How Much Does a Green Card Actually Cost in 2026?

The headline number is straightforward: Form I-485 (Adjustment of Status), the core green card application filed from inside the United States, currently costs $1,440 under the USCIS fee schedule in effect since April 1, 2024. That figure already includes the biometric services fee — USCIS no longer charges it separately for most applicants. For a child under 14 filing alongside a parent, the fee drops to $950.

What catches people off guard is that $1,440 is very often not the whole cost, because most adjustment-of-status applicants also file two companion forms while their green card case is pending: Form I-765 for a work permit and Form I-131 for a travel document (advance parole), so they can work and travel legally while waiting. When filed together with a pending I-485, the I-765 work permit fee drops to a discounted $260 rather than its standalone $520/$470 rate — but it is still an additional cost most people don't budget for upfront.

If the green card is based on a family petition — a U.S. citizen or permanent resident sponsoring a relative — there is also the underlying Form I-130 petition, which runs $675 filed on paper or $625 filed online, on top of the I-485 itself. Employment-based cases have their own separate petition costs through the employer, which are usually paid by the company rather than the applicant.

None of this includes a lawyer. USCIS fees are fixed regardless of whether you self-file or use an attorney, but immigration attorney fees for a full adjustment-of-status case commonly range from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars depending on complexity — a cost this article doesn't try to estimate, since it varies enormously by case and by attorney.

For applicants with limited income, it's worth knowing that fee waivers exist for some — but not all — of these forms. The N-400 citizenship application (a separate, later step after holding a green card) has a well-established reduced-fee and full-waiver program tied to income relative to the federal poverty guidelines. I-485 itself generally does not have an equivalent waiver, so budgeting for the full amount is the safer assumption for the green card stage itself.