Proof of funds for Sweden, and the tuition instalment you pay before you have a permit

In short: Sweden asks you to evidence SEK 10,656 for every month your permit covers, about EUR 960 at the 2026 level. If you are a fee-paying student it asks for something else first: the first tuition instalment, paid before the permit application can be made at all. Two pots of money, needed at the same time, before anyone has decided your case.

Three numbers get mixed up in almost every conversation we have about Sweden, and the mix-up is what wrecks a budget:

• what you must SHOW — money that stays yours and is only evidenced;
• what you SPEND to apply — money that leaves and does not come back;
• what the DEGREE costs — tuition and living, spread over years.

They are not interchangeable. And Sweden is the one country where the calendar forces two of them to collide, which is why this page exists separately from our general proof of funds guide.

The three numbers, separated

Living costs break down at roughly EUR 400 to 650 for housing, 230 to 330 for food, 50 to 75 for transport and 90 to 160 for everything else — city by city in Stockholm, Lund and Gothenburg, and totalled for a Bangladeshi family in what studying in Sweden costs. For the test itself, IDP listed IELTS on Computer at BDT 29,600 on 9 September 2026. We are not quoting a permit fee or a processing time here: Migrationsverket publishes both, they change, and a fee copied off a blog is how people arrive at the counter short.

The instalment: what makes Sweden different from the other eight

If you are a fee-paying student — which most Bangladeshi applicants are, unless a waiver or a scholarship changes it — the first tuition instalment must be paid before you apply for the residence permit. Without it you cannot apply at all.

Read that as a family, not as a rule. The money leaves Bangladesh, crosses into a Swedish university's account, and only then does an immigration officer open your file. You have no permit. You have no guarantee. And you still need the maintenance figure evidenced at the same moment.

This ordering, not the size of either number, is the single biggest reason a Bangladeshi family's Sweden plan fails financially. Not the tuition level, which is ordinary for northern Europe. Not the monthly figure, which is in line with the cost of living there. The problem is that both are demanded at once, up front, from a family that has usually planned one pot of money.

Two practical defences. First, ask the university in writing for the exact instalment amount and its payment deadline — it is a portion of the annual fee, fixed by the university, and nobody else can tell you what it is. Second, ask for the published refund policy in the same email. Whether anything comes back if your permit is refused is the university's question, not the Swedish state's; the policies differ, and they are a condition to read before you transfer, not after. Then move the money through a legal route with the paperwork intact: sending tuition from Bangladesh and the student file at your bank.

If a tuition waiver, a Swedish Institute scholarship or another Nordic scheme removes the fee, this whole section stops applying to you — which is precisely why those deadlines, which fall early, are worth more than they look. Just be clear about what a waiver does not cover: it never touches the maintenance requirement.

A payment is not evidence, and you cannot show the same money twice

This is the sentence we most often have to say twice.

The instalment is a payment. Once it is transferred it is no longer in your account, so it can no longer be part of what you evidence. The maintenance figure is evidence: money that is yours, available, and stays yours through the assessment and beyond it.

Picture a family that assembles exactly the maintenance sum in one account, pays the instalment out of it in October, and submits the same statement in November. Nothing dishonest has happened, and the file is still short — by the whole instalment — because one pot was asked to do two jobs. The fix is boring and works: plan them as two lines in the budget from the first day, and if the instalment must come out of the same savings, replace it before the account is evidenced and keep the paperwork showing where the replacement came from.

Assessed per month of the permit, so a longer degree asks for more

Sweden's maintenance requirement is monthly by design. The sum is the monthly figure multiplied by the number of months your permit covers, which means a longer programme raises the total, and a two-year master's is assessed across the whole period rather than one year at a time.

We are deliberately not printing a grand total on this page. The number of months is decided by your programme dates and by the permit period the agency grants — not by us — and a total lifted from a consultancy's page is exactly the kind of number a caseworker will not recognise. Do the arithmetic yourself against your own offer letter, write it down, and be ready to explain it.

One more detail that catches people: the figure is set in Swedish kronor. The EUR 960 is an approximate conversion, and conversions move. Budget in kronor, convert for your own understanding, and never plan to the euro to the last digit.

What the caseworker is actually testing

Here is the part that most pages miss. An officer reading your file is not counting a balance. They are testing whether the money is explicable — whether this account, with this history, plausibly belongs to this family and will still be there when you land. Four questions do almost all the work.

Whose account is it in? Check this on Migrationsverket's own page before building a plan around anyone else's account, because it is exactly the sort of condition that differs between countries and gets copied wrongly from one blog to another. What is true everywhere: a sponsor makes the source question bigger, not smaller — see sponsors and affidavits, affidavits embassies actually accept and what happens when the embassy calls your sponsor.

How long has it been there? A history beats a snapshot. An ordinary account with months of ordinary movement is worth more than a perfect balance that appeared last week. Our guides to bank statements and getting one at the counter in Dhaka explain what to ask your branch for, and a solvency certificate is a different document doing a different job — never a substitute.

What arrived, and when? A large deposit immediately before submission is the most damaging thing you can do to an honest file. It reads as money borrowed for the photograph. If your funding genuinely arrives as a lump — a land sale, a retirement payment, a loan — let it arrive early, and keep the deed, the sanction letter or the receipt with the statement.

What evidences the source rather than the amount? The amount is one line. The source is the story, and the story is what is assessed: a salary certificate with pay slips, a trade licence and tax return for business income, a sale deed, a loan sanction letter, a sponsor's own statement plus proof of the relationship. How embassies verify financial documents sets out how far that checking goes, why an inflated statement gets caught explains why the shortcut is not one, and education loans and show money covers the honest ways the money is actually raised in Bangladesh.

Your Bangladeshi documents then need to travel. Sweden accepts an apostille — Bangladesh joined the Convention, in force 30 March 2025 — but do not generalise that across the Nordics: Denmark, Greece and Finland objected, so for those three the full consular legalisation chain still applies. The order of steps is set out in attestation and apostille and the countries that refuse it.

No blocked account — which is less of a relief than it sounds

Sweden does not use a blocked account, and neither do any of our nine countries. Families hear this as good news. It is closer to the opposite. A blocked account answers the officer's question for them: the money is frozen, so it demonstrably exists and demonstrably stays. An ordinary account leaves you to answer it, with history and documents. That is why everything above matters more in Sweden than a single impressive balance ever will.

Fifteen hours a week is not a funding plan

Term-time work in Sweden has been capped at 15 hours a week since 11 June 2026, with the limit relaxed over the summer and for university-related work, and breaking the cap can cost you the permit — the detail is in student work rules in Sweden and summer versus term time.

But the cap is not really the point. At the application stage you have no job in Sweden, so there is nothing to evidence. A permit file is assessed on money that already exists; future earnings are a hope. Part-time work makes a funded year more comfortable — it does not make an unfunded year possible. Compare destinations honestly in the nine countries ranked for part-time work and read a student visa is not a work permit before anyone sells you the opposite.

Who should not choose Sweden on these numbers

Four readers, plainly.

A family that can raise the instalment or the maintenance figure but not both at the same moment. Someone whose plan depends on earning the shortfall after arrival. Anyone borrowing the instalment against a refund policy they have not read. And anyone treating the spend as an investment in settling: study years do not count towards permanent residence in Sweden, only working years do, citizenship comes after eight years of residence, and what follows graduation is a 12-month job-seeking permit. Sweden is worth choosing for the education and the working conditions, not as a migration shortcut — what Sweden is actually good for is blunter about it, and Sweden versus Denmark, Finland versus Sweden and what a first year costs across Europe will show you where the same money goes further.

The order that works

1. 1Fix the two numbers before you fall in love with a programme. Instalment amount and refund policy from the university, in writing; monthly maintenance figure from Migrationsverket, multiplied by your own months.
2. 2Start the account history early. Months, not weeks. Nothing about a statement can be fixed at the end.
3. 3Document the source as you go. Sale deed, sanction letter, salary certificate, sponsor evidence — collected when the money moves, not reconstructed afterwards.
4. 4Apply through universityadmissions.se in January for an August or September start, and read the exact dates on the portal, not here.
5. 5Accept the offer, pay the instalment, then apply to Migrationsverket — in that order, because Sweden gives you no other one. The whole route is in how Sweden handles a Bangladeshi application and study in Sweden from Bangladesh.

If a refusal does come, read the letter before reacting: how to read a refusal letter and refused, and how to reapply properly. Our full country page is Sweden, and if you want a second pair of eyes on a funding plan before the money moves, that is the cheapest hour you will ever spend on this application.