NIE number in Spain: cost and processing time

Two questions come up before any other: what does a NIE cost, and how long will it take. Both have a clean official answer and a messier real one, and the gap between them is where people get caught out.

The official fee is €9.84. The official decision period is five working days. Almost nobody experiences the process that way, and it is worth understanding why.

The state fee: €9.84

Assigning a NIE at the request of the applicant costs €9.84. That is the tariff in Orden PJC/617/2025, published in the BOE and in force since 16 June 2025, which replaced the old 2011 tariff order following the new Reglamento de Extranjería.

You pay it using modelo 790 código 012, at a Spanish bank or online with a digital certificate. The amount has been stable for years, and the 2025 reform did not change it.

If a website tells you a NIE costs €12, it is quoting the wrong line of the same form.

What the neighbouring fees cost

The same modelo 790 código 012 covers several different documents, which is exactly why the figures get muddled. For context:

• NIE assignment at the applicant's request: €9.84
• EU citizen registration certificate, the green certificate: €12.00
• TIE for family members of Spanish nationals: €12.00
• TIE, first issue: €16.08
• TIE, renewal: €19.30
• TIE, long-term residence: €21.87

The bare NIE is the cheapest item on the list. Anything involving a physical card costs more.

Consular fees abroad

Apply at a Spanish consulate and you pay a consular tariff instead, set per country and revised periodically.

In eurozone countries the tariff matches the Spanish fee: the Spanish Embassy in Dublin and the consulate in Paris both charge €9.84. The Spanish Consulate General in London has charged £8.65 since 1 January 2026. Consulates in the Netherlands and Belgium, both eurozone, can be expected to charge the same €9.84, but check the published price list before your appointment rather than relying on that.

The costs nobody quotes you

The state fee is rarely the real bill. These are market prices, not official tariffs, and they vary a great deal between providers and regions:

• Lawyer or gestor handling the application: roughly €150 to €300, usually excluding the state fee and translations.
• Sworn translation: around €25 to €50 per page.
• Apostille: anything from a few euros to about €100 per document. It is almost always cheaper to have it done in the country where the document was issued than to arrange it from Spain.
• Power of attorney at a Spanish notary: roughly €50 to €300, depending on complexity and the number of copies.

For a straightforward non-resident application handled remotely, the realistic total sits well above the €9.84 headline, and that is worth knowing before you compare quotes.

How long it takes, route by route

Two separate clocks run, and conflating them is the single most common planning mistake.

In person in Spain. The legal maximum for a decision is five working days from filing. In practice, a plain NIE certificate is usually handed over the same day, at the counter. The processing is not the problem.

At a consulate abroad. Amsterdam quotes about two weeks, extending to a month. London says around three weeks. Edinburgh says three to four. Dublin is currently reporting roughly five weeks because of a backlog. Expect two to five weeks, with a visible upward drift across several consulates.

Through a representative in Spain. The same five-working-day legal period applies, but your representative still has to secure an appointment. There is no official fast lane for lawyers.

The appointment is the real bottleneck

None of the figures above include the wait for a cita previa, and that is where the months disappear.

Availability varies enormously by province. Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia are the well-known problem cases, where waits of several months have been widely reported, while quieter provinces can offer a slot within days. The Barcelona Bar Association has publicly pushed for action on the chronic shortage, and the Spanish press has reported organised networks hoarding appointments.

The underlying cause is straightforward: the foreign population has grown far faster than the staffing of the offices that serve it, and the 2025 regulatory reform added a wave of extra applications on top.

Practical consequence: if your timeline is tight, the province you apply in matters more than anything else on this page.

Is there an official fast-track?

No. There is no paid urgent procedure for a NIE, and the appointment system itself is a free public service.

This matters because plenty of services advertise guaranteed fast appointments. Some are legitimate: a lawyer or gestor monitoring the official system for released slots, or advising you to file in a less congested province, is simply using the same free system more effectively. Others are not. Spain's Interior Ministry has publicly reported dismantling a network that used bots to block the appointment system and then charged people between €30 and €200 for an appointment that costs nothing, and there are documented cases of paid "appointments" that never existed in the system at all.

If someone guarantees you a slot tomorrow for a fee, be sceptical.

A realistic budget

For a non-resident buyer who needs a NIE before signing at a notary, a sensible plan is: €9.84 in state fees, a professional fee in the low hundreds if you use one, possible translation and apostille costs if any foreign document is involved, and a timeline measured from the appointment date rather than the filing date.

Start earlier than feels necessary. The paperwork is quick; the queue is not.

Why Buenaley

The cheapest route on paper is often the slowest in practice, and the fastest route depends on where you are, where the property is and whether you can travel. That judgement is most of the value.

Buenaley is a Spanish law firm advising internationals on NIE applications, property purchases, tax and residency. We tell you upfront which route fits your deadline, what it will actually cost, and where the risk of delay sits.

• An honest timeline, including the appointment wait, not just the processing time.
• Filing under power of attorney where that avoids the queue entirely.
• A clear quote, with the €9.84 state fee shown separately from our work.

Need to know what your case will cost and how quickly it can be done? We can handle your NIE application or simply talk it through first. Get in touch.

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