What does it cost to move to New Zealand?
There is no honest single answer, so this calculator does not pretend to one. It takes the one figure that is published — Immigration New Zealand’s fee for your visa — and gives you a structured worksheet for the ten costs people actually forget, which you fill in with real quotes.
Checked against immigration.govt.nz on 2026-09-15
1. The published visa fee
$1,540 is the “Cost — From” figure Immigration New Zealand publishes for the Accredited Employer Work Visa.
2. Your own numbers
These are yours, not ours. We do not publish an average: what it costs depends on where you are coming from, how much you ship and where you land. Get real quotes and type them in.
The working
Up-front cost of the move
$1,540
$1,540 published visa fee + $0 your figures
One number worth adding
Most people underestimate the gap between arriving and being paid. Rent here is usually paid weekly or fortnightly in advance, and a bond is held on top of that.
Only the visa fee on this page comes from a published source. Everything else is what you typed.
How this tool works
The calculator has two halves and shows them separately on purpose.
The published half
The visa fee is the Cost — From figure on that visa’s page at immigration.govt.nz, read on 2026-09-15, multiplied by the number of people paying it. It is the only number on this page that comes from a source.
Your half
Everything else is a blank you fill in. We do not publish an “average cost of moving to New Zealand” because we have no defensible figure for one: it swings by an order of magnitude depending on whether you are flying from Sydney with two suitcases or shipping a container from Manchester with a dog and three children. An invented average would be the easiest untruth on this website, so there isn’t one.
The line people underestimate
The gap between arriving and being paid. Rent in New Zealand is normally paid weekly or fortnightly in advance, a bond is held on top, and a new job may not pay for a month. Our settling-in guides cover what has to be set up in that window — an IRD number, a bank account, a doctor, a school place.
Questions
How much does it cost to move to New Zealand?
There is no single figure, and anybody quoting one is guessing. The part that is fixed and published is the visa fee, which runs from a few hundred dollars to NZD $6,450 depending on the visa. Everything else — flights, shipping, pets, bond, a car, the weeks before your first pay — depends on your household. Use the worksheet above with real quotes rather than an internet average.
Why doesn't this calculator have default amounts filled in?
Because we have no published source for them. Every other figure on this site is copied from an official page with a link and a date; we are not going to break that rule for the one number people most want us to make up.
How much money do I need when I arrive?
Some visas set a published minimum, and where they do it is on that visa's page — the Post-Study Work Visa requires at least NZD $5,000 for living expenses, for example, and the United Kingdom Working Holiday Visa requires at least NZD $350 a month. Those are visa requirements, not a budget. What you actually need depends on your rent, your household and when you start being paid.
Do you sell help with any of this?
With the settling-in half, yes — the bank account, the IRD number, the rental, the schools, the driver licence. Not with anything to do with the visa. See relocation help for what that is and is not.
Sources
- Immigration New Zealand — every visa (each page carries its own fee)
- Immigration New Zealand — Post-Study Work Visa (published NZD $5,000 living expenses figure)
- Immigration New Zealand — United Kingdom Working Holiday Visa (published NZD $350 a month figure)
Read on 2026-09-15. Immigration rules change: if this page and the source disagree, the source is right.