How Much Does It Cost to Study in France?

The real cost of studying in France (summary)

France is cheap to enrol in and moderate to live in, and the fee you actually pay is set by your university rather than by a national price list. Public tuition is €178–2,902 per year for a bachelor’s and €255–3,950 per year for a master’s: the low end is the rate French and EU students pay, the high end the “droits différenciés” rate non-EU students officially owe. Every enrolled student also pays the CVEC of €105 per year. Living costs run €600–800 per month on Campus France’s own estimate, and city surveys put Paris well above that. Health cover is free through the state scheme. The visa costs €50–99, the service centre €28–31, and the OFII stay tax €100 once you have landed. Two decisions move your total, and neither is the country: whether your university exonerates you to the EU rate, and whether you live in Paris.

Tuition fees in France: public and private universities

Since 2019, non-EU students at public universities officially owe “droits différenciés” — many times the EU rate — but universities may exonerate some or all of their non-EU intake back down to that EU rate. That is why the published band is so wide: €178–2,902 per year for a bachelor’s and €255–3,950 per year for a master’s. Université Paris Cité exonerates every entrant, so its bachelor’s is €178 per year and its master’s €255 per year. Université Paris-Saclay does the same at €178 per year and €255 per year. Aix-Marseille Université does not, so you pay €2,902 per year or €3,950 per year unless you are inside its exemption quota. A decree of 21 May 2026 replaced the single exoneration cap with two larger ones, but restricted eligibility to individual financial-hardship cases, so blanket institutional exemptions end and each waiver is now harder to win. Medicine in the final clinical cycle is billed at €526 per year, the same for EU and non-EU students; earlier medical years sit inside the ordinary bachelor’s and master’s brackets. The CVEC of €105 per year is paid once at enrolment, not per semester, because France bills annually. Applying to a public university is free. Private and fee-autonomous institutions are a different market: a private bachelor’s is €14,900–23,900 per year and a private master’s €24,000–30,450 per year. Sciences Po charges non-EEA students €14,900 per year for its bachelor’s and €20,640 per year for the standard master’s, with a €150 application fee; HEC Paris charges €29,450 per year. Fees per institution are on our French universities page.

Living costs in France

Campus France puts food, transport and housing together at €600–800 per month. City surveys run higher, and the spread between cities matters more than the national average. Paris is the extreme at €1,235–1,700 per month, with rent of €400–900 per month depending on whether you get a CROUS room or rent privately. Lyon is €900–1,350 per month, Bordeaux €900–1,350 per month, Marseille €850–1,300 per month and Strasbourg €850–1,300 per month. Grenoble is the cheapest city in our dataset at €600–1,000 per month, with subsidised halls at €250–500 per month. Lille spans €650–1,300 per month, because shared housing and a private studio are two different budgets. Rent is the only line that changes much between French cities, so choosing a city is really choosing a rent. The number to plan against is neither the Campus France estimate nor the city surveys: it is €877.50 per month, the resource figure the consulate applies when it reads your file. A CROUS room in Marseille at €253–468 per month leaves that budget workable; a private flat in Paris does not. Housing assistance (APL) has been open to international students, but from 2026/27 the Ministry proposes limiting it to non-EU students holding means-tested CROUS scholarships, subject to budget approval.

Health insurance

France does not use a minimum-cover private insurance model. Registration with the state scheme (PUMA) is free and automatic for non-EU students once you enrol, through the official étudiant-étranger portal at ameli.fr, and it reimburses a fixed share of your medical costs rather than the whole bill. The yearly cost is the same: Free. You are not asked for insurance documents at the visa stage, and the minimum-cover sum quoted for short-stay Schengen visas does not apply to the VLS-TS. The part the state does not reimburse is why most students add an optional top-up “mutuelle”, which each insurer prices individually, so there is no standard premium to quote.

Proof of funds for the France student visa

France sets no blocked account and no single statutory sum. The reference figure consulates and Études en France committees work from is €877.50 per month, raised on 1 August 2026 by the Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs; France-Visas itself defers to a per-applicant assessment through its visa wizard. Proof is documentary rather than one mandated instrument: bank statements, a guarantor’s signed “attestation de prise en charge”, an irrevocable-transfer or blocked-fund certificate, or a scholarship award certificate. Holders of a French government scholarship are treated as meeting the requirement automatically. Insufficient or unclear proof of resources is the first refusal reason on the official list, and files usually fail on presentation rather than on the amount: unexplained lump sums, a sponsor with no evidenced income, statements that do not match the study plan. Our France 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

The cheapest French universities are the ones that exonerate non-EU students to the EU rate. Université Paris Cité charges €178 per year for a bachelor’s and €255 per year for a master’s, with no application fee. Université Paris-Saclay matches that at €178 per year and €255 per year, and teaches 60 master’s programmes in English. University of Lille charges €254 per year for a first master’s enrolment under an automatic partial waiver, while its bachelor’s runs €178–2,902 per year depending on its Fee Waiver Commission, which you must apply to by 31 October. Sorbonne University sits at €178–2,895 per year and €255–3,941 per year, the low rate going to the capped share of non-EU applicants it exempts. University of Strasbourg is €178–2,902 per year and lists 98 English-taught master’s. A cheap fee in an expensive city is not a saving: a year in Grenoble at €600–1,000 per month or Lille at €650–1,300 per month costs less than the same waiver in Paris at €1,235–1,700 per month. Compare destinations on our cheapest countries in Europe page.

How to cover the costs

Two national schemes reach our students: the Eiffel Excellence Scholarship, which your university nominates you for rather than you applying directly, and Erasmus Mundus joint master’s, open to applicants from all nine origin countries. Eiffel access is restricted for Kenya, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Morocco, so confirm the scheme rules before you plan around it. The larger lever is the fee exoneration itself: a waiver down to €178 per year is worth more than most partial awards, and since 21 May 2026 it turns on documented individual hardship, so file that evidence with the application rather than after a decision. Work rights are real but capped at 964 hours/year (60% of the 1,607-hour annual legal working time) — an annual cap, not split into term-time/holiday allowances, paid at no less than €12.31 per hour. A capped student job covers groceries and transport, not tuition and rent, and no consulate accepts planned earnings as proof of funds. Details are on our France scholarships page.