License for Mining: Title Types, Fees and How to Apply

A license for mining is the legal permission a government gives you to search for, or extract, minerals from a defined piece of ground. In most countries the state owns the minerals, not the landowner, so without that title even the owner of the land cannot legally dig, drill or sell ore. The name changes from place to place (licence, permit, lease, concession, right or claim), but the logic behind them is remarkably similar.

Try it: Holding-cost comparison, four mining titles on the same ground →

Most people who search for a license for mining hit a wall of legal jargon. So we have kept it practical: what each type of title allows, what regulators typically ask for, what fees look like in real jurisdictions, and how an application moves from a map selection to a granted title. Every fee and rule below comes from a regulator’s own website or the governing statute. Each one changes over time, so we give the date of the schedule we used and the page where you can check for a newer one.

“In Western Australia, a A$30 Miner’s Right lets you prospect on Crown land and keep samples of up to 20 kg.”

What a license for mining is, and what it is not

Think of a mineral title as a bundle of three things: an area (a polygon, a set of grid blocks or a staked claim), a set of rights (to prospect, explore, retain or mine), and a set of obligations (rent, minimum work spend, reporting, environmental care and eventual rehabilitation). Every license for mining you will ever hold is some mix of those three, fixed for a term of years.

The words vary, and the differences matter when you read a law or a sale document:

• Mining license / licence. The general term, and the formal name of the production title in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. “License” is the US spelling; “licence” is used in Australia, Canada and most of Africa, so a mineral licence in Perth and a mineral license in Nevada are the same idea spelt two ways.
• Mining permit. Often a smaller or shorter title. In South Africa a mining permit covers no more than 1.5 hectares; in Kenya it is the small-scale production title. Some codes also use “mineral permits” as a catch-all for every small title they issue.
• Mining lease. The production title in Western Australia and Ghana. A WA mining lease runs for 21 years and can be renewed.
• Mining or mineral concession. The term used in Lusophone and several Latin legal systems. Mozambique’s Mining Law 20/2014 grants a Concessão Mineira, and you will see “mineral concession” in many Latin American contracts.
• Mining right. South Africa’s large-scale production title under the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act (MPRDA), granted for up to 30 years.
• Mining claim. In the USA and Canada you usually “locate” or “register” a claim over open land rather than apply for a discretionary licence. The claim is still a mineral title, with fees and rules.

What a license for mining is not: it is not proof of a deposit, it is not normally a right to the surface of the land, and it rarely excuses you from other approvals. Environmental authorisations, water use, explosives, heritage clearances and landowner consultation usually sit alongside it. South Africa, for example, asks applicants for a prospecting right to apply for environmental authorisation at the same time.

Types of license for mining, from reconnaissance to mining lease

Most modern mining laws build a ladder. You start with a broad, short, low-commitment title and climb towards a narrow, long, high-commitment one as your knowledge of the ground improves. Each rung asks more of you and grants more in return. Work out which rung you are on and you have worked out which title you need.

Reconnaissance: looking before you commit

A reconnaissance licence or permit covers a large area for a short time and usually rules out drilling or trenching. Ghana’s Reconnaissance Licence, for instance, can cover up to 5,000 contiguous 21-hectare blocks for 12 months, renewable, according to the Minerals Commission’s mineral rights page. It suits companies scanning a region for targets. Not every country offers one.

Prospecting and exploration: finding and testing a deposit

This is the workhorse license for mining exploration, and the one most juniors hold. It gives an exclusive right to search for specified minerals, including by sampling and drilling. Terms run for years and often come with compulsory area reduction. Ghana’s Prospecting Licence covers up to 750 blocks for three years and is renewable with the area cut to no more than half. Kenya’s prospecting licence can reach 1,500 contiguous blocks for up to three years. In Western Australia a prospecting licence runs four years plus one four-year extension, and an exploration licence applied for after 10 February 2006 runs five years, then one five-year extension, then further two-year periods. Victoria’s prospecting licence is the odd one out: seven years at most, and no renewal. Our prospecting licence comparison across eight jurisdictions sets the rent and minimum spend for each side by side.

Retention: holding a deposit you cannot mine yet

Suppose you find something that is uneconomic today because of price, infrastructure or technology. A retention licence lets you hold it without the work obligations of an exploration title. Western Australia’s Retention Licence has no maximum area and runs for up to five years, renewable.

Small-scale and artisanal mining titles

Many countries reserve small production titles for their own citizens. Ghana’s Small Scale Mining Licence is for Ghanaians only and runs for five years, renewable. Kenya’s artisanal and small-scale permits require the holder to be a Kenyan citizen or a company at least 60% owned by Kenyan citizens.

Mining lease, licence or right: production

The top rung is the production license for mining: it authorises extraction and sale. It covers a much smaller area, usually tied to a defined deposit, and demands the most: a mine plan, environmental approvals, rehabilitation security, social commitments and royalties. Kenya’s Mining Licence runs for up to 25 years or the forecast life of the mine, whichever is shorter. A Western Australian mining lease runs 21 years and is renewable.

How much does a license for mining cost?

“Mining permit cost” is one of the most searched questions on this topic, and the application fee is the smallest part of the answer. The real cost of a license for mining is the recurring bill: annual rent per hectare or block, minimum work expenditure, security deposits, reporting and, at the production stage, royalties. The table sets out published figures from four regulators so you can see the structure. Each row names the schedule it came from; confirm the amount on that page before paying.

Western Australia’s Fees and Charges 2026–27 schedule, effective 1 July 2026, shows where the money goes. A prospecting licence costs A$4.40 per hectare in rent but A$40 per hectare in minimum annual expenditure. A mining lease costs A$30.10 in rent and A$100 in expenditure. In both cases the work commitment is roughly three to nine times the rent. WA reissues the schedule each July, so check the DMPE site for the current year’s figures.

Two lessons follow. Recurring costs scale with area, so an oversized licence is an expensive one. And minimum expenditure is often the biggest line, so budget for the full term, not the lodgement day. The calculator below puts four very different titles side by side for the same piece of ground.

One search in this cluster trips people up: “surpac license cost”. That is a software licence for mine-planning tools, priced by the software vendor. It has nothing to do with the right to explore or mine.

Requirements for a license for mining: what regulators ask for

Requirements for a mining permit or licence differ in detail, but the checklist regulators work through is much the same everywhere. Expect to prove who you are, where you want to work, what you intend to do, and that you can pay for it and clean up afterwards. The heavier the license for mining, the more evidence you need.

• Identity and eligibility. ID for individuals; incorporation papers, directors and shareholders for companies. Some titles are citizens-only, such as Ghana’s small-scale licence and Tanzania’s Primary Mining Licence.
• A defined area. Coordinates or grid blocks in the datum the registry uses. The area must be free of existing rights; Tanzania’s Mining Commission states this explicitly.
• A work programme. What you will do, when, and at what cost. Western Australia sets a minimum annual expenditure for every exploration title.
• Technical and financial capacity. South Africa grants prospecting rights only where the applicant has access to financial resources and expertise and a compatible financing plan.
• Environmental approvals. An environmental management plan or authorisation, often lodged in parallel.
• Consultation. South Africa requires applicants to consult the landowner and lawful occupier and report the outcome within 30 days of acceptance of a prospecting right application.
• Production-stage proof. For a WA mining lease you must lodge a mining proposal, a mineralisation report by a qualified person, or a JORC-compliant resource report.

How to apply for a license for mining, step by step

Application processes have converged, largely because so many registries now run on similar online cadastre software. Our mining cadastre portal guide by country lists the official portals for 17 countries. The sequence below is what you will meet in most of them.

1. Choose the right title. Match the stage of your project to the ladder above, then apply for the license for mining that fits it. Applying for a production title before you have exploration results is a common and costly error.
2. Register with the registry. Online systems such as Ontario’s MLAS, the BLM’s MLRS and Western Australia’s Mineral Titles Online need an account before you can lodge anything.
3. Search the register. Confirm the ground is open. Most portals show existing titles and pending applications on a map.
4. Select or mark out the area. Pick grid blocks, enter coordinates, or physically mark out the ground where the law still requires it (WA prospecting licences and mining leases must be marked out).
5. Lodge and pay. Application fees are usually non-refundable. Keep every receipt, because lodgement time often decides priority.
6. Notice, objections and consultation. Many systems publish applications and allow objections. In WA, native title parties have four months to object where the expedited procedure applies.
7. Grant and ongoing compliance. Rent, minimum spend, annual reports and renewals keep the title alive. Miss a payment date and you can lose the licence.

Finding the mining licence application form

Few regulators still publish a single paper application form for a mining licence. In most of the places covered here the form is the portal itself: you fill in the mining licence application online, attach documents and pay there. Ghana moved every application online in November 2021. Kenya’s cadastre portal takes new applications once you have registered and been verified. Where a paper form still exists, the regulator’s own site is the only safe place to download it. Copies passed around online are often out of date.

If you already have a boundary in mind, you can get a satellite read on it while the paperwork moves. Draw it on mining.farmonaut.com (Map Your Mining Site), or send the coordinates through our mining query form for a quote.

Getting a license for mining in the USA, Canada, Australia and Africa

United States: claiming mineral rights on federal land

On open federal public land there is no discretionary license for mining at the exploration stage. The US system is claim-based under the General Mining Law: you locate a lode or placer claim, then record it with the Bureau of Land Management within 90 days. For a lode claim filed on or after 1 September 2024, the BLM’s mining claim fee page lists a $25 processing fee, a $49 location fee and a $200 maintenance fee: $274 in total. Placer claims pay the same $74 at filing plus $200 maintenance for each 20 acres or part of it. Existing claims pay the maintenance fee on or before 1 September each year, and the BLM adjusts these fees from time to time, so check that page before you file.

• Online filing: the BLM’s Mineral & Land Records System (MLRS) at mlrs.blm.gov lets you file claims and sites online. It replaced LR2000, and the BLM says every LR2000 serial number was carried into MLRS, so old LR2000 BLM mining claims records can still be traced by their case number.
• The BLM mineral rights map: there is no separate paper map any more. MLRS has built-in geospatial mapping, and the BLM also publishes its open and closed mining claim cases as public GIS map layers you can load in ArcGIS or Google Earth.
• Small-miner waiver: if you and all related parties hold 10 or fewer claims nationwide, you can file Form 3830-2 instead of paying maintenance fees.
• ⚠ Other permits: a claim is not an operating permit. Surface disturbance needs separate federal and state approvals.

Canada: provincial online staking

Canada leaves minerals mostly to the provinces, so the license for mining you need depends on where the ground is, and most provinces have replaced physical staking with online map selection. In Ontario, MLAS lets you register claims online, 24 hours a day, from anywhere. To register a claim you need an MLAS account and a valid prospector’s licence, which you buy through MLAS. Once you hold claims, early exploration needs an exploration plan or permit, and the usual time from circulation of an exploration plan to effect is 30 days.

• Newfoundland and Labrador: mineral claims in Newfoundland are staked online through the Mineral Rights Administration System (MIRIAD), and the province’s mines FAQ confirms registration is free.
• Ontario claim maps: people still search for “MNDM claim maps”, after the old Ministry of Northern Development and Mines. The current equivalent is the free MLAS Map Viewer, which non-registered users can open to see active unpatented claims; paper claim maps are still sold by the ministry.
• Saskatchewan: the Mineral Administration Registry Saskatchewan (MARS) handles tenure online, and a Free Miner’s Certificate is needed before staking. Potash mineral rights in Saskatchewan are handled differently: they are subsurface mineral dispositions covering mineral salts more than 60 metres below surface, and the province sells them through competitive public offerings under The Subsurface Mineral Tenure Regulations.
• British Columbia: Mineral Titles Online handles claim registration.
• Manitoba: Manitoba mining claims run from 16 to 256 hectares. You need a prospecting licence (anyone 18 or older; C$15 for life), and you check open ground on the iMaQs Mining Map before staking. The province’s staking page listed recording fees of C$16 per claim in unsurveyed territory and C$67 in surveyed territory when we checked in September 2026.
• ⚠ Other provinces: check the provincial mines branch directly for the staking method and claim maps in force when you apply.

“Ontario’s online system lets prospectors register a mining claim 24 hours a day, from anywhere in the world.”

Australia: state-based tenements

Each Australian state runs its own mining act, so a license for mining in Perth is not the same as one in Melbourne. Western Australia, the largest mining state, administers tenure through the Department of Mines, Petroleum and Exploration (DMPE), which replaced DEMIRS on 1 July 2025. WA’s Mining Act 1978 offers prospecting licences (under 200 ha, four years plus one four-year extension), exploration licences (1 to 70 graticular blocks, or 200 outside mineralised areas), retention licences, mining leases (21 years, renewable), general purpose leases and miscellaneous licences. Applications and searches run through Mineral Titles Online. For fees, office addresses and each tenement type in detail, see our guide to WA mining tenements and the Dept of Mines.

Victoria regulates under the Mineral Resources (Sustainable Development) Act 1990. Its prospecting licence is capped at 5 hectares, runs for a maximum of seven years and cannot be renewed.

Africa: online cadastres and citizen-reserved titles

Much of Africa runs licensing through online cadastre portals, with small-scale titles often reserved for citizens. A few examples, each checked in September 2026:

• Kenya (Mining Act, 2016): a mining license in Kenya can be one of several titles: reconnaissance, prospecting and retention licences and a mining licence for large-scale work, plus reconnaissance, prospecting and mining permits for small-scale operators. Applications go through portal.miningcadastre.go.ke, and the Ministry of Mining FAQ lists the fees.
• Tanzania (Mining Act, Cap. 123): the mining license in Tanzania comes as a Prospecting Licence, Primary Mining Licence, Mining Licence and Special Mining Licence, handled by the Mining Commission. The PML is for Tanzanian citizens.
• Sierra Leone (Mines and Minerals Development Act, 2022): a mining license in Sierra Leone can be a reconnaissance, exploration, small-scale, large-scale and artisanal licences, filed with the National Minerals Agency’s Mining Cadastre Office.
• Ghana (Act 703): reconnaissance and prospecting licences, mining leases and small-scale licences. Every application has been online since November 2021.
• South Africa (MPRDA): prospecting right, mining right and mining permit. Applications go through SAMRAD while the Indwe Mining Licensing System is piloted in the Western Cape, where the first rightholders were registered in October 2025. Our South African mining rights and permits guide covers each one step by step.

Gold mining licenses and gold panning permits

Why does gold get its own rules? Because it draws hobbyists and serious operators to the same creeks. The line that matters runs between recreational prospecting, which usually needs a cheap personal permit, and commercial gold mining, which needs a full mineral title. Legally, a gold mining license is simply a license for mining gold, but some jurisdictions offer gold-specific shortcuts.

• Western Australia, Miner’s Right: every person who prospects or fossicks on Crown land needs one. It costs A$30 on the 2026–27 schedule and allows samples of up to 20 kg, but no mining operations. Metal detecting counts as prospecting.
• Western Australia, Special Prospecting Licence for gold: up to 10 hectares, marked out inside an existing prospecting or exploration licence that has been in force for more than 12 months. You may hold an interest in no more than 10 at once.
• Victoria, Miner’s Right: required to search for gold, gems or minerals, and must be carried while prospecting. Check the fee with Resources Victoria when you buy it.
• USA, placer claims: gold in stream gravels is usually claimed as a placer claim, with maintenance fees per 20 acres. Many popular panning streams are already claimed, so check MLRS before you dig.
• ⚠ Artisanal gold in Africa: a small-scale gold mining licence is often citizens-only and tied to designated areas. Mercury use and river-bed disturbance are closely regulated.

Buying a mining permit instead of applying

Searches for “mining permit for sale” are common. Some titles can be transferred with regulator approval; others cannot. South African mining permits, for example, are not transferable. Where a transfer is possible, the buyer of a license for mining inherits every unpaid obligation. Treat any purchase as due diligence: check the register, the rent history, the boundary and the geology. Our list of checks to run before buying a gold claim works for most transferable titles. We are not a broker and do not buy or sell titles, but a satellite read of the boundary is a quick independent check on what you would be buying.

Before you apply: make sure the ground is worth licensing

A license for mining costs money every year you hold it. In first-come, first-served registries applicants often rush to file on ground they know little about, then carry rent and work commitments on an area that never justifies a drill rig. The cheapest time to improve the odds is before the application goes in. A day spent on reading the published geological maps for the area, or an hour with a mining consultant who knows the local code, costs far less than a year of rent on the wrong ground.

This is where satellite analysis fits. Once you have an open area and a draft license for mining application, you already have what we need: a boundary. Our satellite-based mineral detection analyses multispectral and hyperspectral imagery of that polygon. Each mineral and alteration zone reflects energy in its own spectral signature, which lets us flag likely mineralised target zones, alteration halos and structures such as faults and fractures, without anyone setting foot on the ground.

• ✔ Input you already have: the coordinates, KML/KMZ or polygon from your licence application, plus the country and target mineral.
• ✔ Speed: reports arrive in 5–20 business days, depending on area size and mineral complexity.
• 📊 Deliverables: prospectivity heatmaps, high-potential zones with estimated location and depth ranges, geological interpretation, and PDF plus georeferenced GIS files. Premium+ adds TargetMax™ drilling intelligence and 3D subsurface models.
• 📊 Cost and time: satellite screening can cut early-exploration costs by up to 80–85% and shorten timelines from months to days, compared with starting on the ground.
• ⚠ Limitation: satellite targets are exploration targets, not a resource estimate. They tell you where to sample and drill first; fieldwork confirms them.

The satellite-driven 3D mineral prospectivity mapping overview shows what a typical deliverable looks like. We have scanned 100,000+ hectares for 20+ mineral types across 25+ countries.

A pre-application checklist

1. Pick the right rung of the licence ladder for your stage of work.
2. Register on the official portal early, because account verification can take days.
3. Search the register and save a dated copy of the result.
4. Prepare the boundary in the registry’s grid or datum.
5. Screen prospectivity on that boundary so you apply for the best ground, not just open ground.
6. Budget the full term: rent, minimum expenditure, security, reporting and renewal.
7. Lodge a complete application, because incomplete ones can lose their place in the queue.

Country and licence guides in this series

Each of these goes deeper on one registry or one rung of the ladder:

• Official mining cadastre portals for 17 countries: where to sign in, what the public map shows and how to lodge.
• Exploration licence terms, rent and spend compared: WA, NT, several African codes and Ontario in one table.
• Guyana GGMC permits, forms and per-acre rents: small, medium and large-scale permits and how to apply for each.
• Mining rights, permits and SAMRAD filing in South Africa: the MPRDA titles and where the DMPR offices are.
• Western Australian tenement types and fees: the seven WA titles, the 2026–27 fee schedule and Mineral Titles Online.

Frequently asked questions

Reviewed September 2026 against the BLM’s mining claim fee schedule, Western Australia’s DMPE Fees and Charges 2026–27 and its licence pages, Resources Victoria’s prospecting guidelines, Ontario’s MLAS pages, the Newfoundland and Labrador and Saskatchewan tenure pages, South Africa’s gov.za MPRDA service pages, Ghana’s Minerals Commission, Tanzania’s Mining Commission, and Kenya’s Mining Act 2016 and Ministry of Mining FAQ.

Licence types, terms and fees in this guide come from those regulators’ own websites and published schedules, and from our verified cadastre research. Fees are revised on each regulator’s own cycle (WA every July, the BLM by periodic adjustment), so always confirm with the licensing authority before you file or pay. Nothing here is legal or investment advice.