Fully Funded Scholarships with Monthly Stipend for International Students 2027

Ask a room of scholarship applicants which award is “the best paid” and you will get confident answers built on a single number: the monthly stipend. €1,400 sounds bigger than €992. HK$28,700 sounds enormous. HUF 43,700 sounds like a fortune until you learn what currency it is. The monthly stipend is the most quoted, most compared and most misunderstood figure in international student funding — because a stipend is not a salary, and its value depends on three things the headline never shows: what else the scholarship pays for (tuition, housing, insurance, flights), what the city you will live in charges for rent and food, and how the stipend is actually delivered (monthly cash, an annual sum paid in instalments, or a contribution the programme itself warns is only partial).

This guide compares the monthly stipends of the major fully funded scholarships open to international students for 2027, using figures verified against official sources in October 2026 and date-stamped as such. Every stipend in the main table comes with its source context: the level it applies to, whether tuition is covered on top, and an honest note on what the stipend must stretch to cover. Where programmes publish conflicting figures across their own pages — Türkiye Burslari is the current example — we show the currently published rates and flag the conflict rather than picking a number silently. Where a famous programme has ended — Canada’s Vanier — we name its replacement instead of quoting a ghost. And throughout, we resist the temptation to crown a single “highest” stipend: instead, the final section shows you how to judge a stipend against the cost of living where you would actually spend it, using the budgeting resources in our study-abroad tools section and the full programme listings in our scholarship directory. If deadlines matter more to you than amounts right now, pair this guide with Top Fully Funded Scholarships with Deadlines in 2027 and our ranking-focused companion, Highest Paying Fully Funded Scholarships for International Students 2027.

At a Glance: Monthly Stipend Comparison (Verified October 2026)

Three reading rules before you use this table. First, date-stamp everything: these figures were verified in October 2026 for the 2027 cycle; stipends are revised between cycles, and any figure quoted without a date — including in older StudyGraduate articles — should be re-checked. Second, monthly equivalents of annual awards are arithmetic, not payment schedules: RTP and CGRS-D are annual awards; dividing by twelve helps comparison but your university will pay on its own cycle, often fortnightly or by term. Third, exchange-rate conversions move: we deliberately avoid freezing a US-dollar league table, because a conversion calculated in October 2026 would mislead by the time you are budgeting in September 2027. Judge each stipend in its own currency against costs in its own city — the method section at the end shows how.

The Stipends in Detail: What Each Figure Really Means

Erasmus Mundus Joint Masters — €1,400 per month, the European benchmark

The European Commission’s Erasmus+ Programme Guide calculates the Erasmus Mundus scholarship as €1,400 per month multiplied by the duration of the programme — up to 24 months for a two-year joint master — as a contribution to the costs incurred by the student, covering travel, visa, installation and subsistence, with participation costs (including tuition) covered separately by the consortium. Read the official rules on the Erasmus Mundus page of the Erasmus+ Programme Guide. Two consequences follow. The €1,400 is genuinely comprehensive in design — there is no tuition bill waiting underneath it — but it must also absorb your travel between the two or three countries your programme moves you through, so a consortium based in expensive capitals will stretch it further than one based in smaller university cities. In practice, €1,400 a month is workable across most European student cities with shared housing, and tight in the most expensive capitals. Our programme guide is at Erasmus Mundus.

DAAD EPOS, Germany — €992 / €1,300–€1,400 per month, plus the system around it

The DAAD’s official scholarship database states EPOS monthly payments of €992 for graduates and €1,300 for doctoral candidates, rising to €1,400 for doctoral candidates from February 2026, alongside payments towards health, accident and personal liability insurance and a travel allowance, with a possible monthly rent subsidy and family allowance in certain circumstances — verify the wording in the official DAAD database entry for EPOS. The older €934 figure still quoted across the internet is superseded; do not budget with it. EPOS’s €992 looks modest beside Erasmus Mundus’s €1,400 until you price the context: the programmes sit at German public universities where these degrees generally carry no tuition, insurance — a real cost in Germany — is paid on top, and many EPOS cities are mid-cost by Western European standards. The honest pressure point is rent, which varies dramatically between, say, Munich and smaller university towns, and is exactly what the possible rent subsidy exists for. For comparison, a self-funded student in Germany must show a blocked account of €11,904 for a year — €992 a month — which tells you the German authorities themselves calibrate student living costs at roughly the EPOS master’s rate. Our guide: DAAD Scholarship.

France Excellence Eiffel — €1,200 / €2,100 per month, and the tuition asterisk

From January 2026, Eiffel pays €1,200 per month at master’s level and €2,100 per month at doctoral level — the doctoral rate is among the highest monthly allowances in this entire comparison — alongside travel, insurance and housing support, under the call administered by Campus France; see the official Campus France page for the Eiffel 2027 call. Older sources showing €1,181/€1,700, and a regulations PDF still printing €2,000 for the doctoral rate, are superseded by the January 2026 rates. But Eiffel carries the biggest asterisk in this article: it does not cover tuition fees. At French public universities, regulated fees are relatively low and Eiffel holders on national degree programmes may be exempt from registration fees, which is why Eiffel can still anchor a fully funded package in France; at institutions with substantial fees of their own, the €1,200 or €2,100 must be judged after the fee bill, not before it. A stipend comparison that hides that fact — as many do — is advertising, not analysis.

MEXT, Japan — ¥117,000–¥145,000 per month, tiered by level

MEXT’s stipend is tiered precisely by enrolment status, as published in the Japanese government’s application guidelines and reproduced by Japanese embassies and universities: ¥117,000 per month for undergraduates; ¥143,000 for research students in preparatory education or non-regular status; ¥144,000 for master’s and professional degree students; and ¥145,000 for doctoral students, with a supplemental regional allowance of ¥2,000 or ¥3,000 per month in designated regions, and tuition and examination fees paid by MEXT plus return airfare. One embassy-published statement of these rates is the Consulate-General of Japan in Miami’s MEXT research-student guidance page. Two budgeting notes: MEXT itself warns that the first payment can arrive a month or more after you land, so arrival savings are part of the real package; and the stipend’s adequacy tracks your city — comfortable in most regional university cities, tighter in central Tokyo, where the regional supplement and university dormitories do real work. Programme overview: MEXT Scholarship.

Hong Kong PhD Fellowship — HK$28,700 per month, priced for Hong Kong

HKPFS pays an annual stipend of HK$344,400 — HK$28,700 per month — plus HK$14,400 per year for conference and research travel, for up to three years, to 400 new fellows in the 2027/28 round. In raw currency-converted terms this is one of the largest stipends in the world for a PhD student. It is also priced for one of the world’s most expensive rental markets: Hong Kong housing will claim a share of this stipend that shocks newcomers, even with university halls available to many research postgraduates. The correct judgement is comparative within Hong Kong: the fellowship sits well above the standard postgraduate studentship at the same universities, which is the honest benchmark — HKPFS fellows are funded generously for Hong Kong, and the surplus over local costs, not the converted headline, is what you will experience.

SINGA, Singapore — S$2,700 rising to S$3,200 per month

SINGA’s stipend structure rewards progress: S$2,700 per month, rising to S$3,200 after you pass the qualifying examination, for up to four years, with tuition covered, a one-time airfare grant of up to S$1,500 and a one-time settling-in allowance of S$1,000. Older pages quoting S$2,200/S$2,700 reflect an earlier cycle; the figures here are the currently published rates for the intake closing 1 December 2026 — re-confirm them on the official A*STAR page when you apply, as this programme has revised rates between cycles before. Singapore is a high-cost city with unusually good public transport and food-court economics; the stipend is designed to be lived on there, particularly with the first-year accommodation priority many scholars receive, but it includes no support for dependants, which families must price separately.

United Kingdom — Gates Cambridge and Commonwealth: annual and monthly logics

The UK’s two flagship schemes express their money differently, which is why stipend tables so often garble them. Gates Cambridge quotes a maintenance allowance of £23,152 for 12 months at the 2026–27 rate — about £1,929 per month as a comparison figure — paid alongside the University Composition Fee, airfare, visa and Immigration Health Surcharge costs, at the University of Cambridge. Commonwealth Scholarships quote a true monthly stipend: at the CSC’s recent-cycle rates, £1,452 per month, or £1,781 per month for study in London, with tuition, return airfare and smaller allowances on top; stipend rates are uprated between cycles, so treat these as the latest published CSC rates at the time of writing and confirm the 2027/28 rates in your offer documentation. Cambridge and London are the UK’s two most expensive student markets; both packages are calibrated by their funders to those costs, and both are best judged against college and university accommodation prices rather than national averages. For context on how UK universities compare, see our rankings hub. Programme profiles: Gates Cambridge and Commonwealth Scholarship.

Sweden and Australia — SEK 12,000 and the RTP’s annual base rate

The Swedish Institute Scholarship for Global Professionals pays full tuition directly to the university plus a living allowance of SEK 12,000 per month and a one-time travel grant of SEK 15,000 (SEK 10,000 for scholars from a small group of nearer countries); the official framework and current-cycle key dates are on the Swedish Institute’s official scholarship page. Sweden’s costs — particularly rent in Stockholm, Gothenburg and Uppsala — mean the allowance is sufficient with student housing and disciplined budgeting, and the absence of any family allowance is a real constraint to plan around. Australia’s Research Training Program (RTP) works on annual rates set by the Australian Government: the official Department of Education RTP page lists the full-time base stipend rate as AUD 34,315 for 2026 and AUD 35,550 for 2027, with a maximum rate of AUD 55,537 for 2027 — universities choose where in that range their RTP stipends sit and pay students directly, commonly fortnightly, alongside a fees offset. So “the RTP stipend” at the University of Melbourne or any other university is that university’s chosen rate, not automatically the base: read your offer letter’s figure, not the headline.

Canada — CGRS-D at CAD 40,000 per year (and the Vanier correction)

Any stipend list that still quotes the Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship is out of date: Vanier has been discontinued. Its replacement at doctoral level is the Canada Graduate Research Scholarship – Doctoral (CGRS-D), worth CAD 40,000 per year for 36 months — about CAD 3,333 per month as a comparison figure. Two Canadian specifics change how to judge it. First, CGRS-D is a research award, not a tuition waiver: your university charges tuition, and international doctoral tuition in Canada varies enormously by institution, so the net position depends on the university’s own international tuition and any additional university funding stacked alongside. Second, Canada gives you an official cost-of-living yardstick: IRCC’s study-permit proof-of-funds requirement for living expenses is CAD 23,448 for applications from 1 September 2026 (CAD 22,895 applied in the previous period) — a government-set floor for what a student is expected to need, before tuition. A CAD 40,000 award clears that floor with room; how much room depends on your city and tuition bill.

Korea, China, Türkiye and Hungary — where headline numbers mislead most

Global Korea Scholarship (GKS) packages tuition, airfare, insurance, a settlement allowance, Korean language training and research support around a monthly living stipend; official Korean university guidance for GKS scholars lists KRW 1,000,000 per month for graduate scholars, with additional Korean-proficiency incentives for high TOPIK levels in the wider package. Korean student-city costs — outside premium Seoul districts — make this a workable stipend, especially with university dormitories. Chinese Government Scholarship (CSC) stipends are set nationally at CNY 2,500 (bachelor’s), CNY 3,000 (master’s) and CNY 3,500 (doctoral) per month, as stated in the official application guide reproduced by host universities such as South China Normal University on its CSC application guide page, with tuition, a free dormitory place or accommodation subsidy, and medical insurance (CNY 800 per year) included — the free dormitory is the hidden giant in this package, because it removes the largest single cost in Chinese student cities. Türkiye Burslari currently publishes TL 6,500 / TL 9,500 / TL 13,000 per month for bachelor’s, master’s and PhD students respectively, with tuition, accommodation, insurance, flights and a Turkish language year included — but flag this honestly: some official-adjacent announcements for the 2026 cycle printed lower figures (TL 4,500 / 6,500 / 9,000), and Turkish inflation makes lira stipends the most revision-prone in this table, so confirm the rate in the live call on the official Türkiye Scholarships site before budgeting. Stipendium Hungaricum is the comparison’s reality check: HUF 43,700 per month at bachelor’s and master’s level (doctoral phases pay HUF 140,000 and HUF 180,000), plus a dormitory place or HUF 40,000 housing contribution — and the programme itself describes these as a contribution to living costs, with travel not covered. It is a genuine, valuable scholarship; it is not, at taught-degree level, a stipend you can live on alone in Budapest without other resources, and saying so protects you better than any ranking.

Eligibility: Who Receives Which Stipend?

Stipend levels are inseparable from who may receive them. Erasmus Mundus, SINGA, HKPFS and Gates Cambridge are open worldwide (Gates to non-UK citizens) at their stated levels. DAAD EPOS restricts eligibility to citizens of listed developing and newly industrialised countries with at least two years of post-degree professional experience. The Swedish Institute restricts by citizenship list and requires work and leadership experience. CSC, GKS and Türkiye Burslari are national government schemes with their own citizenship, age and grade conditions — CSC’s standard age limits are under 25 (bachelor’s), under 35 (master’s) and under 40 (PhD) in the official guide. RTP stipends follow admission to an Australian research degree and each university’s own competition. CGRS-D follows Canada’s national graduate scholarship competition rules. Before falling in love with a number in the table, confirm you are eligible for the scheme that pays it — an ineligible €2,100 is worth exactly nothing, while an eligible €992 with insurance and no tuition is a funded degree. Browse eligible institutions in the university directory and related programmes such as Australia Awards and the Fulbright Program — noting that Fulbright amounts are set country by country and so are honestly excluded from a single-figure table like this one.

How to Compare Stipends Properly: A Five-Step Method

1. List everything the scholarship pays besides the stipend. Tuition (Eiffel: no; CSC: yes, plus a dormitory), insurance (DAAD and Türkiye: yes), flights (MEXT, SINGA, Türkiye: yes), housing (Hungary: a place or contribution). A smaller stipend with housing and insurance included can beat a larger bare one.
2. Price your actual city, not the country. Rent a one-bedroom or shared room in your real study city, add local transport, food and phone costs, and compare the total with the stipend. Capital-city and regional-city versions of the same scholarship are different financial products.
3. Check the payment rhythm and the first-payment gap. Annual awards paid by term, monthly stipends paid in arrears, and MEXT’s warning that the first payment may take a month or more all create an arrival-cash requirement. Budget your first six weeks separately.
4. Check what the stipend must not cover. Dependants are unsupported by several schemes (SI and SINGA state this plainly); visa fees, deposits and winter clothing sit outside others. The Commonwealth’s warm clothing allowance exists precisely because these edges matter.
5. Re-verify the figure in the live call. Stipends are revised between cycles — DAAD’s doctoral rise to €1,400 and Eiffel’s January 2026 rates both happened recently. The figure in your offer letter is the only one that pays your rent.

Documents and Application Notes for Stipend-Bearing Scholarships

The document core is shared across nearly every scheme in the table: passport; degree certificates and transcripts with certified translations where required; a CV in the programme’s specified format; English (or host-language) proficiency evidence as the programme accepts; a study plan or research proposal at postgraduate level; reference letters submitted through each scheme’s own route; and, for experience-gated schemes (EPOS, SI), employment certificates that prove the years claimed. Two stipend-specific warnings: first, several governments set financial-evidence rules for the visa independently of the scholarship — Canada’s CAD 23,448 living-funds benchmark and Germany’s €11,904 blocked account for non-scholarship students are the examples in this article — and scholarship holders may still need to show how any gap (for example tuition under CGRS-D) is covered. Second, keep the offer letter and award conditions you are actually issued: stipend rates, duration and continuation conditions (satisfactory progress is a standard one) live there, not in any guide.

Stipend Timeline: When the Money Starts and How Long It Lasts

Common Mistakes When Comparing Stipends

Ranking by the converted headline. Converting every stipend to dollars on one day’s exchange rate and sorting produces a confident, wrong league table — it ignores tuition, housing, insurance and city costs, which routinely outweigh the stipend gap. Quoting superseded figures. DAAD’s €934, MEXT confusion between ¥117,000 and ¥144,000 (different levels, both real), Eiffel’s old €1,181/€1,700, SINGA’s old S$2,200 rate and Vanier’s ghost all circulate widely; every figure in this article carries its level and its verification date for a reason. Assuming annual awards pay monthly at annual÷12 in cash. RTP and CGRS-D are annual awards administered by universities; your cash flow follows their schedule. Forgetting tuition direction. “Fully funded” normally means tuition is handled — Eiffel (no tuition) and CGRS-D (tuition charged) are the two exceptions in this table, and both are flagged; check any scheme you add to your own list for the same trap. Ignoring the first month. Deposits, arrival costs and delayed first payments mean even a generous stipend starts with a bill. Treating a contribution as a full stipend. When a programme itself — Stipendium Hungaricum — calls its payment a contribution to living costs, believe it, and plan supplementary resources honestly.

Frequently Asked Questions

Which fully funded scholarship pays the highest monthly stipend in 2027?

By raw monthly figure among verified rates, Eiffel’s doctoral allowance of €2,100 and HKPFS’s HK$28,700 sit at the top of this comparison — but they are not comparable prizes: Eiffel pays no tuition, and HKPFS is priced for Hong Kong’s rental market. The meaningful question is surplus over local living costs after tuition and housing, which is why this article compares packages and contexts rather than crowning a single winner.

How much is the Erasmus Mundus monthly stipend?

€1,400 per month for the duration of the programme (up to 24 months), calculated in the European Commission’s Erasmus+ Programme Guide as a contribution to travel, visa, installation and subsistence costs, with participation costs covered by the consortium. Students who previously held an Erasmus Mundus Joint Masters scholarship cannot receive a second one.

Is the DAAD EPOS stipend €934 or €992?

€992 per month for master’s students. The DAAD’s official database lists €992 for graduates and €1,300 for doctoral candidates, with the doctoral rate rising to €1,400 from February 2026. The €934 figure is an older, superseded rate that older websites still repeat.

Does the Eiffel Scholarship’s €1,200 / €2,100 include tuition?

No. Eiffel pays the monthly allowance plus travel, insurance and housing support, but it does not pay tuition fees. Holders on national degree programmes at French public institutions may benefit from registration-fee exemptions, which is how Eiffel often forms part of a fully funded package in practice — confirm your institution’s position before relying on it.

What is the Australia RTP stipend for 2027 in monthly terms?

The Australian Government’s full-time base RTP stipend rate for 2027 is AUD 35,550 per year — about AUD 2,962 per month as a comparison figure — with a maximum rate of AUD 55,537. Individual universities set their own RTP stipend within that range and pay it directly (commonly fortnightly), so your offer letter’s rate is the operative one.

What replaced the Vanier Scholarship in Canada, and how much does it pay?

Vanier has been discontinued. The doctoral replacement is the Canada Graduate Research Scholarship – Doctoral (CGRS-D), worth CAD 40,000 per year for 36 months. It is a research award rather than a tuition waiver, so compare it against your university’s international tuition and any additional university funding, as well as IRCC’s living-funds benchmark of CAD 23,448 from 1 September 2026.

Why do Türkiye Burslari stipend figures differ between websites?

Because rates have been revised between cycles and some announcements for the 2026 cycle printed lower figures (TL 4,500 / 6,500 / 9,000) while the currently published rates are TL 6,500 (bachelor’s), TL 9,500 (master’s) and TL 13,000 (PhD) per month. Lira-denominated stipends are especially exposed to revision; always confirm the figure in the live call on the official Türkiye Scholarships website before budgeting.

Can I live on the Stipendium Hungaricum stipend alone?

At bachelor’s and master’s level, plan on needing supplementary resources. The stipend is HUF 43,700 per month plus a dormitory place or HUF 40,000 per month housing contribution, and the programme itself describes the package as a contribution to living costs; travel to Hungary is not covered. Doctoral stipends (HUF 140,000–180,000) are a different financial picture.

Sources & Verification

Stipend figures in this article were verified in October 2026 against the following official sources: the European Commission’s Erasmus+ Programme Guide, Erasmus Mundus action page (€1,400 per month scholarship calculation); the DAAD scholarship database entry for EPOS (€992 master’s; €1,300 doctoral, €1,400 from February 2026; insurance and travel provisions); Campus France’s France Excellence Eiffel call documentation and its January 2026 allowance rates (€1,200 master’s / €2,100 doctoral; tuition not covered); MEXT application guidelines as published by Japanese government and embassy sources (¥117,000 undergraduate; ¥143,000 preparatory/research; ¥144,000 master’s; ¥145,000 doctoral; regional supplement ¥2,000–¥3,000); the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong’s HKPFS scheme information (HK$344,400 per year plus HK$14,400 travel allowance); A*STAR’s SINGA programme information (S$2,700 rising to S$3,200); the Gates Cambridge Trust’s published funding (£23,152 maintenance at the 2026–27 rate); the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission’s recent-cycle stipend rates (£1,452 / £1,781 London); the Swedish Institute’s official scholarship page (SEK 12,000 per month, travel grant); the Australian Department of Education’s Research Training Program page (base stipend AUD 34,315 for 2026 and AUD 35,550 for 2027, maximum AUD 55,537 for 2027); Canadian federal scholarship documentation for CGRS-D (CAD 40,000 per year for 36 months; Vanier discontinued) and IRCC’s proof-of-funds table (CAD 23,448 from 1 September 2026); Korean official university guidance for GKS scholars (KRW 1,000,000 per month); the Chinese Government Scholarship application guide as published by the China Scholarship Council and host universities (CNY 2,500 / 3,000 / 3,500 per month; insurance CNY 800 per year); Türkiye Scholarships’ currently published rates (TL 6,500 / 9,500 / 13,000 — with the conflicting lower figures in some 2026-cycle announcements flagged in the entry); and the Tempus Public Foundation’s Stipendium Hungaricum call (HUF 43,700 plus housing support at taught levels; HUF 140,000–180,000 doctoral). Currency conversions are deliberately not frozen into a league table; figures are stated in the currency in which they are paid.

Disclaimer: Scholarship stipends, deadlines and eligibility rules change every cycle, and several programmes above revise rates between intakes. Always confirm deadlines and amounts on the official website before applying. StudyGraduate is an information portal, not an agency, and cannot guarantee selection, admission or visa approval.