Finance is the UK subject where the university you pick moves the bill further than anything else you decide. We list 28 Finance master's in the UK across 22 universities, and hold a verified tuition figure for 20 of them, each read off the university's own fees page.
The numbers, and what they mean
Across those 20 verified programmes the annual tuition runs from £18,685 to £62,920, with a median of £31,700.
That top-to-bottom gap is £44,235 — the widest of any UK subject we hold, and more than three times the cheapest fee. It is not a gentle curve either. The two figures at the top are the University of Oxford's MSc in Financial Economics at £62,920 and the University of Cambridge's Master of Finance at £60,000, and then the list falls away steeply. At the other end, the University of Westminster lists both its Finance and Banking MSc and its Accounting and Finance MSc at £18,685, and De Montfort University's Accounting and Finance MSc is £19,500.
Set that median against the one for Data Science, where the same calculation gives £24,250. Both are master's degrees of the same length in the same country, counted the same way on the same day. Finance simply carries a brand premium that the technical subjects do not, because a large part of what a finance master's sells is the recruiting pipeline attached to the name.
The usual caution, and it bites harder here than elsewhere: we hold verified figures for 20 of 28, so this is the shape of the market rather than all of it. The eight without a verified figure are not cheaper or dearer — they are unchecked, and we would rather say so than average them in.
Twelve months, with two exceptions
Twenty-six of the 28 run 12 months. One runs 10 and one runs 21, so if a two-year structure matters to you — for a placement, or to spread the cost across two tax years — it exists but it is one programme on this list, not a category.
The one-year shape is the thing to weigh against the fee. A £31,700 median for one year is a different proposition from the same number for each of two, and against a two-year European master's the UK's total cost can land lower even when its headline tuition is higher. That calculation is the one most people skip.
Where the 28 are
By city: London (10), then Glasgow, Edinburgh, Birmingham and Newcastle upon Tyne with two each, and Manchester and Bristol with one.
By institution: Queen Mary University of London (3), then Aston University, Newcastle University, the University of Westminster and Brunel University of London with two each.
Ten of the 28 are in London, and that concentration is sharper than it looks on paper. Finance teaching clusters where the industry is, so the London programmes are the ones with the City on their doorstep for internships and milkround recruiting — and they are also where the rent is highest. On a self-funded budget that second half frequently decides it, because a year of London accommodation can exceed the tuition gap between a London programme and a northern one.
Entry requirements
Where an English requirement is recorded on our listings it is IELTS 6.0 on 3 programmes, 6.5 on 13, 7.0 on 3 and 7.5 on 2. The 6.5 cluster is the real centre of this subject, and the 7.5 end is a small number of the most selective names.
Our listings do not record an academic cut-off for any of these 28, so we are not going to quote you one. Finance admissions in practice weigh your quantitative background — whether your degree carried enough mathematics or statistics — at least as heavily as your overall percentage, and a commerce degree without that content is the most common reason a strong applicant is turned down for a quantitative finance master's. That is a transcript conversation, not a cut-off. We have written separately on reading an IELTS requirement properly.
The stay-back, briefly
The Graduate Route is the other half of the UK case, covered in post-study work visas explained. The date worth knowing is that 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 finance graduate the shorter window matters more than it does in most subjects, because graduate finance recruitment runs on fixed annual cycles — miss one intake and the next is a year away, which is a large fraction of 18 months.
Browse the set: Finance 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: 20 of 28 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.