The ordinary freelancer’s route — register the Individual Entrepreneur, apply for the right to work, apply for a work-ground residence permit — is genuinely do-it-yourself. The forms are handled in English, the counters speak English, and the published state fees are 200 GEL and 300 GEL. If someone is quoting you a package to do those three things and nothing else, you are paying for a queue.
You should pay for: a refusal, an appeal, anything with a spouse or a child in it, an apostille chain from a country you are not currently in, a corporate structure, and any case where a mistake produces an entry ban rather than a resubmission. In those, the fee is cheap relative to what it protects.
Everything below is the reasoning, and the questions to ask before you agree to anything.
What the state actually charges
You cannot judge a quote without this, and almost nobody puts it in front of you.
| Thing | Published fee |
|---|---|
| Residence permit, 30-day review | GEL 300 |
| Residence permit, 20-day review | GEL 450 |
| Residence permit, 10-day review | GEL 600 |
| Right to work, 30 calendar days | GEL 200 |
| Right to work, 10 business days | GEL 400 |
Residence permit fees from sda.gov.ge; work authorization fees from KPMG’s alert of 29 April 2026. Checked on 2 September 2026.
So the state’s price for the common route is 500 GEL at standard speed. That number is the baseline every quote should be measured against. A professional fee on top of it may be entirely reasonable — but you should know what fraction of what you are paying is the government’s and what fraction is the service.
I am not going to publish a range for what lawyers here charge. I do not have a defensible source for it, quotes vary by case in ways that make an average misleading, and a number invented for the sake of a tidy table is exactly the failure this site exists to avoid. Get your own quotes, in writing, from more than one.
Do it yourself
The Individual Entrepreneur registration. This is a Public Service Hall transaction. It is short. Small business status is a separate application to the Revenue Service and does not happen automatically on registration — the number of people who believe it does is the actual reason this trips anyone up, and knowing it is free. The registration, step by step.
The monthly declaration on RS.ge. The accountants make it sound harder than it is and the blogs make it sound easier. It is a monthly habit, not a skill. What you file, when, and what happens if you don't.
The right to work application, for the self-employed. The self-employed pay for themselves; there is no employer to coordinate with, and the fee ladder is published.
A first work-ground residence permit with clean documents. Clean means: your ground is straightforward, your home-country documents are already apostilled and translated, and you are inside the 40-day window with room. If all three are true, this is a folder-assembly task.
I did the IE registration, the declarations, one residence permit application on the IE ground, and the right to work under the 2026 transition, without paying anyone. The cost was mornings, not money — and the honest accounting is that DIY saved me several hundred lari and cost me perhaps three half-days at the Public Service Hall, spread over weeks. If your working time is worth more than that, paying is a rational choice and not a failure. Just know that is the trade you are making, rather than believing you are buying a better outcome.
Pay someone
A refusal. Once you have been refused, the situation stops being about assembling documents and starts being about a decision on your record. The cost of getting the response wrong is not another 300 GEL; it is a route closing. What a rejection says, and what happens next.
Anything with an entry ban attached. Since 1 October 2025 an overstay carries a ban of six months to three years by tier, and the ministry keeps a database of foreigners who have been illegally present in Georgia (Fragomen, Georgia Immigration Reform 2025). A ban is not something you fix at a counter. The fines, the database, and the day it stops being cheap.
Family cases. Family reunification, a spouse of a Georgian citizen, anything involving a child. The documents come from other jurisdictions, the evidentiary standard is about a relationship rather than a fact, and I have not been through any of them — which is itself the signal. When the person writing the DIY guide has not done the route, that is not a guide.
Corporate structure. An LLC instead of an IE, the “manager or representative of an international IT company” category, an employer taking on the permit obligations for staff. Structure decisions have tax consequences that outlive the immigration question. When the company is the right answer.
An apostille chain you cannot physically attend. If a document has to be apostilled in a country you are not in, you are hiring someone regardless. The only question is whether it is an agent there or a firm here. The step that delays everyone.
The remote-worker question, if the answer materially changes your year. Whether a person working remotely for a foreign employer needs the right to work is unresolved in the published material, and the exemption list does not obviously cover them (KPMG, 29 April 2026). If the answer determines whether you stay, that is worth a paid hour with someone who will put their reading in writing. The exemption, the ambiguity, and what to do this month.
The four questions
Ask these before you agree, and ask them in a message rather than in a room.
1. What is your fee, and what is the government fee, separately? A quote that presents one number covering both is a quote designed not to be compared. You now know the state’s numbers.
2. Is the fee fixed for this case, or does it change if there is a second submission? Second submissions are common. Find out now who pays for one.
3. What happens if it is refused — is any of this refundable, and is the appeal included? The honest answer is usually “no, and no”. That is fine. You want it said before, not after.
4. Who actually stands at the window? Sometimes you still do. That is a legitimate service model, but it changes what you are buying, and it is the question that most often produces a useful pause.
Add a fifth if the route involves documents from home: what is your estimate for the apostille and translation stage, and is that inside or outside the fee? That stage is where timelines die.
The part nobody selling this can tell you
Every page ranking above this one for the phrase you searched belongs to a relocation agency, a law firm or an accounting practice. Their content is often accurate. What none of them can publish is the sentence you do not need us for this one — and for the single most common route on this site, that sentence is true.
That does not make them wrong to exist. It makes them the wrong source for the question of whether to hire them.
If you want the whole sequence with the costs attached, the routes ranked by what they cost you is the pillar. Read it before you take a quote, not after.
State fees checked on 2 September 2026 against sda.gov.ge and KPMG’s 29 April 2026 alert. Fees move; the argument does not.