What does H-1B premium processing cost?

Premium processing speeds up USCIS's decision on your petition — it doesn't replace any of the mandatory filing fees, and a few employers face extra charges beyond both.

The figure above is what premium processing itself costs: the government's Form I-907 fee for a faster, guaranteed decision from USCIS on your H-1B petition. It is a separate, optional add-on — paid on top of, never instead of, the mandatory government filing fees for the underlying petition itself.

That figure is USCIS's own published fee for Form I-907, shown exactly as the agency states it, current as of the date given above — not an estimate, and not a number this page is guessing at.

Premium processing is only one line in a longer bill. The petition underneath it carries its own mandatory government filing fees — registration, the base petition fee, training and fraud-prevention fees, and, where it applies, the fee charged at consular visa issuance — all separate from premium processing, and all separate again from two further charges that only reach some employers and some cases.

A separate fee applies to petitions filed by large employers whose workforce is majority H-1B or L-1, and it also reaches those employers' same-employer extension petitions, not only new hires or transfers — so it can turn up on a renewal quote, not only on a first-time hire or transfer. Separately, a newer supplemental payment was introduced for new petitions for beneficiaries abroad who need consular or port-of-entry processing. It is not being collected: a federal court vacated the policy, the appeals court declined to pause that ruling, and the government's appeal continues. The underlying order was renewed into 2027, so collection could resume if the appeal succeeds. Even when it was in force it never applied to someone already in the US filing to change status, extend, or amend an existing H-1B. None of this changes what premium processing itself costs — that figure stands on its own, separate from whichever of these other charges do or don't apply to your case.

What to ask before you pay

Before comparing a firm's invoice against anything, it helps to know which charges are the government's and which are the firm's own — an honest quote keeps these on separate lines, and a quote that blends them is the first thing worth questioning.

Charges that go to the government:

• Registration, the base petition fee, and the training and fraud-prevention fees — the employer's to pay, by law, never billed to the worker.
• The consular visa-issuance fee, where it applies — paid by the employer or the worker, depending on the employer's own policy.
• Premium processing (Form I-907) — the figure above. It is paid to USCIS, but who actually writes the check depends on what the employer has agreed to; check the invoice for who's named as the payer.
• The large-employer supplemental fee, where the workforce test applies — the employer's to pay, by law.
• The newer supplemental fee, for some petitions filed from abroad — not being collected while a court's vacatur stands, with the government's appeal continuing. If it is ever collected again, it is the employer's to pay, by law.

Charges that are the firm's own:

• Whatever the attorney or filing service charges for their own work. This should always sit on a separate line from every charge above — a filer that folds its own fee into "government fees" on the invoice is doing something an honest invoice does not do. Paid by whoever engaged the firm, not the government.

Beyond sorting government from firm, a few more questions are worth asking directly:

• Is premium processing billed as its own separate USCIS filing you can see a receipt for, or is it folded into a package price you can't itemize?
• If your employer meets the workforce test for the large-employer fee, has that fee actually been included in what you're being asked to pay — or is it being added later as a surprise?
• If a firm is quoting the newer fee, ask on what basis: it is not being collected while the court's vacatur stands, and even when it was, it never reached a change of status inside the US. A quote that includes it today needs a written explanation, not a line item.
• If a premium-processing petition isn't decided inside its guaranteed window, is that fee refunded automatically, and by whom — the firm, or USCIS directly?
• What happens to fees already paid, government and firm's own alike, if the petition is denied rather than approved?

Check your own quote against these rules using the box below on this page — no account, no document needed, just the figure you were quoted and which of these charges it's supposed to cover. Already have the full proposal, an invoice, an engagement letter, or a retainer agreement in hand? Upload it for the complete check instead — it reviews the whole document line by line, not just the one number you typed in.

General information, not legal advice.