Considerably more. The capital must be invested and remain at risk in a qualifying commercial enterprise, its lawful source and path must be documented, and at least ten qualifying full-time jobs must be created, with permitted counting methods differing between standalone and regional centre structures. Payment alone establishes no eligibility and buys no decision.
Weigh evidence burden, not just price
The heavier obligation in EB-5 is usually documentary. Years of earnings records, tax filings, business sale agreements, loan documents and transfer confirmations may be needed to trace the funds, and a job-creation methodology has to hold up on review. When comparing routes, ask what proof each demands and who bears the risk if it falls short.
A cheaper headline figure attached to a heavier evidentiary burden is not cheaper in practice. Add one further obligation to that weighing, because it falls due long after the comparison has been made and forgotten. Approval leads to conditional permanent residence, and those conditions are removed only on a later petition showing that the capital remained at risk and the required jobs were created or, where permitted, will be created within the applicable period.
That later filing depends on records generated in the intervening years by people the investor may not control, which makes the question of who produces them part of the present comparison rather than a future administrative matter. Hypothetical example: an investor comparing routes prices the entry cost of each carefully and asks nothing about the later stage, and the two routes turn out to differ far more in what they demand at that point than in anything on the front page.