Don't pay £150 for a £50 test
A cluster of websites exists to charge immigrants £100–£200 for a booking that costs £50 and takes 10 minutes on gov.uk. Here's how they work and how to avoid them.
Última verificação: 15 July 2026
The whole rule in one line
The Life in the UK Test costs £50 and is booked only on gov.uk. Any other site "booking it for you" is charging you extra for nothing.
How the middleman sites work
- They buy ads on searches like "book life in the UK test" so they appear above the real service.
- Their pages copy convincing government-style layouts and crests, and hide the markup in fine print.
- You pay £100–£200; they fill in the same gov.uk form with your details — sometimes with errors that get you turned away at the centre.
- Some also harvest the personal data you give them.
Red flags
- Any booking price other than £50.
- A domain that isn't exactly gov.uk (watch for "gov-uk", "-gov", "govuk-").
- "Priority booking", "guaranteed slot", or "same-day booking" claims — no such tiers exist.
- Claims of access to "real exam questions" — real questions are not published, ever.
- A phone line that charges premium rates for "booking support".
The only legitimate booking route
Our step-by-step booking guide walks through the real form, free. (We're an independent study aid — we never take bookings, and nothing on this site is required to book.)
Already booked? Put the £100 you just saved into passing
The genuinely useful thing money buys is preparation. Ours starts free — a 2-minute level check — and the full product costs £12.99, less than ⅓ of one retake.
Scam FAQ
I already paid a booking site. What can I do?
Check whether a real booking exists in your name on gov.uk. Then contact your bank or card provider — many card issuers treat undisclosed middleman fees as disputable, especially if the site implied it was the government service. Report the site to Action Fraud (actionfraud.police.uk).
Are paid practice apps and courses scams too?
Not inherently — paying for preparation (like this site, or the publisher's own app) is a normal choice. The scam is charging for the BOOKING, which only gov.uk provides, or claiming to sell 'real exam questions', which are not published.
How do I know a site is really gov.uk?
The address bar says gov.uk — nothing before it but https:// and optionally www. 'gov-uk', 'govuk-tests', 'lifeintheuk-gov' and similar are lookalikes.