The USCIS filing fee is the number every "how much does an H-1B cost" article quotes. It's also less than 20% of what an employer actually spends. Here's the whole stack — and why Year 1 lands closer to $15,000–$30,000 than the $5,000–$7,000 most people expect.
These are charged once per petition, at the initial filing or on a change of employer. Amounts reflect the fee schedule USCIS put in place after its April 2024 revision; verify the current dollar amounts on the USCIS fee schedule before you rely on them.
| Fee | Amount | When it applies |
|---|---|---|
| I-129 base petition | Varies | Reduced rate for smaller employers (fewer than 25 FTE), nonprofits, and higher-ed institutions |
| Fraud Prevention & Detection | $500 | Flat, on every initial petition and change-of-employer |
| ACWIA training fee | $0 / $750 / $1,500 | $0 for higher-ed and nonprofit research; otherwise tiered by FTE (fewer than 25 FTE vs. 25+). Due at initial filing and first renewal. |
| Asylum Program fee | Varies | Reduced or waived for nonprofits and higher ed; charged to for-profit filers (introduced in the April 2024 fee revision) |
| Public Law 114-113 fee | $4,000 | Only for H-1B-dependent employers with 50+ FTE |
| Registration (lottery) | Applies | Per beneficiary, cap-subject employers only |
| Premium Processing (optional) | $2,805 | ~15-day adjudication vs. ~6 months; may be paid by either party |
Add these up and a straightforward for-profit petition with Premium Processing already clears several thousand dollars in government fees alone — before a lawyer has drafted anything. The $4,000 Public Law 114-113 fee only hits H-1B-dependent employers with 50 or more full-time-equivalent employees, but when it applies it is one of the largest single line items.
Almost every employer uses immigration counsel to prepare the Labor Condition Application (LCA), assemble the petition, and respond to any Request for Evidence. Fees vary widely by firm — a boutique practice and a large firm can differ by thousands of dollars on the same case. Attorney fees for the petition itself are the employer's obligation, not the worker's; only attorney fees for a worker's personal legal questions may fall to the worker.
This is the cost that surprises people, because it isn't a fee at all — it's salary. The H-1B program requires the employer to pay at least the OFLC prevailing wage for the role's SOC code, Metropolitan Statistical Area, and wage level. If the offer sits below that number, the employer has to raise it to meet the wage. That gap is recurring money, paid every year the worker is on H-1B — and it is frequently the single largest item in the whole stack, dwarfing the government fees.
OFLC publishes four wage levels (I entry, II qualified, III experienced, IV fully competent). Picking the wrong level is the most common reason online H-1B calculators give wrong answers. Our lottery guide covers how selection works before you spend on any of this.
Beyond salary, sponsorship carries ongoing administrative cost: maintaining the Public Access File, posting LCA notices, meeting recordkeeping obligations, and handling amendments, transfers, and address changes over the life of the petition. Depending on how it's resourced internally, this recurring overhead adds a modest per-worker cost each year on top of salary and fees.
A meaningful share of H-1B sponsorships convert to PERM-based permanent residency. That's its own multi-year exercise — PERM recruitment and prevailing-wage determination, the I-140 immigrant petition, and then the I-485 adjustment of status or consular processing. Including attorney fees, this typically adds on the order of $10,000 or more in total, spread over roughly two to four years. Note that this is the cost of pursuing the green card; the country-of-birth backlog — the wait for a visa number to become available, which is enormous for India- and China-born workers — is a separate problem that time, not money, has to solve.
The H-1B sponsorship cost calculator loads all of this for your specific case — employer size and type, SOC code and location, wage level, dependency status, Premium Processing, and whether you pursue the green card — and gives you Year-1, 3-year, and 6-year totals plus a comparison against hiring a US worker. It runs entirely in your browser.
Reflects guidance current as of May 2026: amounts use the post-April-2024 USCIS fee schedule. USCIS and DOL revise fees periodically — verify current amounts on the USCIS fee schedule. This guide is educational and not legal or immigration advice; see our disclaimer.
Sources: USCIS H-1B specialty-occupation fee schedule (post-April 2024); DOL Office of Foreign Labor Certification prevailing-wage program (flag.dol.gov); Public Law 114-113.