How long does a visa actually take?

It depends on the country, and more than people expect it depends on what the government is actually measuring. Canada publishes an observed figure recalculated about weekly and reported separately for Indian applicants, currently 29 days for a visitor visa and 5 weeks for a study permit. The UK publishes something different in kind: a service standard it commits to worldwide rather than a measured average, currently 3 weeks for a Standard Visitor and 3 weeks for a Student visa. One is a description of what happened, the other a promise about what should. Both exclude the weeks you spend gathering documents before you file, which for most applicants is the longer half of the wait and the only half within your control. Start gathering documents before you decide on a date, not after, because that is where the weeks actually go.

Canadian and UK processing times are not directly comparable, and treating them as though they are is the most common mistake made with these numbers. IRCC reports what actually happened to recent applications, broken down per country, and the figure moves week to week as the queue changes. UKVI states a target it aims to meet, the same target everywhere in the world, revised only occasionally and not tied to what any particular application experienced. One is a measurement and the other is a commitment. So a smaller number does not reliably mean a faster decision, and setting the two side by side to choose a country is reading a thermometer against a thermostat. Compare each against its own history instead, which is the only comparison the published data actually supports. Each page here keeps the two apart for that reason.

For the UK, the published standard already is the after-biometrics figure. Gov.uk states that UKVI starts processing once you attend your appointment at a visa application centre to give fingerprints and a photograph, or verify your identity in the ID Check app, so there is no second and shorter clock that starts afterwards. That means 3 weeks is the answer to both questions rather than to only one of them. Canada's figure likewise describes an application that was already complete when it arrived, and an application is not complete until biometrics are in. So the same logic applies there. Sites publishing a separate after biometrics number are mostly republishing the same figure under a different heading, which is why the two always look suspiciously identical. Book the appointment as early as you can get one, since that is the event both clocks are waiting on.

These figures do not include the time before you apply, and that is usually the larger half of the wait. Both governments start the clock when a complete application is submitted and biometrics are given, and everything before that point is invisible to the published number. The weeks spent collecting bank statements, getting an employment letter reissued because the first one was on the wrong letterhead, or waiting on a document that was always going to be needed, sit entirely outside it. That is why two people who applied in the same week can be months apart in practice, and why the published figure so often feels wrong to the person waiting. It is also the good news buried in this: the half that is longer is the half you control. Compressing it is the only speed available to anybody.

These numbers come directly from the governments that publish them, read from their own feeds rather than typed in by hand. Canada's come from the three JSON files behind IRCC's processing-times tool, last refreshed 16 September 2026 for temporary residence and 3 September 2026 for permanent residence, which run on separate update cycles. The UK's come from gov.uk's content API, last revised 26 June 2026. Both regenerate whenever the source changes, so nothing on this page is a number somebody remembered to update. The corollary is worth carrying to other sites: a processing time that has not moved in a year is either a source that has not moved, which is rare, or a page nobody has touched since it was written, which is common. Check the date beside any figure you are planning around. A page with no date beside its numbers is telling you something too.