International School Fees Index 2026

What 728 international schools across 46 cities actually publish, ranked on annual tuition at age 16 and converted to US dollars so cities in different countries can be compared. Every figure is a school's own published fee — not a "starting from", not an estimate, and not a range someone typed into a spreadsheet.

An international school year costs 12.4× more in New York than in Cairo

The median published fee at age 16 is $22,093 a year. That single number hides almost everything: at the top of the index a place in New York costs $51,390, while the same stage of schooling in Cairo costs $4,143. Look at individual schools rather than city medians and the gap widens again — the cheapest fee in this index is $1,509 and the dearest $75,300, a spread of 50×.

This is why a single "average international school fee" figure is useless for planning. The city you are posted to moves the number more than the school you choose does.

Median annual tuition by city, age 16

Cities with at least 5 schools publishing a fee that reaches age 16. Local-currency figures are on each city's own page; these are converted to USD.

69 of the 797 schools in the database stop before age 16 — primary-only schools — and are excluded from these figures rather than estimated. Cities with fewer than 5 priced schools are left out too.

What the headline fee leaves out

Tuition is the annual teaching fee and nothing else. Before a child starts, most schools also charge a set of one-off costs. Across the 668 schools that itemise them, the median total is $2,504 — about 11% of a year's tuition, payable up front and mostly non-refundable.

Not in any figure on this page: transport, uniforms, lunches, school trips, examination entries, English-language support, and the annual capital or building fee some schools bill on top of tuition. Where a school publishes its fees in two currencies, only the local leg is ranked. A school's own page always shows its own published currency, because that is what a parent is actually charged.

How this index is built

Every figure is the school's own published fee schedule, read from the school's own website or fee PDF — never a listing site or an aggregator. Tuition is taken at age 16, which is the same basis as every league table on FeeRank, so the number here matches the number on the city page it links to. Currencies are converted to USD at current rates; within a city the local currency is used. Each school carries a confidence tag and a link to the document its fees came from, and schools whose published fees stop before age 16 are excluded rather than estimated.

Sources are listed per school on every city page. If a figure is wrong, the school's page links to its own fee schedule so you can check it — and tell us.

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