EEA Family Permit vs Family Visa - Help?

[selftaughtlearner]

Hi everyone! I was wondering if anyone had any advice on whether to choose to apply for an EEA Family Permit or a family visa.

I'm a US citizen and have lived in the UK for the past 4 years while studying. My Swedish partner and I live together here and since my course is due to finish in August, I want to move from my Tier 4 visa onto either a Family Visa or an EEA Family Permit. My partner currently holds pre-settled status on the EU Settlement Scheme and will qualify/apply for settled status in October (2 weeks before my current visa expires eek!). We intend on applying as unmarried/durable partners, since we'll have lived together for 2 years in September and feel no need to get married unless we have to for immigration reasons. We have plenty of proof of our relationship, meet the maintenance requirement (my offered job alone would meet it) and would have no obvious problems with our application (at least that I can think of).

I have a job here and will move to full-time work once my course finishes next month, plus I have a few medical issues that would make going back home to the US to apply for a visa complicated (as I would be uninsured back home), so my hangup with applying for an EEA family permit is that it may take a comparatively long time to receive a decision and my current visa may expire before I could return to the UK, which would mean I would need to quit my (remote, but UK-based) job, couldn't renew my part of the lease I share with my partner and would be uninsured. However, it's free to apply and I've heard it's a less complicated process than a family visa. My only concern with the visa is that it may be harder to get an approval (more scrutiny?), it's expensive and my partner may not be able to get his settled status application approved before my visa expires, due to processing times.

Does anyone have experience or thoughts to share? I really appreciate it!

[CR001]

You don't qualify for the more expensive family visa as your partner is an EU citizen.

[selftaughtlearner]

You don't qualify for the more expensive family visa as your partner is an EU citizen.

If you mean the regular family visa, from what I've read in the gov't guidance, EU citizens' partners are not excluded from the family visa route as long as the EU citizen has settled status or IDR. My partner will qualify for (and apply for) settled status before my current visa expires, so should have settled status by the time we would apply for the family visa. Unless there's a rule I've missed somewhere excluding EU citizens for another reason?