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By Olami, AbroadPilot · Reviewed September 2026
Every guide on this site carries a line like “checked against the official fee schedule — September 2026.” This page explains what that actually means in practice, so you can judge how much to trust it yourself rather than taking our word for it.
Every number here has a source and a date. If a government hasn’t published one, we say so instead of guessing.
What counts as a source
We use the primary source only — the government department, embassy, or funding body that actually sets the rule — never a third-party blog’s summary of it, even a good one. For a visa fee that means the immigration ministry’s own fee schedule (IRCC, GOV.UK, the U.S. Department of State, the German Federal Foreign Office and equivalents). For a scholarship it means the funder’s own eligibility page, not an aggregator site. Where a figure could not be confirmed against a primary source, the guide says so directly instead of repeating a number found elsewhere.
What “checked as of [month, year]” means
It means a specific person read that specific number on that specific official page on that date. It is not an automatic feed and it does not mean the number is still current today — visa fees, income thresholds, and scholarship terms change on their own schedule, sometimes with no public notice. The date exists so you can judge how stale a figure might be, not to imply it updates itself. If you find one that no longer matches the official page, tell us through the contact page.
What happens when a government doesn’t publish a fixed number
This comes up constantly. The United States has no published national proof-of-funds threshold for a visitor visa; Australia sets its living-cost figure in a legislative instrument rather than on a public visa page; several scholarships publish no single global deadline because it varies by partner institution or country. In every one of these cases, the guide states that plainly and links to where you’d find your specific answer, instead of inventing an average that would look complete and be wrong.
How re-checking actually works
There is no fixed re-check calendar publishing a guaranteed cadence — that would be a promise we can’t keep for every guide on the site. In practice, guides get re-verified when: a reader flags something through the contact page, a scheduled content pass reaches that page, or a known policy change (a fee increase, a visa route pausing) is confirmed and the affected guides are updated. The “checked as of” date on each page is the honest record of the last time that happened, not a claim that nothing has moved since.
Where this doesn’t apply
Travel Stories and first-person accounts on this site are personal experience, not verified fact, and are labelled as such rather than carrying a “checked” date. Immigration News headlines link straight to their original publisher and are summarised for convenience — we are not the source of record for those, the linked outlet is.
Frequently asked questions
Do you use AI to write these guides?
Drafting and research are assisted by AI tools, but every published figure is checked against the primary source described above before it goes live — the standard doesn’t relax because a tool helped write the sentence around the number.
What if I find an outdated figure?
Use the contact page. Tell us the guide, the figure, and what the official source currently shows, and we’ll check and correct it.
Why do some guides have more sources listed than others?
Because some questions genuinely require citing more than one authority — a Schengen guide might cite both the issuing country’s foreign ministry and the European Commission’s Schengen policy pages. A guide with one source isn’t less rigorous; it means one authority governs that entire topic.
Next steps
See this standard applied across our visa guides, scholarships, and free planning tools, or read more about who writes and checks them.
