TL;DR: PLM publishes no schedule of fees anywhere on plm.edu.ph — not per unit, not per programme, not per college. What settles the question instead is national law. PLM is listed by UniFAST as a Local University or College, and Republic Act 10931 exempts eligible Filipino undergraduates at SUCs and CHED-recognised LUCs from tuition and thirteen other school fees. The exemption is conditional and it stops at undergraduate level, which is why the only place PLM's own site mentions paying students is the College of Law.
If you want to know which programmes PLM runs, that is a separate question and we answer it in Courses Offered at Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila. This guide is only about money.
Start with what PLM does not publish
PLM's own sitemap lists around 55 pages. There is a page for admissions, one for each of its fifteen academic units, one for scholarships, one for downloads, one for the academic calendar and one for the citizen's charter. There is no fees page, no tuition page, and no assessment schedule.
That is not sloppiness. For a Local University whose undergraduate students are covered by free higher education, a schedule of fees is not the document prospective students need. But it does mean that anyone quoting you a PLM per-unit rate is quoting something PLM has not published.
The law that does the work
RA 10931, the Universal Access to Quality Tertiary Education Act, is the operative rule. UniFAST, the body that administers it, states Section 4 plainly: all Filipino students enrolled in courses in pursuance of a bachelor's degree, certificate degree, or any comparable undergraduate degree in any SUC and LUC shall be exempt from paying tuition and other school fees for units enrolled in.
PLM's status matters here, and it is checkable. UniFAST's own list of higher education institutions carries Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila with the institution type LUC. That is the category Section 4 names.
The four eligibility conditions
UniFAST publishes them, and each one bites:
- Filipino citizen.
- Meets the admission and retention policies of the SUC or LUC. Fail PLM's own retention rules and the exemption goes with them.
- No previous undergraduate degree. A second bachelor's is not covered.
- Not overstaying in the programme — the normal four or five years, plus a one-year grace period.
Condition two is the one students underestimate. Free tuition is contingent on staying in good academic standing at the university that grants it.
The thirteen fees, named
"Free tuition and other school fees" is vague until you see the list. UniFAST publishes it:
| Covered fees |
|---|
| Admission |
| Athletic |
| Computer |
| Cultural |
| Development |
| Entrance |
| Guidance |
| Handbook |
| Laboratory |
| Library |
| Medical and dental |
| Registration |
| School ID |
Laboratory fees being on that list is the single biggest item for science, engineering, nursing and physical therapy students, who at a private school would carry them separately every term.
What is not on the list: uniforms, books and printed materials, transport, board and lodging, review classes, PRC application fees, graduation fees charged outside the covered set, and student organisation dues. Those are yours. Our CHED free tuition guide goes through the national framework in more detail.
Where PLM's own site admits somebody pays
Search plm.edu.ph for a paying student and you find exactly one place: the College of Law.
Its admission requirements page states that Manila residency, evidenced by a voter's ID or certification plus a barangay certification, applies "for Manila's partial scholars only", and adds that "non-residents of Manila may apply as regular full-paying students."
Read that carefully, because it is easy to over-generalise. It is a statement about the Juris Doctor programme, not about PLM as a whole. Law is a professional graduate-level programme; RA 10931's free higher education provision is written for undergraduate degrees. So the College of Law is precisely where a paying category would have to appear — and it does.
The same page also says the CLAT fee is non-refundable and is paid through Land Bank of the Philippines, including its LinkBiz Portal, into the university's account. The amount is not published.
The College of Medicine page points the same way without naming money: applicants submit a Certificate of Indigency from DSWD, copies of parents' latest income tax return, and — for Manilans only — a certificate of voting history. Those are means and residency documents, which exist because something is being allocated.
What the undergraduate route actually asks for
For incoming freshmen, PLM runs the PLMAT. Its published guide describes an entirely online process: create an account on the applicant portal, verify by emailed code, agree to the Data Privacy Act notice, complete programme preference and applicant, academic and family information, then upload scanned PDFs of a PSA birth certificate, a Grade 11 certificate of general weighted average or Form 138, or for ALS completers an A&E certificate of completion, plus a 2x2 colour ID photo with a white background.
No application fee appears anywhere in that guide. For the AY 2027-2028 cycle, PLM published an application window of 14 August 2026 to 30 September 2026. Dates move every year; take them from PLM's admissions page, not from this one.
PLM also warns applicants to use an active personal email address and to check spam, because verification codes and both temporary and official applicant account details are sent by email. That sounds trivial until a code expires.
Scholarships sit on top, not instead
PLM runs a Scholarship Section under its Resource Generation Office, and its role is to connect students with external providers rather than to waive PLM's own charges. The published selection criteria that providers evaluate against:
- Family annual income of PHP 300,000 or less
- General weighted average not lower than 2.25
- No previous scholarship application and not currently a recipient of any grant
- Full-time student with a regular load, at any level
- Good moral character
Separately, PLM students appear as grantees of the Tertiary Education Subsidy (TES) and the Tulong Dunong Program (TDP) under CHED-UniFAST. Those are cash subsidies for living and learning costs, not tuition waivers — which is the point, since tuition is already covered.
Organisations or individuals who want to fund PLM scholars go through the Office of Public Affairs and a memorandum of agreement approved by the Board of Regents.
The honest gaps
Four things you cannot learn from PLM's website, and should ask about rather than guess:
- The rate for anyone outside the exemption — second-degree students, non-Filipinos, overstaying students. No figure is published.
- Graduate and professional programme fees, including the Graduate School of Law and the College of Medicine.
- The CLAT and CMAT fee amounts.
- Non-covered incidental costs — uniforms, laboratory consumables charged outside the covered laboratory fee, internship and practicum costs, and the very real cost of getting to Intramuros five days a week.
How to actually confirm your number
- For undergraduate admissions and the exemption, contact the admissions office at the address published on PLM's PLMAT page.
- For law, contact the College of Law directly; it publishes its own email on the CLAT page.
- For anything involving a bank transfer, verify the account against PLM's published details before paying. The College of Law page is the only place PLM publishes an account number, and it publishes it precisely so applicants do not pay a stranger.
- For what a comparable private university would cost you instead, our private versus public school comparison sets out the trade-off.
The PLM directory record carries the campus address and phone, and you can compare against other schools in Manila.
Sources
- UniFAST — Free Higher Education under RA 10931, including eligibility and the thirteen covered fees (unifast.gov.ph/fhe.html)
- UniFAST — List of Higher Education Institutions, showing PLM's institution type (unifast.gov.ph/hei-list.html)
- Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila — Admissions and PLMAT applicant guide, including requirements and the published application window (plm.edu.ph/admissions/plmat)
- Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila — College of Law admission requirements and CLAT application process (plm.edu.ph/admissions/clat)
- Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila — College of Medicine admission requirements (plm.edu.ph/admissions/cmat)
- Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila — Scholarship pages and scholarship FAQs (plm.edu.ph/scholarship)
- Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila — news release on CHED-UniFAST TES and TDP awarding, September 2025 (plm.edu.ph/news)
- Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila — sitemap (plm.edu.ph/sitemap.xml)
