How much does it cost to certify a document in the UK?

The four certifications and who sets each price

Only one of the four transactions behind the word “certified” has a price somebody decides on the day, so a quoted figure often answers a different question from the one asked. The figures below are the England and Wales ones.

What is happening	Who sets the price	What it costs
A professional signs a photocopy as a true copy	The professional	No set fee. gov.uk confirms one may be charged and names no amount
A registry issues a certified copy of its own record	The registry	Published and fixed, £7 to £65
A court issues a sealed or certified copy from its file	A statutory fees order	Published and fixed, £2 to £82
The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office adds an apostille	The FCDO	£35 to £100 per document

What a solicitor charges to certify a copy

There is no statutory fee, no regulator’s tariff and no scale. gov.uk’s certification page says the person certifying may charge a fee, and names no amount or per-page rate.

This site holds published fees from 145 firms across fifteen city lists, and not one prints a certification price, unlike the hourly rates firms publish for work they compete on.

Three questions decide the bill.

• Per document or per page. A five-page bank statement certified page by page is a different bill from one document fee.
• Whether further copies are cheaper in the same appointment.
• Whether the firm certifies for non-clients, and what identification it wants. The wording and the list of people who can certify are fixed by gov.uk, so the certificate is identical wherever it is signed.

Why no law firm publishes a certification fee

The silence is structural rather than evasive. The Solicitors Regulation Authority, which regulates firms in England and Wales, requires published cost information for nine services only under its transparency rules.

• Residential conveyancing sales, purchases and mortgages
• Uncontested administration of an estate within the UK
• Immigration applications, excluding asylum
• First-tier Tribunal immigration appeals, excluding asylum
• Summary only road traffic offences at a single Magistrates Court hearing
• Employee unfair or wrongful dismissal claims in the Employment Tribunal
• Employer defence of those claims
• Debt recovery up to £100,000
• Licensing applications for business premises

Certification is outside that list. Where the rules do bite, rule 1.5 requires a total or a range, the likely disbursements, whether VAT applies and how much, and the key stages and timescales, which is why a conveyancing quote arrives with a figure attached and a certification enquiry gets a phone call.

Registry and court fees in England and Wales

Where the copy comes from the body holding the record, the price is published and identical for everyone.

Certified or official copy	Issued by	Published fee
Birth, death, marriage or civil partnership certificate	General Register Office	£12.50 in 4 days, £38.50 next working day if ordered by 4pm, plus £3.50 per search without an index reference number
Official copy of a register, title plan or document, forms OC1 and OC2	HM Land Registry	£7 through the portal, £11 each by post
Certified copy of a company document or a certificate of incorporation	Companies House	£22 by post for up to 10 pages, £65 same day, £16 for a further certificate
Copy of a civil court document	HM Courts and Tribunals Service	£14 for ten pages or less, 50p each further page
Certified copy of a judgment or order for use abroad	HM Courts and Tribunals Service	£82
Extra copy of the probate document	HM Courts and Tribunals Service	£2 with the application, £16 afterwards

Searching the Companies House register is free and a copy by email is £3, so the £22 buys the certification, not the paper. The £14 and 50p rates also run in the family courts, where searching the national central index of decrees absolute and final orders is a further £89.

The £2 probate copy and the £16 one

Same document, same registry, same seal, eight times the price. Fee 8(a)(i) of Schedule 1 to the Non-Contentious Probate Fees Order 2004 sets £2 for each copy provided, sealed or certified, where the request accompanies the grant application. Fee 8(a)(ii) sets £16 for each such copy in any other case.

Executors need one copy per bank, registrar, pension provider and insurer, a number rarely known when the application goes in. gov.uk’s probate fees page records that help with fees covers the application fee but not the copies, so the £2 rate is the only reduction on them. The application fee is £526 where the estate is over £5,000, and nothing at or below it.

Apostille fees from the Legalisation Office

The Legalisation Office attaches the apostille a UK document usually needs to work abroad. It charges per document and refunds nothing where a document cannot be legalised.

Service	Fee per document	How long it takes
Standard, paper-based	£45 plus courier or postage	Up to 25 working days plus courier time
e-Apostille	£35	Up to 2 working days
Next-Day, registered businesses only	£40	Next working day
Restricted Urgent, registered businesses only	£100	Same day, pre-approved by email

Courier is £6 per 1.5kg inside the UK, £32 to most of Europe and £42 elsewhere, so a paper apostille sent to a UK address lands at £51 in up to 25 working days, against £35 in up to 2 working days electronically.

The electronic route is narrower. It needs PDF files electronically signed by a UK notary or solicitor, and is closed to General Register Office certificates, to ACRO police and DBS certificates for England and Wales, to disclosure certificates for Scotland and Northern Ireland, and to fingerprint and ACCA membership certificates.

Free certification, and the routes with no set fee

One route is free outright. Two more have no published price, for different reasons.

A copy of your own registered lasting power of attorney. A donor who still has capacity can certify it themselves. gov.uk sets the wording, which is “I certify this is a true and complete copy of the corresponding page of the original lasting power of attorney” at the bottom of every page covering sections 1 to 11 and any continuation page, a shorter version naming the whole document on the final page, signed and dated throughout. Where the LPA is not yet registered, nothing may be written at the bottom of sections 12 to 15, or the copy is not certified. The fixed cost is registration, at £92, or £184 for both a personal welfare and a property and affairs LPA.

A passport countersignature. The countersignatory must have known the applicant for at least 2 years, as a friend, neighbour or colleague rather than only professionally. gov.uk sets no fee, and that requirement rules out paying a solicitor who has never met them.

A certified translation. gov.uk asks the translator to confirm on the translation that it is a “true and accurate translation of the original document”, with the date and their contact details, and sets no fee for doing it. The translator’s own charge sits outside every published scale, exactly as the solicitor’s does.

Extracts and certified copies in Scotland

The vocabulary changes before the price does. A registry copy is an extract, probate is confirmation, and a court copy is an extract decree.

Certified copy in Scotland	Fee
Extract of a birth, death or marriage record from National Records of Scotland	£15 first copy, £10 each additional, plus postage from £4.10
Certified extract confirmation and will, sheriff court	£33 ordered with the inventory, £46 later including the search fee
First extract decree, sheriff court	Covered by the initial writ fee, £176 ordinary or £191 divorce or dissolution
Second extract, or copying up to 10 pages	£24, being £9 for copying plus a £15 search fee per 30 minutes
Extract or certified copy of a deed from Registers of Scotland	£35 plus VAT, against £25 plus VAT for a plain copy with no evidential status

Two rows work differently from England and Wales. The first extract decree is already paid for, because the Sheriff Court Fees Order 2026 attaches its issue to the initial writ fee. Registers of Scotland prices evidential status separately, so a £25 plain copy lacks the standing a court requires and a £35 extract has it. Confirmation itself is free up to £50,000, then £351 to £250,000 and £705 above.

Authentication by National Records of Scotland, its own signed and authenticated stamp or seal, is a separate Scottish act, and an apostille still comes from the FCDO at UK-wide fees. The regulator is the Law Society of Scotland, and service complaints go to the Scottish Legal Complaints Commission. England and Wales keeps notaries on a list of their own, while gov.uk’s legalisation page sends readers to the Law Society of Scotland’s solicitor list for both, so Scottish notarial work sits inside solicitors’ firms such as those on the Edinburgh list.

Certified copies and exemplifications in Northern Ireland

Northern Ireland is the cheapest of the three for an everyday court copy, and half as much again as England and Wales for a copy going abroad.

Certified copy in Northern Ireland	Fee
Life event certificate from the General Register Office for Northern Ireland	£15 excluding postage, £8 per further certified copy of the same certificate
Copy of a court document, Court of Judicature	£8 for five sheets or less, 50p each further sheet
Copy order or decree, certified or sealed	£17, or £15 produced online
Certified copy of a written judgment, or of a judgment for use abroad	£123
Certified or sealed copy of a probate document, Probate Office	£17
Exemplification signed by the Master and countersigned by the Lord or Lady Chief Justice	£123

A court copy is £8 for five sheets against £14 for ten pages in England and Wales, while a certified judgment for use abroad under the Foreign Judgments (Reciprocal Enforcement) Act 1933 is £123 against £82. The exemplification has no priced equivalent in the England and Wales schedule. The £15 life event certificate carries a £7 search fee inside it, kept even where the record is not found.

Probate comes from the High Court through the Probate Office, with no fee up to an assessed value of £10,000, £326 above it and a personal application fee of £81 on top. The regulator is the Law Society of Northern Ireland, and gov.uk again points to one body for both notaries and solicitors.