costs & funding
Sweden charges real tuition and has the strictest rules in this guide about where your money is allowed to sit. Both are worth getting right before you apply.
Lab-based, technical and design programmes sit at the upper end. In euro terms that is roughly €7,000–26,000 a year — real money, and a correction to the widespread belief that Scandinavian education is free for everyone.
Application fee: SEK 900, one-time per application round and non-refundable
A sequencing rule that catches people: you are not finally admitted — and cannot get the permit — until you pay the first tuition instalment and your university confirms it to Migrationsverket
Amount required: roughly SEK 10,300–10,700 per month of the permit period
For a typical academic year: budget roughly SEK 103,000–123,000 for about 10 months
The figure is set annually, so verify the current one on migrationsverket.se rather than trusting any guide — including this one.
Reductions available: the monthly amount drops if your institution provides free food (−SEK 2,960) or free housing (−SEK 4,736) in 2026
This section matters more for Nepali applicants than for almost anyone else, because of how savings are commonly held in Nepal.
Assets in a microfinance bank are NOT approved. Neither are credit, shares, or funds locked or frozen during the permit period.
What Migrationsverket does accept — and usefully, these can be combined:
Accepted sources: your own bank assets, a scholarship, student grants or loans from Nepal, a sponsor, or employment income — and these can be combined
A full exemption: holders of certain scholarships intended for living expenses — Sida, the EU, the Swedish Institute — may be exempt from showing separate funds
Note that Sweden is more flexible on source than Finland, which rejects sponsor money outright. A sponsor is acceptable here. What is not acceptable is the wrong kind of institution holding it — so if your family's savings are in a microfinance bank, move them to a bank Migrationsverket accepts well ahead of applying.
Living costs: roughly SEK 8,000–12,000 per month
Residence-permit application fee: SEK 1,500 for adults, non-refundable
Stockholm is the expensive end; Lund and Uppsala are notably cheaper, partly because of subsidised student housing. In a country where you must prove a fixed monthly sum regardless, choosing a cheaper city means the money you show goes further in practice.
Worth a serious attempt rather than a glance, because it is one of the few genuinely full scholarships available to Nepali students anywhere.
SISGP: fully funded — tuition and living costs — with Nepal an eligible country and around 700 eligible master's programmes
Around 700 master's programmes are eligible. It covers tuition and living costs, and holding it can exempt you from demonstrating separate maintenance funds — which removes the microfinance problem entirely. Highly competitive, and the application cycle is separate from and earlier than you might expect.
Reference rate used here: 1 SEK ≈ NPR 13–14
A year of maintenance funds is roughly NPR 13.4–17.2 lakh
SEK 150,000 of tuition is roughly NPR 19.5–21 lakh
Nepali bank education loans: not published