This is the only subject–country pair in our whole catalogue where we can quote the cost without a caveat attached. We list 27 Data Science master's in the UK across 20 universities, and hold a verified tuition figure for all 27 of them — every one read off the university's own fees page.
The numbers, and what they mean
Across all 27 the annual tuition runs from £17,000 to £43,730, with a median of £24,250.
The cheapest is Teesside University's MSc Data Science at £17,000, with two Sheffield Hallam programmes — MSc Big Data Analytics and MSc Data Science and Artificial Intelligence — at £18,600. The top is the University of Oxford's MSc in Statistical Science at £43,730, and Queen Mary University of London's Data Analytics MSc at £36,950.
What makes this list worth reading is the middle. A median of £24,250 against a top of £43,730 means the expensive end is a handful of names rather than a market rate, and the distance between the median and the floor is only about £7,000. If your mental model of a UK master's came from the figures at two or three famous universities, most of this list costs a good deal less than you have been assuming.
Compare it to Finance, where the same calculation gives a median of £31,700 and a top of £62,920. Same country, same one-year shape, counted the same way on the same day — and roughly £7,500 a year between the two medians. The subject you choose is a cost decision as much as an academic one.
Twelve months, all of them
Every one of the 27 runs 12 months. There is no part-time or two-year variant anywhere on this list, which makes the budgeting unusually simple: one year of tuition, one year of living costs, and no second-year figure to find.
That matters more in data science than in most subjects, because the alternative route — teaching yourself and collecting certificates — is genuinely viable in this field in a way it is not in, say, civil engineering. A one-year master's that costs £24,250 plus living is competing against a free self-taught path, and the honest case for the degree is the visa, the structured project work and the graduate recruiting access rather than the syllabus alone.
Where the 27 are
By city: London (5), Newcastle upon Tyne (4), then Coventry, Sheffield, Leicester, Birmingham and Nottingham with two each.
By institution: Coventry University, the University of Greenwich, Sheffield Hallam University, the University of Leicester, Aston University and Newcastle University all carry two.
Only 5 of 27 are in London, and that is unusual — in most subjects we hold, London takes a third or more. Data science teaching in the UK has spread into the post-industrial cities, and since rent is the part of the budget a student actually controls, a Newcastle or Sheffield programme at £18,600 can land several thousand pounds a year below a London one before tuition is even compared.
Entry requirements
Where an English requirement is recorded it is IELTS 6.0 on 8 programmes, 6.5 on 12 and 7.5 on 1. Eight programmes at 6.0 is a larger opening than most applicants expect, and it is the single most useful fact on this page for anyone sitting on a band they think is too low.
Our listings record no academic cut-off for any of these 27, so we will not quote one. What decides a data science application in practice is whether your degree carried real mathematics — linear algebra, probability, statistics — and whether you can show code. A high percentage in a non-quantitative degree is a weaker application than a middling one in engineering or statistics, which is not what the percentage-based advice on most consultancy sites will tell you. We have written separately on reading an IELTS requirement properly.
The stay-back, briefly
The Graduate Route is covered in post-study work visas explained. It lasts 2 years for applications made on or before 31 December 2026 and 18 months from 1 January 2027, with 3 years for doctoral qualifications. For a data science graduate the shorter window is survivable, because this is one of the few fields where hiring runs continuously rather than in a single annual cycle — but 18 months is still 18 months, and the job search has to start during the degree rather than after it.
Browse the set: Data Science in the UK, master's only, or the subject across every destination we list.
Catalogue figures counted from our published listings on 20 October 2026: all 27 programmes carry a tuition figure verified against the university's own page. Graduate Route durations from GOV.UK, read 17 October 2026. Check the current figure for your intake before you apply.