US Passport Fees 2026: Complete Cost Guide for Every Type

The Short Answer: What a Passport Costs

If you only need the number, here it is. A first-time adult passport book costs $165 total: a $130 application fee plus a $35 execution fee. An adult renewing by mail or online pays $130 for the book with no execution fee. A passport for a child under 16 costs $135 total. A passport card, which works for land and sea travel to Canada, Mexico, Bermuda, and the Caribbean but never for international flights, costs $65 for a first-time adult and $30 on renewal. Speed costs extra in every case: $60 for expedited processing and $26.87 for 1-to-3-day return delivery, and those two add-ons are separate charges that do very different things. Everything below unpacks these numbers so you pay exactly the right amount, to exactly the right recipient, the first time.

The fee schedule on this page comes from the State Department's official passport fee chart updated for October 2026, cross-checked against the Department's online fee pages. Passport fees change over time, and the delivery fee in particular moved during 2026, which is why you should treat any undated blog post quoting a different delivery number as stale. The verification date for every figure on this page is October 13, 2026.

The Complete 2026 Passport Fee Schedule

The table below lists every standard applicant category. Application fees go to the Department of State. The $35 execution fee, where it applies, goes to the acceptance facility and is charged once per application, not per document, which is why getting the book and card together costs only one execution fee.

A few lines in that table deserve a closer look. The adult book-plus-card combination costs $160 in application fees, which is exactly the sum of the $130 book and the $30 card, and it carries a single $35 execution fee rather than two, so bundling saves you $35 compared with applying for the two documents separately. The same single-execution-fee logic applies to children. The large-format 50-page passport book, often called the large book, is available at no extra charge; you simply request it, which frequent travelers should always do since extra pages can never be added to a booklet later. And the file search fee is the rare line most applicants will never touch: it applies only when you cannot present citizenship evidence or proof of a previously issued passport or Consular Report of Birth Abroad and must ask the Department to locate your record, submitted with Form DS-11 and a written request.

One more number that surprises people is the delivery fee. Older State Department charts quoted $22.05 for 1-to-3-day delivery, and some 2026 guides quote $23.36, but the Department's current fee pages list $26.87. The fee changed during 2026, and $26.87 is the figure on the Department's live fee pages as verified on October 13, 2026. If you mail an older amount, the mismatch can delay your application, so always confirm the delivery add-on against the current chart before you write the check. Note also that 1-to-3-day delivery applies to the issued passport book mailed to a US address and is not available for passport cards.

Who Pays What to Whom: The Two-Payment Rule

This is the classic confusion point, so it is worth stating plainly. A first-time passport application involves two payments to two different recipients, and they cannot be combined. Payment one is the application fee, payable to the "U.S. Department of State," which covers adjudication, printing, and issuance. Payment two is the $35 execution or acceptance fee, payable to the acceptance facility itself, such as the post office, clerk of court, or other designated office whose agent witnesses your signature, verifies your identity, reviews your documents, and seals the package. The State Department cannot cash a check made out to the post office, and the post office cannot forward a check made out to the State Department, so a single combined check fails both ends and your application stalls until the payments are corrected.

Renewals by mail work differently, and the difference is pure savings. When you renew with Form DS-82, or through online renewal, there is no in-person appearance and therefore no acceptance agent, so no execution fee applies at all. The entire renewal payment goes to the Department of State in one check or money order, or by card online. This $35 gap is the main financial reason to protect your eligibility to renew by mail: let your passport expire too long, damage it, or lose it, and you fall back into the DS-11 in-person track where the execution fee returns. Our renewal guide walks through the eligibility rules, and our DS-11 first-time application guide covers the in-person track.

Families should note how the execution fee scales. It is charged per application, and each family member files a separate application, so a family of four applying in person pays the $35 fee four times. There is no family discount and no way to bundle applications under one execution fee. Children under 16 must always apply in person with both parents or guardians appearing or consenting, as our minors guide explains, so the execution fee is unavoidable for every child applicant.

Renewal vs New Application: Cost Compared

Whether you renew or start over is not just a paperwork question; it changes the total by at least $35 and sometimes much more. The table below compares the two tracks side by side for the same document.

The practical takeaway is that staying renewal-eligible is worth real money and real convenience. Renew before the 15-year window closes, keep the old booklet undamaged, and report a name change through the proper correction route, and every future renewal stays on the cheaper track. Slip off that track and each cycle costs $35 more plus a trip to an acceptance facility. Travelers weighing the card against the book should read our passport card versus book comparison, since the card's lower price only makes sense if your travel stays within its land-and-sea limits.

Expedited Service and Fast Delivery Costs

Speed is sold as two separate products, and buying only one of them is the most common expensive mistake in passport applications. Expedited processing, at $60 per application, buys faster handling inside the State Department: the published expedited timeframe is currently 2 to 3 weeks plus mailing time, versus 4 to 6 weeks plus mailing time for routine service. Faster return delivery, at $26.87, buys faster shipment of the finished passport book back to your US address, arriving 1 to 3 days after mailing instead of riding standard mail. An expedited application with standard return mail still crawls through the postal system on the way back, and a routine application with fast return delivery still waits the full routine queue; travelers in a genuine hurry almost always need both add-ons together.

Three fine-print points matter here. First, the expedite fee is charged per application, so expediting a family of four costs an extra $240, not $60. Second, 1-to-3-day delivery covers the issued book mailed to addresses within the United States and does not apply to passport cards, and you should not include prepaid return envelopes of your own since the Department instructs applicants not to submit them. Third, the delivery fee is the figure most likely to be stale in older guides: $26.87 is current as verified on October 13, 2026, replacing the older $22.05 and interim figures still quoted around the web. To estimate your exact total before you apply, use our passport renewal fee calculator.

How to Pay: Checks, Cards, and Money Orders

How you may pay depends entirely on where the payment is going and how the application travels. For applications mailed to the State Department, including every DS-82 renewal and every DS-11 executed at a post office, the Department's fee must be paid by personal, certified, cashier's, or traveler's check, or by money order, made payable to "U.S. Department of State." Credit and debit cards are not accepted for State Department fees sent by mail, full stop. The exact payee wording and the exact dollar amount both matter: an incorrect amount is one of the most common reasons mailed applications get delayed, since the package has to be returned or held for correction.

In-person applications open more options. At a passport agency, the State Department fee can be paid by credit card, debit card, check, money order, or digital wallet such as Apple Pay or Google Pay, which makes the agency counter the only in-person point where plastic reaches the Department itself. The $35 execution fee owed to the acceptance facility is a separate transaction with its own rules: post offices accept checks or money orders payable to "Postmaster" as well as debit and credit cards, while clerks of court and other facilities set their own accepted methods, so confirm before you arrive. Online renewal is paid by card through the State Department's online system, which is the simplest payment path of all for eligible adults.

Two practical tips close out the payment question. First, buy the money order before your appointment if you need one: post offices sell money orders but cannot take a credit card for them, so bring a debit card or cash for that purchase. Second, never send cash through the mail under any circumstances; cash is not an accepted payment method for mailed applications and cannot be recovered if the envelope goes astray. If your situation involves lost documents rather than just payment questions, our minors guide and DS-11 guide cover what to file alongside the fees.

Fee Exemptions and No-Fee Passports

Almost every traveler pays the published fees, and the exemptions are narrower than rumor suggests, so this section is mostly about what does not apply to you. The State Department issues no-fee passports, sometimes called special-issuance passports, to US government employees, personal services contractors, and their eligible family members traveling abroad on official government business, processed through the Special Issuance Agency or through passport offices on military installations. Military dependents listed on official orders can obtain no-fee passports for a government-directed move overseas. These documents are issued for official use, are generally valid for five years rather than ten, and are not valid for personal leisure travel: a service member flying abroad for vacation needs a regular blue tourist passport and pays exactly the same fees as any civilian.

What about sympathetic cases? There is no published fee waiver for a death in the family abroad, for financial hardship, for students, or for seniors. Travelers facing a life-or-death emergency abroad get something more valuable than a discount: access to a phone appointment system that can produce a passport within days, as our emergency passport guide explains, but the standard application and expedite fees still apply. Similarly, replacing a passport that was lost, stolen, or damaged costs the full first-time-equivalent total, since the replacement travels the DS-11 in-person track with its execution fee. The honest rule is simple: unless you are traveling on official US government orders, budget the full published amount.

One genuine money-saver does exist inside the system and is worth knowing. If your passport was issued with a printing or data error, or your name changed within one year of issuance, Form DS-5504 corrects or reissues the book without a new application fee; you pay only for expedited processing or fast delivery if you choose them. After the one-year window, the same change requires a full new application at full cost, which is another reason to inspect a new passport the day it arrives. Name changes outside that window are covered in our passport name change guide.

Refund Policy: What Happens to Your Money

State Department passport fees are, by law, non-refundable and non-transferable. The Department collects the application fee and the acceptance facility collects the execution fee, and both are kept even if no passport is ultimately issued. That means a denied application, an application abandoned halfway, a trip that gets cancelled, or a passport that arrives too late for the journey produces no refund of the core fees. The same finality applies to the $150 file search fee and the $26.87 delivery fee once paid. Knowing this before you apply reframes every optional add-on as a sunk cost the moment the envelope is mailed, which is all the more reason to verify eligibility, amounts, and payees before sending anything.

The single exception is the $60 expedite fee. If the Department fails to process your application within its published expedited timeframe, you may request a refund of the expedite fee through the Department's expedited service fee refund process. Note what this covers and what it does not: it refunds only the $60 expedite add-on, never the underlying application or execution fees, and mailing time sits outside the processing clock, so a passport that was adjudicated on time but rode slow mail does not qualify. Third-party expeditor markups are private company charges entirely outside the government refund system; any refund there depends on the company's own policy, which is worth reading before you hire one.

Cheapest vs Fastest: Pick Your Total

The table below puts the extremes side by side so you can match spending to your timeline. Every figure is the government total before photos, postage to mail the application, photocopies, and any travel to an appointment.

Read the table as a decision rule. If your travel is more than three months out, the cheapest row that fits your category is almost always correct, and the $86.87 urgent premium buys you nothing but earlier anxiety relief. If your travel is inside a month, the standard urgent combination is the rational buy, since the expedite fee without fast delivery leaves the finished passport riding slow mail. Only travel inside two weeks justifies the agency appointment, with its phone scheduling, proof-of-travel requirements, and trip to one of the limited agency cities. Whatever row you land on, run your expiry math first with our passport validity checker, confirm your document lineup with our document checklist tool, and check destination entry rules with our visa eligibility checker before you spend a dollar.

Frequently Asked Questions