study tax with stamp duty, €140–160 per year, charged once a year. Living costs run €900–1,300 per month depending on the city. Health cover is €135–700 per year, billed annually. The visa is €50, and the residence permit you must apply for within eight working days of landing adds €116.46. Tuition is the small line on this page; rent is the one that decides your total.

Tuition fees in Italy: public and private universities

Italian public universities do not charge one national price. They calculate a student contribution from the ISEE, an Italian household means assessment. If your family income and assets are outside Italy and you have no ISEE, the university puts you in a fixed band according to how your country is classified by income or GDP per head. That is why the published range is wide, €200–4,200 per year for a bachelor’s and €200–4,200 per year for a master’s, and why the number you actually pay sits near the bottom of it. Sapienza University of Rome puts all nine of our origin countries in its lowest band and charges €300 per year for a bachelor’s and €300 per year for a master’s. The University of Milan charges €346–402 per year, the split depending on whether your programme is classed as humanities or science. The University of Bologna runs two lists: €500–1,200 per year for a bachelor’s, with Uganda and Zambia at the lower end and the other seven countries at the higher one, and €600–1,400 per year for a master’s. Medicine is not billed separately at public universities: English-taught Medicine and Surgery follows the same scale at €200–4,200 per year, so Sapienza charges €300 per year for it. Application fees are small or absent — free at Bologna, Milan, Pisa and Naples, €30 at Sapienza, €60 at Padua. Private universities are a different market. A private bachelor’s is €3,400–17,000 per year and a private master’s €7,280–18,550 per year. Bocconi University charges €17,000 per year before aid and €3,710–18,550 per year for a master’s, the low figure being what a deep need-based waiver leaves. Fees institution by institution are on our Italian universities page.

Living costs in Italy

Plan on €900–1,300 per month for rent, food, transport and a phone. Rent is what separates one city from another, and the gap is large. Milan is the most expensive student city in the country at €1,050–1,550 per month, with a room at €390–704 per month depending on whether you share. Rome follows at €950–1,400 per month and rent of €345–615 per month, having overtaken Bologna in 2026. Florence is €900–1,350 per month, Bologna €850–1,300 per month, Padua €830–1,250 per month and Naples €800–1,200 per month. Turin and Pisa are the cheapest of the eight cities in our dataset, both at €750–1,150 per month, with a room in Pisa at €230–364 per month and in Turin at €265–479 per month. A shared or double room costs roughly half a single one in most of these cities. The figure that decides your visa is none of the above: it is 783.06 EUR a month, the reference sum the consulate multiplies to size your financial requirement. That figure is lower than real costs in Milan or Rome, so meeting it is a paperwork test, not a budget.

Health insurance

Health cover in Italy is bought by the year, not the month. Once enrolled you can register voluntarily with the national health service for a flat €135–700 per year — the upper figure is the SSN student rate for permit holders with no income beyond scholarships, the lower one a private policy at one provider’s pricing. There is no instalment option for either. Before you travel you need something different: travel medical insurance with at least 30,000 EUR of cover, valid across the Schengen area and including repatriation, for the whole length of your stay. Nobody is exempt from the pre-arrival policy, and it is checked at the visa appointment.

Proof of funds for the Italy student visa

This is the line that stops most files. You must show €10,179.85 per year — the monthly reference sum of 783.06 EUR multiplied by thirteen months — plus separately evidenced money for the return trip home. The amount is Annual figure tied to the Italian social allowance (assegno sociale) reference amount, recalculated each academic year, and it rose sharply for 2026/27 from the previous year’s level. Proof is documentary: Bank statements (own or parental, typically last 3 months), a notarised sponsor affidavit, or proof of an awarded scholarship, shown to the consulate at visa application and again to the Questura when registering. Insufficient or unclear proof of means is the first refusal reason on the consulates’ own list, and files usually fail on presentation rather than on the amount — unexplained deposits, a sponsor with no evidenced income, statements that do not match the study plan. Our Italy student visa requirements page lists the full document set, and how to prove funds for a student visa explains what an officer reads for.

Cheapest universities and student cities

Sapienza University of Rome is the cheapest large option for our students at €300 per year for a bachelor’s and the same for a master’s, with 45 English-taught master’s programmes. The University of Milan charges €346–402 per year and asks no application fee. The University of Naples Federico II starts at the regional tax alone, €146–3,585 per year, for citizens of listed developing countries. The University of Pisa sets its band by World Bank income group, €290–2,900 per year, and most of our origin countries fall in the two lowest tiers. The University of Bologna is €500–1,200 per year and the University of Turin €500–1,650 per year. At the other end, the University of Padua charges a flat €2,790–2,990 per year, reduced to about a third for citizens of DAC low-income countries, and Politecnico di Milano places non-EU master’s entrants with a foreign bachelor’s straight into the top band at €3,943.04 per year. A low fee in an expensive city is not a saving: a year in Pisa or Turin at €750–1,150 per month costs less than the same fee in Milan at €1,050–1,550 per month. Compare countries on our cheapest countries in Europe page.

How to cover the costs

Two national routes reach applicants from all nine of our origin countries: the Italian Government scholarship for foreign students and Erasmus Mundus joint master’s. Regional right-to-study grants, the DSU awards, are the larger prize in practice — they can carry a fee waiver, a room and a meal card — but eligibility is set region by region and our dataset records no confirmed access for our origin countries, so do not build a budget on one. Bocconi’s need-based waivers are the clearest published example of private aid, taking a master’s from €3,710–18,550 per year. Work rights are real: 20 hours/week maximum with no separate permit needed, inside an annual ceiling, paid at roughly €5.20–7.07 per hour under sector agreements. Term-time work covers groceries and a phone bill, never tuition and never the funds you must prove before you fly. Our Italy scholarships page has the schemes and their deadlines.