Apostille vs. Embassy legalisation for Austria
Two routes exist for sending a British paper abroad, and only one of them applies here. The long route runs a paper past a home ministry and then past a consulate, each adding a mark. The short route stops after a single certificate called an apostille. Document legalisation for Austria takes the short route, so the consular half of the story never begins. The slip itself only says who signed your paper and in what role; it makes no claim about what the paper says.
Austria's Hague status and what it means for you
Austria joined the Hague Apostille Convention in 1968, and Britain has been in it since 1965. Both ends of this route have therefore agreed, for a long time, to trust each other's apostilles without a further look. That is why an apostille from United Kingdom to Austria travels as a single step, and why old guidance mentioning a Vienna consular stamp is out of date.
The Edinburgh to Austria route, step by step
Work backwards from the reader. Ask what body in Austria will open the envelope, then get the version of the paper that body will accept, then stamp it. Doing it in that order stops the common waste, which is paying to stamp a paper the reader was never going to take.
For Scottish civil records the first stop is Edinburgh Registration Service, which prints certified extracts of births, marriages and deaths. A fresh extract can go through the post in its place, so the original never leaves your hands. For a degree, a company paper or a court order, the issuing body itself supplies the version to be stamped.
Cost and timing on this route
The stamp costs £45 per paper on the standard postal route. Registered firms may use a next-day route at £40 per paper. Those are the only prices set by the office; everything else on the bill belongs to a courier, a register or a translator, and none of it changes because Austria is at the other end. The waiting is mostly the envelope moving, so a job with three papers costs three fees but adds little to the clock.
What an Austrian reader tends to want
Austrian offices read German, so a German rendering of both the paper and the stamp is the usual ask, even though nothing in the British process requires one. A translator can work from the stamped page once it is back with you. Knowing what you need for an apostille for Austria is only half the job; the other half is knowing what the reader wants beside it.