ECA processing times, agency by agency — and the three numbers one agency publishes for the same report

The published gap between the fastest and the slowest designated ECA organisation is not a few weeks. On 3 September 2026 IQAS published “about 15 business days” and ICAS published “20 weeks” for the same kind of report. Neither number is a promise, and neither starts on the day you apply. And one organisation publishes three different figures for its own immigration ECA on two of its own pages.

This page reports what each body publishes about its own timelines, with the exact wording and the page it came from. It is not a queue tracker, it does not predict how long your file will take, and nothing on it comes from an applicant-reported dataset — forum threads show that people are asking this question, but they do not establish what any organisation’s published standard is.

What each body published on 3 September 2026

Organisation	Immigration ECA	Rush service	Other report types on the same site
IQAS (Alberta)	“ECA assessments take about 15 business days”	“$250 in addition to application, administration, and courier fees”; “Rush service processing for an Educational Credential Assessment (ECA) is 5 to 7 business days”	“Assessments for work, study, and professional licensing take about 15 business days”
CES (U of T)	“40 Business Days”; “7 Business Days” where “your official institutional documents are delivered through an approved secure digital platform”	Not offered	30 business days course-by-course; 20 business days document-by-document; 15 business days to renew an expired immigration ECA
WES	Document verification “Typically 2 weeks”, then “Evaluation begins… Typically 1 week (complex evaluations may take up to 2 weeks)”	Not offered	Course-by-course evaluation stage “Typically 2 weeks (complex evaluations may take up to 4 weeks)”; NZQA verification record “Up to 1 week”
ICES (BCIT)	“The current estimated processing timeline for an ECA is 7 weeks”	“Unfortunately, ICES does not offer any type of rush or expedited service. We cannot accept requests to expedite the application.”	Basic report 4 weeks; comprehensive 7 weeks; ECA renewal 4 weeks; duplicate copies “within 2 weeks”
ICAS	“The average processing time is 20 weeks after all required documents are received in our office”	“Rush services are not available”	General Assessment Report 8–10 weeks; Postsecondary Comprehensive Assessment Report 25 weeks

The three numbers on one site

CES publishes its immigration ECA time in two places, and they do not agree.

Its home page carries a heading reading “Get Your ECA quickly.” and, directly under it, “Our current average processing time is 60 business days.”

Its Step 5 – Wait page, which is the page an applicant is routed to inside the application flow, publishes “40 Business Days / For ECA for Immigration Purposes (IRCC)”, and separately “7 Business Days / Applies when your official institutional documents are delivered through an approved secure digital platform”, listing “IRCC purpose ECA” among the report types that qualify for the 7-day figure.

Sixty, forty and seven business days, on the same site, on the same day, for the same report. We are not going to reconcile them for CES; only CES can say which is current. What a reader can act on is narrower and more useful: CES publishes a much shorter figure for applicants whose institution transmits documents through one of its approved secure digital platforms, and that route is worth asking your institution about before choosing anything on the basis of the headline number.

What the clock actually starts on

Every one of the five says, in its own words, that the published figure begins when the documents are complete — not when you apply, and not when you pay.

ICES is the most explicit: “Timelines are calculated from the day that all required items are received. This includes the application form, payment, identification (if necessary), and all mandatory documents. The timeline is not necessarily counted from the date the application is submitted, but rather when all items are received.” Its FAQ adds that “This date we receive all your documentation and full payment will most likely differ from the date the application was received.”

CES: “The processing time does not start from the date you submitted your application. Instead, it starts from the day when all your supporting documents, including the official academic records (transcripts) have been reviewed and accepted for assessment.”

ICAS: “The average processing time is 20 weeks after all required documents are received in our office.”

WES: “WES only starts the process after receiving all required official documents from you and your institution.”

IQAS: “All processing times start once an application is at the ‘In line for processing status’ in the IQAS portal.”

Two consequences follow, and they are the reason the published numbers under-describe the real wait:

• The time your university takes is not counted anywhere. For countries where the document must come from an examinations board or a registrar rather than the college you attended, this can be the largest single block of time in the whole process, and no agency publishes a figure for it.
• Delivery is not counted either. ICES: “processing times do not include the time it takes for the mail or courier service to deliver your final report.” CES: “These processing times do not include the delivery time.”

The extra clocks nobody advertises

Three published items add time that does not appear in any headline figure.

• Physical paper has to be digitised first. CES: “Physical official academic records (transcripts) require digitization and may take up to three weeks to be processed and matched to your application. This process does not affect your processing time.” Three weeks that, by CES’s own description, are outside the number it publishes.
• A verification enquiry stops the clock entirely, with no published limit. WES: “WES reserves the right to submit documents for verification… Your evaluation will be placed on hold until the institution replies to WES.” ICES describes what happens when the institution never replies: “After repeated attempts or time elapsed, ICES may choose to close the file.”
• Institutional closures are not counted. CES publishes that its processing times “Do not include statutory holidays” and “Do not include the University of Toronto’s year end closure (up to two weeks).”

Rush service exists at exactly one of the five, and it is rationed

IQAS is the only designated organisation that publishes an expedited option, and the conditions attached to it are unusually specific:

“To maintain processing times and service standards, IQAS limits the number of rush Educational Credential Assessment (ECA) applications that are accepted each day for immigration purposes. Once the daily limit for rush service has been reached, it resets the following day at 8:15 am (Mountain Standard Time).”

IQAS also publishes two conditions that matter more than the price: you must select rush when you submit — “If you already submitted an application under the regular processing time queue, IQAS will not accept requests to upgrade to rush service or transfer the application to rush processing” — and “If IQAS cannot complete an assessment, your application will be cancelled, and the rush service fee will not be refunded.”

ICES and ICAS both state plainly that no rush option exists. CES and WES publish none.

How to read this table

1. The five are not measuring the same interval. WES publishes two internal stages and no total; ICAS publishes one average; IQAS publishes a service standard; CES publishes three different figures. Adding your own document-gathering time to any of them is the only way to get a comparable number.
2. “Business days” and “weeks” are not interchangeable. IQAS’s 15 business days is about three calendar weeks. ICAS’s 20 weeks is about 100 business days. The two are nearly seven times apart, not “15 versus 20”.
3. Every figure is hedged in the source. ICES: “Timelines are an estimate and not a guarantee and are subject to change at any time.” CES: “All processing times are estimates only and are not guaranteed.” WES: “the stated processing times are approximate and may change based on volume, staffing, and other factors.”
4. A faster published time does not mean a faster route for you. The dominant variable in every one of these systems is how quickly a specific registrar in a specific country responds, and none of the five claims otherwise.

What to do with this

1. Ask your awarding institution first, before choosing an organisation, whether it transmits documents electronically and through which platform. At CES this is the difference between the 7-business-day and the 40-business-day figure as published.
2. Add the document-gathering weeks yourself. Treat the published figure as the last stage, not the whole process.
3. If you are near an ECA expiry, note that renewal times are published separately and are shorter — CES 15 business days, ICES 4 weeks — and that IRCC refuses applications filed with an expired report. The mechanics are in five years from the date of issue.
4. Re-read the page before you rely on it. These are the most volatile numbers on any of these sites, and one of the five had a fee change dated 1 September 2026 posted on its own news panel two days before we read it.

What this page does not do

It does not predict how long your application will take, it does not rank the organisations, and it does not publish any applicant-reported average. Where a figure could not be read from an organisation’s own page, it is not on this page at all.