L-1 Visa Cost 2026: What the Company Pays and What You Pay

Every charge on an L-1 case belongs to one side of that split. Most cases owe the first three rows below, plus the visa application fee when the employee applies from abroad.

The calculator puts both sides together for your own case. Set the size of the company filing, whether the worker collects the visa abroad or switches status inside the US, and whether you want premium processing. It itemizes the fixed attorney fee beside every government fee, with no login and no email.

The company side starts with the petition itself, where two fees show up on every L-1 filing. For a company with 25 or fewer full-time US staff, the base petition fee is $695 and the Asylum Program Fee is $300. A nonprofit pays the $695 and nothing more. Above that staff line the two run $1,385 and $600. One question on Form I-129 decides which tier applies.

A third fee of $500 covers fraud prevention and detection. It lands the first time a person receives L-1 status, when someone moves into the L-1 from another status, and when an L-1 worker changes employers. Most companies pay this one and stop there.

The fourth reaches only large filers. A company with 50 or more US employees, more than half of them holding H-1B or L-1 status, adds $4,500 under Public Law 114-113. USCIS leaves several groups out of that headcount, including leased staff and people employed by commonly controlled partnerships, sole proprietorships, or affiliated service groups.

Premium processing costs $2,965 on Form I-907. USCIS then has 15 business days to act rather than leaving the case in the regular queue.

The fee is the same on a first petition and on an extension. If USCIS misses the window it refunds the $2,965 and keeps working the case on the fast track.

Either side can pay for it. Companies usually do when a start date is fixed, and employees sometimes cover it themselves to move a transfer along. You can also add it to a petition that is already pending.

The legal work is the other half of the company side, and published L-1 fees run from about $8,000 to $20,000. New office cases sit at the top, because the US company itself has to be documented from scratch. Read any quote for whether it covers a request for more evidence. That response is the work a low quote leaves out.

Through imigOS, a licensed immigration attorney handles an L-1 case end to end for a fixed $8,000, agreed before you commit. That fee covers the eligibility review and case strategy, the evidence, and the ownership and organization charts. It also covers the support letter, the L supplement, every response to a request for evidence, and courier costs. You can check the pricing before deciding anything.

A new office case also needs a business plan, and a separate writer usually produces it for around $1,500. USCIS judges the plan against what the L-1 visa petitioner has to prove about the US company, so its price tracks how much of that the company can already document.

Every charge so far belongs to the company, because the company is what USCIS calls the petitioner. It owes the base petition fee, the Asylum Program Fee, and both extra charges where they apply. The law names who pays the fraud fee: the employer that files the petition, except on the blanket route.

The employee side is one visa fee, and a worker who never leaves the US pays nothing at all.

Premium processing and the attorney fee sit outside all of this. No rule says which side pays either one, so it comes down to the offer or the relocation package. Ask which side covers a request for more evidence before signing, since that is the charge most likely to turn up later.

The employee side of the split is a single fee. An L-1 applicant abroad pays $205 for the visa application, per person, plus a reciprocity fee set by nationality. Indian and Singaporean nationals owe no reciprocity fee. Some nationalities owe several hundred dollars or more.

The 2025 federal law also created a $250 Visa Integrity Fee. It does not reach a routine L-1 case as of August 27, 2026.

The Visa Integrity Fee exists in law but not yet in practice. USCIS wrote in July 2025 that the fee needed work across agencies first and would arrive in a later announcement. Nothing has been published since, and the State Department has issued no rule on it at all.

Check the application fee and your own reciprocity rate against the State Department fee schedule on the day you file. This is the part of the bill most likely to move.

Yes, on the base fee, and a blanket also moves one charge across the split. Form I-129S carries no filing fee of its own. USCIS states it plainly: there is a base filing fee for petitions filed on Form I-129, and none for a Form I-129S. Where a company already holds a blanket approval, that is a real saving on every transfer.

In most blanket cases the employee submits I-129S to a US embassy or consulate with the visa application, and the company files no I-129 at all. Canadians can take a second route. They hand the signed petition, the fees, and the supporting documents to a border officer at certain land crossings, or at a pre-clearance desk in Canada.

The $500 fraud fee still applies here, and it falls on the employee only, never on a spouse or children. The $4,500 charge is unaffected where a company owes it.

An extension and a switch into L-1 status from inside the US both need a full Form I-129 anyway, with its base fee, filed alongside the I-129S. So the same worker under the same blanket costs different amounts depending on whether they are abroad or already in the country.

An extension is cheaper on the company side than the first petition, because both extra charges drop off. A small employer pays $995, the $695 petition fee plus the $300 Asylum Program Fee. A larger one pays $1,985.

The legal work is usually lighter too, because the company relationship and the role are already documented from the first filing. L-1A status runs seven years and L-1B five, and extensions stop at those limits.

Dependents land on whichever side the family applies from. A spouse and unmarried children under 21 take L-2 status, and they cost little next to the petition. Inside the US you add them on Form I-539 for $470, and one form covers the whole family.

Put both sides together and the realistic L-1 visa cost lands between about $9,500 and $15,500 for most complete cases, on a flat $8,000 legal fee. The table shows four common shapes.