TL;DR: There is no honest single number for "MBBS in the Philippines fees", and anyone who gives you one is guessing or selling. Consultancy sites currently claim totals ranging from ₹15 lakh to ₹65 lakh for the same six-year path. What schools actually publish is far thinner: Our Lady of Fatima University lists US$3,500 first-year medicine tuition for international students plus a US$6,000 foreign fee; the University of Santo Tomas lists a US$15,000 out-of-state fee for accepted international applicants; Davao Medical School Foundation publishes a ₱1,300 entrance exam fee, a ₱10,000 commitment fee and a ₱38,000 enrolment down payment. Add ₱1,900 or US$60 for the NMAT and ₱9,720 plus US$50 for the Bureau of Immigration student visa and ACR I-Card. Everything else you must get from the registrar in writing.
The Quote Spread Is the Story
Before any table of numbers, look at what the market is telling Indian families right now. These are all live consultancy pages, all describing the same destination and broadly the same course:
| Source (all consultancy sites, not schools) | Claimed total for the full course |
|---|---|
| vmap.co.in | "between INR 15 lakhs and INR 25 lakhs, depending on the university" |
| moksh16.com | "Total cost ranges from Rs.25 lakh to Rs.50 lakh"; its per-university table runs from about ₹14.75 lakh to ₹48.14 lakh |
| dmsf.in (an India-side admission portal, not the school) | "MBBS Philippines fees for Indian students in 2026-27 range from ₹35 to ₹65 Lakhs total depending on the college" |
The low end of one page is ₹14.75 lakh. The high end of another is ₹65 lakh. That is a factor of four for the same degree in the same country, and the pages do not disagree about the schools, only about the arithmetic.
Note also that dmsf.in is not Davao Medical School Foundation. The school's own site is dmsf.edu.ph. A site whose domain looks like a college's name is not automatically that college, and this is the single most common way families end up paying an intermediary's number instead of the school's.
Why the Spread Exists
Four mechanical reasons, all of which you can neutralise by asking one question in writing.
The pre-med years get counted or dropped. The Philippines does not award an MBBS. It awards a Doctor of Medicine (MD) after a pre-medical bachelor's degree. A "BS+MD" quote covers roughly six years; an "MD" quote covers roughly four. Same school, same student, very different totals. Our MBBS for Indian students guide walks through the structure.
Living costs are sometimes inside the number and sometimes not. Hostel and food are the biggest recurring line after tuition, and moving them in or out changes a total by lakhs.
The agency's own fee is often invisible. A "package" price can carry a service margin that is never itemised. A school-published fee schedule cannot.
Currency drift. Fees are set in pesos or US dollars and quoted in rupees. Different pages use different conversion rates and different years. Every rupee figure in this article is an approximation using roughly ₱1 = ₹1.55 and US$1 = ₱62, and will be wrong the day the rate moves.
The question that fixes all four: ask for a year-by-year fee schedule, on school letterhead, naming each academic year, the currency, and whether hostel and food are included. Anything else is a sales estimate.
What Schools Actually Publish
We checked the schools' own websites. This is what is genuinely on the public record as of August 2026. Where a cell says not published, that is a finding, not an omission.
| School (own website) | Fee published | Amount | Approx ₹ |
|---|---|---|---|
| Our Lady of Fatima University — College of Medicine, international students | 1st year tuition | US$3,500 | ~₹3.4 lakh |
| Our Lady of Fatima University — same page | Foreign fee, non-refundable, one-time, payable in one year | US$6,000 | ~₹5.8 lakh |
| Our Lady of Fatima University — local residents page | 1st year, full payment, Valenzuela campus | ₱115,688 per semester | ~₹1.8 lakh |
| Our Lady of Fatima University | Application fee / minimum down payment | ₱1,000 / ₱20,000 | ~₹1,550 / ~₹31,000 |
| University of Santo Tomas — Faculty of Medicine and Surgery | Out-of-state fee for accepted international applicants | US$15,000 | ~₹14.4 lakh |
| University of Santo Tomas | Application fee, non-local applicants | US$320 or ₱17,600 | ~₹30,700 |
| St. Luke's Medical Center College of Medicine | Institutional Development Fund endowment on enrolment, non-refundable | US$10,000 | ~₹9.6 lakh |
| St. Luke's Medical Center College of Medicine | Application fee, foreign applicants | US$350 | ~₹33,600 |
| Davao Medical School Foundation | Application and entrance exam fee | ₱1,300 | ~₹2,000 |
| Davao Medical School Foundation | Commitment fee | ₱10,000 | ~₹15,500 |
| Davao Medical School Foundation | Enrolment down payment | ₱38,000 | ~₹59,000 |
| Most other Philippine medical schools | Multi-year foreign-student tuition schedule | Not published — confirm with the registrar | — |
Two things are worth pausing on.
First, the OLFU international page is worded exactly like this: "1st Year – International Student, US $3,500 (Total Assessment for the semester Foreign Fee: US $6,000*)", with the note "*Foreign Fee is non-refundable; one time payment payable in one year." Read literally, that is ambiguous about whether the US$6,000 is on top of the US$3,500 or the assessment that contains it. We are not going to guess. Ask OLFU to confirm in writing which reading applies, and get the answer before you transfer anything.
Second, the size of the foreign-student premium at the well-known Manila schools is the thing agencies rarely lead with. UST's US$15,000 out-of-state fee and St. Luke's US$10,000 endowment are one-time charges on top of tuition. They are published, they are non-refundable, and they alone are larger than some agencies' claimed total for the entire degree.
The University of Santo Tomas does publish per-term tuition schedules for the Faculty of Medicine and Surgery on its Tuition Fees page, listed as "MEDICINE AND SURGERY, Faculty of A.Y. 2026-2027 First Term (August to December 2026) — Level I to IV, LEAPMed and Junior Intern (Clerkship)". Read the current term's schedule there rather than any third-party summary of it.
Davao Medical School Foundation announced on 24 February 2025 that it would "suspend any request for tuition fees and other fee increases for the school year 2025-2026 until further notice". That is a freeze notice, not a fee schedule, and it does not tell you the underlying amount.
The Fees Nobody Puts in the Package
These are published, fixed, and easy to verify, which makes them a useful sanity check on any quote. If a "total cost" page does not mention them at all, the page has not costed the actual journey.
| Item | Published amount | Approx ₹ | Who publishes it |
|---|---|---|---|
| NMAT, sat inside the Philippines | ₱1,900.00 | ~₹2,950 | Center for Educational Measurement |
| NMAT, sat outside the Philippines | US$60.00, credit card only | ~₹5,800 | Center for Educational Measurement |
| 9(f) student visa conversion, total of all line items | ₱9,720.00 | ~₹15,100 | Bureau of Immigration |
| ACR I-Card, additional fee | US$50.00 | ~₹4,800 | Bureau of Immigration |
| Certificate of Eligibility (as charged by one school) | US$40.00 | ~₹3,800 | St. Luke's Medical Center College of Medicine |
| Duplicate NMAT report form / shipping | ₱50.00 per copy / ₱80.00 per shipment | ~₹80 / ~₹125 | Center for Educational Measurement |
The NMAT figure of ₱1,900 breaks down as a ₱500 registration fee and a ₱1,400 test fee; the US$60 international rate is US$15 registration plus US$45 test. Payments go through Dragonpay only, and service charges are added on top. Full detail is in our NMAT guide for foreign students.
The Bureau of Immigration's ₱9,720 total is the sum of its published line items for student visa conversion: application ₱2,000, implementation ₱1,000, service ₱1,000, certificate ₱500, visa ₱1,000, ICR/CRTV/CRTS/CRTT/CRPE ₱1,400, legal research ₱70, Alien Certificate of Registration ₱1,000, head tax ₱250, and three express fees of ₱500 each. The same page carries the note "*Fees are updated as of 06 March 2014 and may change without prior notice," so treat it as a floor and confirm at the counter. Our 9(f) student visa guide covers the process itself.
Living Costs: What Is and Is Not Known
We could not find a Philippine medical school publishing a complete cost-of-living figure for foreign students. That matters, because living costs are typically the second-largest line in any total and the one most often stated with false precision.
What circulates is agency estimation. One consultancy page states "expect to spend between INR 12,000 to INR 15,000 each month for accommodation and meals", which works out to roughly ₹1.4-1.8 lakh a year, or about ₹8-11 lakh across a six-year path. That is a plausible order of magnitude and it is also, straightforwardly, an agency claim rather than a published rate.
The honest way to handle this is to convert the unknown into a question. When a school sends you an offer, ask for the hostel rate in pesos per semester, in writing, and whether meals are included. Then you have one real number instead of a range someone else invented. Our broader cost of studying in the Philippines guide covers the non-medical side of the same problem.
Build Your Own Total
The point of this article is not to hand you a number. It is to let you assemble one that survives contact with a registrar.
- Fix the structure first. Are you entering a BS+MD package or an MD after a completed bachelor's? Write down the exact number of years.
- Get tuition per year, in writing, for every year. Not "approximately", not "starting from". Every year, in the currency charged.
- List every one-time fee separately. Foreign fee, out-of-state fee, endowment, commitment fee, down payment. Ask which are refundable. Most are not.
- Add the fixed public costs. NMAT, visa conversion, ACR I-Card, annual immigration requirements, document authentication and apostille.
- Add hostel at the school's own quoted rate, plus a food and personal allowance you decide, and multiply by the number of years from step 1.
- Add the exam you cannot skip. If you are going home to India to practise, budget for FMGE or NExT preparation in the final years, and read the published pass rates before you assume it is a formality. Ours are in FMGE pass rates for Philippine medical graduates.
- Add a currency buffer. The peso-rupee and dollar-rupee rates will move over six years. A quote in rupees is a snapshot, not a price.
If the result is uncomfortable, that is useful information. It is far better to find out at step 2 than in year four.
The Cost That Is Not Money
One line item never appears in any fee table: the risk that the course you paid for does not qualify you to practise where you intend to. India's National Medical Commission requires, among other things, a course of at least 54 months, a 12-month internship at the same foreign institution, and English as the medium of instruction. A degree that misses any of those can leave you with the full cost and no licence.
That requirement set interacts directly with how a Philippine BS+MD programme is structured, so it belongs in your costing conversation, not after it. Start with do you need NEET for MBBS in the Philippines, and confirm with the school in writing how its specific programme meets the 54-month and internship rules for your intake year.
What to Send the Registrar
Copy this, send it to the admissions office of every school on your list, and compare the replies rather than the brochures:
- Please confirm the total tuition for each academic year of the programme I would enter, in the currency charged.
- Please list every one-time fee, stating which are non-refundable.
- Does the school charge a separate foreign-student or out-of-state fee, and if so how much and when is it due?
- What is the current hostel rate per semester, and are meals included?
- How many months of instruction does the programme provide before internship, and where is the internship completed?
- What is the school's NMAT percentile requirement for foreign applicants?
A school that answers all six in writing has told you more than any comparison page can. A school that will not is telling you something too.
Sources
- NMAT Payment & Refund Policy — Center for Educational Measurement
- NMAT Frequently Asked Questions (PDF) — Center for Educational Measurement
- College of Medicine Tuition Fees – International Students — Our Lady of Fatima University
- College of Medicine Tuition Fees – Local Residents — Our Lady of Fatima University
- Tuition Fees — University of Santo Tomas
- Faculty of Medicine and Surgery Admission — University of Santo Tomas
- Doctor of Medicine admissions — St. Luke's Medical Center College of Medicine
- Admission — Davao Medical School Foundation
- No tuition fee increase for SY 2025-2026 — Davao Medical School Foundation
- Student Visa (9F) — Bureau of Immigration
- Foreign Medical Graduate Licentiate Regulations, 2021 (Gazette PDF) — National Medical Commission
- Consultancy pages cited only as evidence of what agencies claim: vmap.co.in, moksh16.com, dmsf.in
