Every comparison table of NLU fees you will find has the same three problems, and they compound. The figures are usually tuition only, excluding hostel and mess, which can be a third of the cost again. They are usually from whichever year the table was written, and fees rise most years. And they are usually copied from another table rather than from a notification, so an error made once propagates everywhere.
This page uses one source: each university's own CLAT 2027 information brochure, linked from the Consortium's participating universities page, with the page number for every figure. It states what each figure is — tuition, a per-semester charge, or an all-in total — because those are not comparable, and it leaves a university out rather than filling the cell from somewhere else.
Tuition, from each university's brochure
Five-year B.A. LL.B. (Hons.), or the university's UG programmes where it prints one figure for all of them. General category, Indian nationals, unless noted.
| University | Figure | What it is | Brochure page |
|---|---|---|---|
| NLUJA Assam | ₹88,000 | Tuition, per year (fee table headed 2026-27) | 16 |
| RMLNLU Lucknow | ₹1,25,000 | Tuition, per year | 2 |
| GNLU Gandhinagar | ₹1,32,000 | Tuition, per year (brochure headed 2026-27) | 8 |
| GNLU Silvassa | ₹1,32,000 | Tuition, per year | 8 |
| TNNLU Tiruchirappalli | ₹1,36,500 | Tuition, per year, 2027-28 | 34 |
| HNLU Raipur | ₹1,40,000 | Tuition, per year, 2027-28; halls of residence ₹15,000 extra | 9 |
| NLU Odisha | ₹1,45,000 | Tuition, per year (General, SC, ST, PwD) | 15 |
| NLU Tripura | ₹1,50,000 | Tuition, per year | 4 |
| WBNUJS Kolkata | ₹1,60,000 | Tuition, per year, ₹80,000 a semester (fee table headed 2026-27) | 11 |
| NLIU Bhopal | ₹1,61,000 | Tuition, per year, 2027-28, tentative | 13 |
| NUALS Kochi | ₹1,65,600 | Tuition, per year, 2027-28 | 6 |
| NALSAR Hyderabad | ₹1,70,000 | Tuition, per year; user charges (room, electricity, water, internet) ₹67,000 a year extra | 14 |
| HPNLU Shimla | ₹1,80,940 | Tuition, per year, batch 2027-32 (₹90,470 a semester) | 7 |
| RPNLU Prayagraj | ₹1,85,220 | Tuition, per year | 5 |
| MNLU Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar | ₹1,86,014 | Tuition, 2027-28, for candidates from outside Maharashtra; ₹1,39,512 for Maharashtra candidates | 10 |
| DSNLU Visakhapatnam | ₹2,00,000 | Tuition, per year | 12 |
| NLU Jodhpur | ₹1,00,000 a semester | Tuition, per semester, UG batch 2027 | 6 |
| NUSRL Ranchi | ₹3,39,000 | **Total** first-year fee (tuition ₹75,000 a semester plus other heads) | 6 |
| NLSIU Bengaluru | ₹5,38,000 | **Total** first-year fee, General, including refundable deposits; subject to approval | 14 |
Not in the table: CNLU Patna, RGNUL Patiala, MNLU Mumbai, MNLU Nagpur, DNLU Jabalpur, DBRANLU Sonepat, IIULER Goa and NLU Meghalaya. Their fees have not been read off their brochures for this page. Their brochures are on the same Consortium page, and the method below works for them too.
Read the table for what it is. Seventeen of the rows are tuition. Two are all-in totals, and they look expensive only because they include what the others leave out. NLSIU's ₹5,38,000 and NUSRL's ₹3,39,000 are the honest kind of figure; the tuition rows are the start of a calculation, not the end of one.
What a fee table actually contains
When you open a university's fee page, you are looking for more than a number.
Heads of charge. Tuition is one. Then, typically: admission fee, caution deposit (usually refundable), examination fee, library and IT charges, hostel rent, mess charges, and sometimes a one-time alumni or development fee. A quoted "fee" is usually the first of these.
Which year it applies to. Fee tables are per academic year and often per year of study. A first-year figure and a fifth-year figure are different. NLSIU's notification for the fifth year of the B.A. LL.B. in 2025-26, for example, gave tuition and facilities of ₹2,01,445 and housing of ₹64,180, a total of ₹2,65,625 for that year (notification dated 24 June 2025), much less than its first-year total, which carries the one-time charges and deposits.
Which category of student. Some universities print different figures for state and other students, as MNLU Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar does, or for NRI and foreign-national seats.
Refundability. The caution deposit usually comes back. Little else does.
Building the real total
An afternoon's work for a shortlist of five or six universities.
One. For each university, open its CLAT 2027 brochure from the Consortium's participating universities page, and find the fee table. If a head is "to be notified", note it.
Two. Record the total payable in year one, adding every head including hostel and mess. Not tuition.
Three. Find the previous year's brochure or fee notification, and work out the actual annual increase rather than assuming one.
Four. Project five years at that rate. Add the one-time first-year charges once, not five times, and subtract the refundable deposits at the end.
Five. Write down the date you read each figure. In six months you will not remember, and fees will have moved.
That gives you a number you can plan against and defend, for the universities that matter to you.
Domicile changes the arithmetic
Some state universities charge state students less: MNLU Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar's tuition is ₹1,39,512 for Maharashtra candidates against ₹1,86,014 for others. If you are eligible for a state quota, you may be looking at a different fee as well as a different closing rank — and the closing rank difference is already large.
In CLAT 2026, NLSIU's General closing rank was 120 all-India and 336 for Karnataka students; NALSAR's was 168 and 565 for Telangana. The domicile guide covers how each quota is defined, and the cutoff table filters by quota so you can see your own line.
What the fee is not a measure of
It is not a measure of quality. Fee structures reflect how a university is funded — how much comes from the state, what its costs are, when it was established — more than what it delivers.
It is not a measure of return. Nobody can honestly quote you a return on a five-year law degree, and calculations dividing a starting salary by a total fee rest on salary figures that are usually the highest offer at one university in one year. The guide for parents goes into why that arithmetic does not work and what to read instead.
It is not the whole cost. Living costs beyond the mess, travel home, books, laptop, and the internships in other cities that are a normal part of the degree. Add a realistic allowance.
Scholarships and financial aid
Some universities print their concessions in the brochure:
- NLIU Bhopal has two merit-cum-means scholarships, one in memory of Justice J. S. Verma and one in the university's name, each covering the full tuition fee (brochure, p. 5).
- NUALS Kochi provides a freeship to economically weaker students (p. 3).
- WBNUJS Kolkata has a financial aid and scholarships section and an allocated scholarship budget for students from the most marginalised sections (pp. 5–7).
- TNNLU Tiruchirappalli has a fee concession and scholarships section (p. 37).
Where a brochure says nothing, ask the university directly, in writing, and keep the answer. This is one of the eight questions in the parents' guide, and it gets asked far less often than it should.
For a loan, two central schemes reduce the interest. Under PM-Vidyalaxmi, students at institutions on its NIRF-based quality list with family income up to ₹8 lakh get 3% interest subvention during the moratorium on loans up to ₹10 lakh, and are eligible for loans without collateral or a guarantor. Under the PM-USP Central Sector Interest Subsidy scheme, students with family income up to ₹4.5 lakh on technical or professional courses get full interest subvention during the moratorium on loans up to ₹10 lakh. The education loans guide covers both.
Where to go next
The closing ranks are on the cutoff table, with the source PDF on each row, and the NLU index shows what is verified about each university.
And the part you control is the score. The free Diagnostic Test is 30 questions in 30 minutes, six from each CLAT section, with a score for each section at the end.