CA Course Fees 2027: Registration, Exam, Total Cost | BootcampGuide

By Deepak Sharma, Marketing Manager at BootcampGuide and Content Lead at TestMu AI. B2B SaaS content strategist, certified in Selenium, Cypress, Playwright, Appium, Automation Testing and KaneAI. Published 2026-11-07. 14 min read. Human edited.

Topics: CA, Course Fees, Finance and Accounting, India, Original Research

By Deepak Sharma, BootcampGuide. ICAI's fees were read from its New Scheme prospectus, its FAQ on the CA course and its January 2027 exam announcement and fee chart on 7 November 2026, and every coaching fee from the institute's own course page the same day. We list CA courses from several of these institutes; none of them paid to appear in this article or saw it before it was published. See sources.

CA course fees paid to ICAI come to ₹84,500 for the whole course through the Foundation route, or ₹74,000 through Direct Entry after graduation, if you pass each exam at the first attempt. That is ₹49,000 in registration fees (₹9,000 for Foundation, ₹18,000 for Intermediate and ₹22,000 for Final), ₹7,500 in exam fees, and ₹28,000 for the two compulsory ICITSS and AICITSS courses. Coaching is the bigger cost: ₹87,000 to ₹1.98 lakh for all three levels at the institutes below, so most students spend about ₹1.7 lakh to ₹2.8 lakh in all.

Two things make the CA course cheaper than its fee guides suggest. The two-year articleship pays a stipend of at least ₹60,000 to ₹1,08,000 in all, depending on your city, which covers most of what ICAI charges. And ICAI's exam fees are small: a re-attempt at one group costs ₹1,500 or ₹1,800, so the real cost of failing is the extra coaching and the lost months, not the fee.

Key takeaway: If you are sitting the January 2027 Foundation or Intermediate exam, the exam form closes on 16 November 2026. After that, until 19 November, ICAI adds a ₹600 late fee, which is more than a third of the Foundation exam fee itself.

CA course fee structure at a glance

Every fee ICAI charges a student in India, level by level. Registration is paid once per level; the exam fee is paid every time you sit.

Totals assume both groups are sat together, once. Sitting the groups at different sessions adds ₹300 at Intermediate and ₹300 at Final, for ₹85,100 in all. ICAI charges no separate fee for the Self-Paced Online Modules, and the Foundation registration fee includes the study material.

CA Foundation fees: registration and exam

The CA Foundation registration fee is ₹9,000, paid once on ICAI's student portal. ICAI's FAQ says it includes the prospectus and the Foundation study material, so a quote of ₹9,400 or ₹9,800 has added an optional journal subscription or old charges that are no longer listed. The Foundation exam fee is ₹1,500 per attempt at an Indian centre.

You can register after Class 10, but you must register four months before the exam you want to sit: by 1 January for May, 1 May for September and 1 September for January. Foundation is held three times a year, in January, May and September. The registration is valid for four years from your first eligible attempt and cannot be revalidated, so a Foundation student who runs out of time registers and pays again.

CA Intermediate fees: registration, exam and ICITSS

The CA Intermediate registration fee is ₹18,000. It covers both groups. ICAI's FAQ says you may sit one group at a time but must register for both, so the ₹13,000 "single group" registration on many fee pages is a figure from ICAI's old 2017 fee sheet. The same ₹18,000 applies whether you come from Foundation or through Direct Entry.

Intermediate needs eight months of study after registration, so registration closes earlier: by 1 May for the January exam, 1 September for May and 1 January for September. It is held three times a year, alongside Foundation. Registration is valid for five years and can be revalidated once, for ₹400.

After passing both groups, and before articleship can start, you complete ICITSS: a 15-day Information Technology course at ₹6,500 and a 15-day Orientation Course at ₹7,000, ₹13,500 in all. Fee guides that quote about ₹7,000 for ICITSS have counted only one of the two parts.

CA Final fees: registration, exam and AICITSS

The CA Final registration fee is ₹22,000 (US$1,100 for foreign students), for both groups. It is valid for ten years and can be revalidated every ten years for ₹500.

Final fees are from ICAI's fee chart for the September and November 2026 exams, its latest with Final fees; the January 2027 session is for Foundation and Intermediate only. Dollar fees are converted at the RBI reference rate of ₹95.2492 for 6 November 2026.

After articleship and before the Final exam you complete AICITSS: Advanced Information Technology at ₹7,500 and Management and Communication Skills at ₹7,000, ₹14,500 in all. ICAI also offers a four-week residential Professional Skills Development programme in place of the MCS course, for ₹48,000 including boarding. In 2026 the Final exam was held in May and November; it is not held three times a year like the earlier levels.

January 2027 exam form: fees and deadlines

With the late fee, the January 2027 form costs ₹2,100 for Foundation or one Intermediate group and ₹3,300 for both Intermediate groups. ICAI charges no separate form fee, and accepts cards, net banking and BHIM UPI. To sit in January 2027, Foundation students must have registered by 1 September 2026 and Intermediate students by 1 May 2026. ICAI had not published the May 2027 notification on 7 November 2026.

CA coaching fees: 7 institutes compared

Coaching is optional, but it is where most of the money goes. These are the published fees on each institute's own CA pages on 7 November 2026. None of the pages says whether GST is included, so ask before you pay. You can compare the CA coaching courses we list by level, mode and city.

What the table shows:

• Online Foundation coaching costs ₹15,000 to ₹21,000 for all four papers at Ultimate CA, Swapnil Patni Classes, Vsmart Academy and Aldine CA. Classroom coaching in Pune costs about three to four times as much.
• Intermediate is the most expensive level to coach: ₹37,000 to ₹58,499 online for both groups, and ₹95,922 face to face. It has six papers, and the pass rate for both groups together was 13.21% in September 2026.
• Final is often bought paper by paper. Few institutes sell a both-groups Final package; Vsmart's Group I and Group II combos add up to ₹34,998 to ₹41,998.
• Live and recorded cost the same at several institutes. Ultimate CA charges ₹37,000 for Intermediate both groups either way, and Swapnil Patni Classes prices its live and recorded online modes the same. Choose by how you study, not by price.

CA coaching fees by city

ICAI's fees are the same everywhere in India. Coaching prices differ mainly by mode: online courses cost the same wherever you live, while classroom and residential courses are tied to a city. Of the institutes above, Swapnil Patni Classes runs classrooms in Pune, J.K. Shah Classes in Mumbai, PSP Educate India in Vadodara, Ahmedabad and Anand, and ArivuPro Academy in Chennai and Bengaluru. Moving to a coaching city adds rent and food, which can cost more than the coaching itself.

Total cost of the CA course: three budgets

These add up ICAI's fees and coaching for the whole course, through the Foundation route, with one attempt at each level. Coaching uses published fees from the table: the cheapest full online packages, the dearest online packages, and Pune classroom courses for Foundation and Intermediate.

Through Direct Entry, a graduate skips Foundation and its ₹10,500 in ICAI fees and its coaching, so the totals fall by about ₹25,000 to ₹70,000. Things that push the total up:

• Re-attempts. Pass rates are low: 18.93% at Foundation in September 2026, 13.21% for both Intermediate groups in September 2026, and 14.07% for both Final groups in May 2026. ICAI's fee for another attempt is only ₹1,500 to ₹3,300, but repeat coaching, test series and another four to six months of study cost far more.
• Living away from home. A residential programme such as Swapnil Patni's ₹1,40,000 Gurukul includes food and stay; a rented room in a coaching city is extra.
• Late fees and revalidation. ₹600 per late form; ₹400 to revalidate Intermediate and ₹500 for Final; a fresh ₹9,000 if a Foundation registration lapses.

What you pay, and when

Add up ICAI's own timings, four months of Foundation study, eight months of Intermediate study, two years of articleship and at least six months before Final, and the course takes roughly three and a half to four years from the Foundation exam for someone who passes every level at the first attempt. That is our reckoning; ICAI does not state a single figure. J.K. Shah Classes puts it at three to four years including articleship. With the low pass rates, most students take longer, and searches for the "total fees for CA course for 5 years" reflect that. Spread over five years, ICAI's fees still come to under ₹17,000 a year.

Articleship stipend: the CA course pays some of it back

During the two-year articleship, the firm you train with must pay a monthly stipend. ICAI's prospectus and FAQ set these minimums:

A draft amendment to the Chartered Accountants Regulations, published in the Gazette on 25 June 2026, would raise each rate by ₹1,000 a month, to ₹5,000 and ₹6,000 in the largest cities (₹1,32,000 over two years). It was not final on 7 November 2026. Students who move to industrial training for the last 9 to 12 months of articleship must be paid at least ₹15,000 a month. These are minimums; a firm may pay more. In a big city, the minimum stipend alone covers all ₹84,500 of ICAI's fees.

CA fees through Direct Entry after graduation

Commerce graduates and postgraduates with 55%, other graduates with 60%, and students who have passed the ICSI or ICMAI intermediate level can skip Foundation and register for Intermediate directly, provisionally in the final year of their degree. They pay the same ₹18,000 Intermediate registration and everything after it, ₹74,000 in ICAI fees for the whole course with one attempt each. A Foundation-route student who later qualifies for Direct Entry pays only the Intermediate registration fee to switch.

Fee concessions and ICAI scholarships

• 75% off registration at every level for students from Jammu and Kashmir, Ladakh, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and the eight north-eastern states, extended to 31 March 2028, and for wards of deceased ICAI members. They pay ₹2,250 for Foundation, ₹4,500 for Intermediate and ₹5,500 for Final, so the whole course costs ₹47,750 in ICAI fees instead of ₹84,500.
• ICAI scholarships pay monthly amounts: ₹2,500 a month on merit to Intermediate rank holders 1 to 10, ₹2,000 merit-cum-need for families earning up to ₹3 lakh, and ₹1,500 need-based for Intermediate and Final students.
• Class 12 board toppers in the first two ranks who join within a year have the Foundation fee refunded in six instalments.

Fees after you qualify: ICAI membership

A qualified CA joins ICAI as a member and pays an annual fee. ICAI's latest annual fee circular we could read, for 2023-24, set it at ₹1,770 a year for an associate member without a certificate of practice and ₹5,310 with one, both including GST. Only members with a certificate of practice can sign statutory audits. ICAI's campus placement programme for newly qualified CAs reported an average salary of ₹13.30 lakh and a highest of ₹27.50 lakh for April to May 2026, with 2,570 candidates offered jobs.

Is CA cheaper than CFA or ACCA?

Much cheaper, on fees paid to the professional body. ICAI's fees for the whole course are ₹84,500. ACCA's own fees come to about ₹2.7 lakh to ₹3.5 lakh, because each exam is priced in pounds; our ACCA course fees guide has the breakdown. CFA Institute charges about ₹3.96 lakh to ₹5.14 lakh for the three CFA levels with GST, as our guide to CFA fees in India shows. CA also pays a stipend during training, which the others do not.

They lead to different work. Under section 141 of the Companies Act, 2013, only chartered accountants in practice can be appointed auditors of Indian companies, so CA is the route to audit, tax and statutory practice in India. ACCA is built on IFRS for international roles, and CFA is an investment qualification. Many CAs add one of them later: a qualified CA can be exempted from up to nine of ACCA's 13 papers.

Is the CA course worth the cost?

PayScale's self-reported data puts the average base salary of chartered accountants in India at ₹10.13 lakh a year, from 421 profiles updated 20 September 2026, with entry-level pay at about ₹7.3 lakh. ICAI's own campus placements reported an average of ₹13.30 lakh in April to May 2026. Against an all-in cost of ₹1.7 lakh to ₹2.8 lakh, most of it coaching, CA is one of the cheapest professional qualifications in India relative to what it pays. The real cost is time: four to five years, and the risk of repeating levels.

How to pay less for the CA course

1. Submit every exam form before the last date. The ₹600 late fee is avoidable; for January 2027 the date is 16 November 2026.
2. Register on time so you do not lose an attempt. Missing the four-month or eight-month registration cut-off costs a whole session, and Foundation registration cannot be revalidated.
3. Buy coaching group by group. Intermediate and Final can be sat one group at a time, and per-group coaching lets you change faculty after a result.
4. Choose online over a move to a coaching city. Swapnil Patni Classes charges ₹15,000 online and ₹60,000 face to face for Foundation, and ₹44,999 against ₹95,922 for Intermediate, so online costs a quarter to a half as much.
5. Use ICAI's own material and free modules. The Foundation registration includes study material, and the Self-Paced Online Modules carry no separate fee.
6. Claim a concession or scholarship if you qualify. The 75% regional concession runs to 31 March 2028.

CA fee figures you will see elsewhere that are wrong

Checking the pages that rank for CA course fees against ICAI's current prospectus, FAQ and fee charts on 7 November 2026 turned up these errors:

• Intermediate registration of ₹13,000 for one group. ICAI now requires registration for both groups at ₹18,000.
• Exam fees of ₹2,000 for Intermediate or Final, or ₹1,500 for one Final group. Intermediate is ₹1,500 or ₹2,700; Final is ₹1,800 or ₹3,300.
• ICITSS at about ₹7,000 or AICITSS at ₹7,500. Each has two parts: ₹13,500 and ₹14,500 in all.
• Final "three times a year". Foundation and Intermediate are held in January, May and September; Final was held in May and November in 2026.
• Stipends of ₹1,000 to ₹3,000 a month. ICAI's minimum now starts at ₹2,000 in small towns and ₹4,000 in large cities.
• A total of ₹49,000. That is registration alone; exam fees and ICITSS and AICITSS bring ICAI's total to ₹84,500.

Sources and how we checked

ICAI's fees come from its New Scheme prospectus (last modified 7 October 2026), its FAQ on the CA course, and its exam announcements and fee charts for January 2027 and September and November 2026, all read on 7 November 2026. Pass rates come from ICAI's result press releases. Coaching fees were read on 7 November 2026 from each institute's own pages and quoted as shown. Totals are our arithmetic and assume one attempt at each level with both groups together. Fees change, so confirm the amount on ICAI's portal before paying.

1. ICAI: Prospectus, New Scheme of Education and Training (registration fees, ICITSS and AICITSS, stipend, concessions, scholarships)
2. ICAI: FAQs on the CA course (registration rules, validity, revalidation, articleship)
3. ICAI: Announcement for the January 2027 Foundation and Intermediate exams and its fee chart
4. ICAI: Fee chart for the September and November 2026 exams (Final exam fees)
5. ICAI: New Scheme of Education and Training
6. ICAI: Announcement on the draft stipend revision and the Gazette notification of 25 June 2026
7. ICAI: Foundation results, September 2026, Intermediate results, September 2026 and Final results, May 2026
8. ICAI: Annual fee circular 2023-24 (membership fees)
9. ICAI Placement Directorate: campus placement brochure (64th programme results)
10. RBI reference rate archive at MSEI (USD/INR 95.2492 on 6 November 2026)
11. Ultimate CA: Intermediate both groups
12. Swapnil Patni Classes: CA Foundation online and CA Final lectures
13. Vsmart Academy: CA Final Group I
14. Aldine CA: CA Foundation
15. ArivuPro Academy: CA Intermediate online classes
16. J.K. Shah Classes: CA coaching
17. PSP Educate India: CA coaching
18. PayScale: Chartered Accountant salary in India