What Austria actually offers

Austria is not a country where a single government scholarship covers tuition, living costs, and travel for international students at scale. What it offers instead is comparatively low tuition at public universities, a network of short-term research and mobility grants through OeAD (Austria’s national agency for education and internationalisation), and a residence permit system with clearly published financial thresholds. That combination makes Austria affordable for many students, but you should not go in expecting a “fully funded” degree unless you find a specific program that says so in writing.

This guide covers what non-EU/EEA students actually pay, where the OeAD grants fit, and what the student residence permit requires.

Tuition: what non-EU students pay per semester

Public Austrian universities are largely tuition-free for EU/EEA and Swiss citizens. Non-EU/EEA students pay a tuition fee from their first semester. At the University of Vienna, that fee is €726.72 per semester, plus a mandatory Austrian Students’ Union (ÖH) fee of €26.20, for a total of €752.92 per semester. Fees at other public universities are set at a similar level, since the tuition figure is set at the national level for the general fee-paying category, though individual institutions add their own ÖH contribution.

Some non-EU students are exempt from the tuition fee itself. The University of Vienna’s own tuition page lists exemptions for students who are citizens of a country on its list of designated developing countries, students with equivalent status under bilateral agreements, and, for winter semester 2026/27, Ukrainian citizens. If you think you might qualify for an exemption, check your target university’s tuition office directly rather than assuming, since the exemption categories are specific and change.

Universities of applied sciences (Fachhochschulen) and private universities set their own fees, which can run considerably higher than the public university rate, so treat the figure above as a floor for public universities rather than a country-wide ceiling.

OeAD grants: what they actually fund

OeAD runs the main scholarship database for Austria (searchable at grants.at) and administers several named grant programs. The one most open to applicants worldwide is the Ernst Mach Grant, which funds “young researchers from all disciplines and countries” other than Austria itself. It is a mobility and research grant, not a full-degree scholarship: grants run from one to nine months, and the online application window for the worldwide strand runs from September to 1 December each year. Other Ernst Mach variants target specific groups, including a Fachhochschule-specific grant for undergraduates and graduates from non-European universities, and a follow-up grant for postdoctoral researchers and lecturers from non-European developing countries who previously held OeAD funding.

Because these are largely short-term and research-focused, most students pursuing a full bachelor’s or master’s degree in Austria will not fund the whole degree through OeAD. Instead, OeAD grants are worth checking if you want a research stay, a semester exchange, or funding to develop a proposal before applying to a longer program elsewhere. For full-degree funding, check with your target university directly and search grants.at for department-specific or bilateral scholarships, since coverage varies a great deal by field and nationality.

The residence permit: what you need to prove

Non-EU/EEA students who plan to study a full degree program (rather than a short exchange under a mobility agreement) need an “Aufenthaltsbewilligung - Student” residence permit. It is issued for up to 12 months at a time (up to two years if you are on a recognised mobility program), and renewal depends on showing that you are making adequate academic progress, not simply reapplying.

The financial threshold is published and specific. To get the permit, you need to show you can cover your living costs for twelve months in advance, held in a savings account or bank account bearing your own name and accessible from Austria:

  • Under 24 years old: €722.58 per month
  • 24 years old or older: €1,308.39 per month
  • Couples applying together: €2,064.12 per month combined
  • Per dependent child: an additional €201.88 per month

If your accommodation costs more than €386.43 per month, you need to show funds beyond these baseline figures to cover the difference. The application itself carries a processing fee of €218.

Health insurance is a separate requirement

You need travel health insurance covering well over €30,000, including a guarantee to cover possible repatriation costs, to enter the country and start the process. Once you are enrolled and resident, most degree students meet the ongoing insurance requirement through Austria’s student self-insurance scheme (Studierendenselbstversicherung), which costs €78.84 per month through the national health insurance provider. Private insurance is accepted as an alternative if it covers all risks without waiting periods or cost caps, and the insurer must confirm this in writing; budget for one or the other in addition to tuition and living costs, since it is not optional.

Application deadlines

Austrian public universities work to national deadlines for general admission: 5 September for the winter semester and 5 February for the summer semester. Programs with entrance exams, including medicine, the arts, and some other restricted-admission subjects, run on separate and considerably earlier timelines, with the closing date for the entrance exam itself sometimes up to six months before the semester starts. Because foreign credential review takes longer than domestic review, apply well ahead of the stated deadline rather than at the wire, and confirm the specific date with your target university, since national deadlines are a floor and individual institutions can set their own within that window.

Putting the budget together

For a non-EU student at a public university, a realistic annual planning figure includes: roughly €1,500 in tuition and union fees across two semesters at a university like Vienna, the residence permit fee of €218, health insurance of roughly €950 a year if you use the student self-insurance scheme, and living costs that the residence permit process itself requires you to prove, a minimum of around €8,700 to €15,700 a year depending on your age bracket, before rent above the built-in accommodation allowance. None of this is a full estimate of what you will actually spend, since actual rent and food costs vary widely by city, but it gives you the floor that the immigration process itself requires you to prove you can meet.

If your goal is a fully self-funded degree, this is a genuinely workable budget compared with many destination countries. If your goal is a scholarship that covers everything, treat OeAD grants as one piece of a wider funding search rather than the whole plan, and check what a student visa actually asks you to show and what your visa or scholarship requires for health insurance for how these requirements compare with other countries before you commit to one.