How much does probate cost in the UK?

The £526 court fee, and the £5,000 estate floor

The probate registry charges one flat fee. Schedule 1 of the Non-Contentious Probate Fees Order 2004 sets it at £526 where the assessed value of the estate exceeds £5,000, and at nothing where the estate is £5,000 or less.

The £526 is new. Article 3(2)(a) of the Court and Tribunal Fees (Miscellaneous Amendments) Order 2026 substituted it for £300 on 13 July 2026, a week later than planned after a second order moved the commencement date. The explanatory memorandum to the increase puts the full cost of the probate service at £536 per grant, being £526 plus five copies at £2, and says the fee was raised to sit closer to it.

Every probate registry fee in England and Wales

The application is one line on a longer price list. The rest of Schedule 1 prices everything else the registry does.

What the registry does	Fee
Grant application, estate assessed above £5,000	£526
Grant application, estate £5,000 or less	No fee
Duplicate, second or subsequent grant for the same deceased person	£22
Copy of a document ordered with the application	£2 each
Copy of a document ordered afterwards	£16 each
Entering or extending a caveat	£4
Standing search, per six-month period	£4
Depositing a will for safe custody	£24
Inspecting a will or document at the registry	£24
Perusing and settling a document	£5

The £22 duplicate grant fee is payable even where the estate is £5,000 or less, so an estate below the fee floor can still face a court charge.

Copies of the grant, £2 with the application and £16 after

Every bank, registrar and insurer holding an asset wants a sealed copy of its own. Ordered with the application each copy is £2. Ordered later, the identical copy is £16.

Copies had been £16 by every route since November 2025. The explanatory memorandum records that a copy requested with an application takes less administrative resource, which is why the 2026 order split the two prices. Help with Fees does not reach copy fees, so the number ordered with the application is where the saving sits.

Help with Fees, the capital and income limits

Remission runs on two tests in Schedule 1A of the same order. On capital, a fee up to and including £1,420 requires disposable capital under £4,250, though where the applicant or their partner is 66 or over the limit is £16,000 whatever the fee.

On income, no fee is payable where gross monthly income does not exceed £1,420 for a single applicant with no children or £2,130 for a couple with no children, plus £425 for each child aged 13 or below, £710 for each child aged 14 or over and a further £710 where the applicant is part of a couple. An online probate application is paid in full at the time, any refund arriving later.

Disbursements, from the Gazette notice to the Land Registry assent

These are published prices, and they land on top of the court fee.

Disbursement	Price	What it buys
Deceased estates notice in The Gazette	£96.55 plus VAT	The statutory creditor advertisement
Local newspaper notice placed through The Gazette	£240.00 plus VAT	The second half of the same advertisement
Gazette PO Box forwarding	£87.55 plus VAT	Keeps the executor’s address private
Official copy of a register or title plan, form OC1	£7 portal, £11 post	Confirms what the deceased owned
Land Registry assent, Scale 2	£20 to £140 by portal	Transfers a registered property to a beneficiary

The advertisement buys protection rather than paper. Section 27 of the Trustee Act 1925 lets a personal representative advertise for claims over not less than two months and then distribute having regard only to the claims they knew about. Both notices together come to £336.55 plus VAT.

Where a house passes to a beneficiary rather than being sold, the assent is charged on Scale 2 against the full value of the property, not the share moving. Each band more than doubles by post, £20 becoming £45 at the bottom and £140 becoming £305 at the top.

Inheritance tax, the £325,000 threshold and the six-month deadline

Tax is not a probate cost, but it usually has to be paid before the grant is issued. The nil rate band is £325,000 to 5 April 2031 and the rate is 40% above it, while the residence nil rate band adds £175,000 to 5 April 2030, a combined £500,000 where a home passes to children or grandchildren and the estate is worth less than £2 million. Payment is due by the end of the sixth month after the death, and interest has run at 7.75% since 9 January 2026 on anything unpaid after that.

Solicitor fees for probate, and the SRA transparency rules

The professional fee is the variable, and the one a firm has to publish. Under the Solicitors Regulation Authority transparency rules, a firm advertising the collection and distribution of a deceased person’s UK assets in uncontested matters must publish on its website the total cost or a range, the basis of its charges including hourly rates or fixed fees, the experience and qualifications of whoever does the work, the likely disbursements and their cost, whether VAT is included, and what is and is not covered. Rule 8.7 of the Code of Conduct adds a duty to give the best possible information about price at the point of engagement and as the work goes on.

Where a firm bills by the hour, the only public reference point is the guideline hourly rates the courts use when assessing costs, £295 for a grade A solicitor in National 1 from 1 January 2026 and £579 in the heaviest London band, down to £142 at grade D in both national bands. They are not probate price lists, and those rates by grade and region cover England and Wales only.

Of the 145 firms on the fifteen city lists, one is recorded as publishing its wills and probate prices. Levi Solicitors on the Leeds list carries single wills from £350 plus VAT and mirror wills from £500 plus VAT alongside its probate charges.

Applying yourself or paying a probate practitioner

gov.uk states that applying online or by post yourself can be cheaper than paying a probate practitioner such as a solicitor to apply for you, on form PA1P where there is a will and PA1A where there is not. The court fee is identical either way in England and Wales, so the comparison is between the professional charge and the executor’s own time. A grant may not be needed at all where the person who died held only savings, owned shares or money jointly, or owned property as joint tenants.

Challenging a probate bill under the Solicitors Act 1974

Under section 70 of the Solicitors Act 1974, an application by the party chargeable within one month of the bill being delivered obliges the High Court to order it assessed, with no payment into court. After 12 months from delivery, or once the bill has been paid, an order is available only in special circumstances, and none at all more than 12 months after payment.

The solicitor pays the cost of the assessment where the bill comes down by one fifth, and the client pays otherwise. Service complaints run separately, and the complaint route has deadlines of its own.

Confirmation in Scotland, and the £50,000 fee line

Scotland grants confirmation rather than probate, on an inventory lodged at the sheriff court in its commissary capacity. Two thresholds run in parallel. The procedural one is £36,000, at or below which the estate is a small estate and the sheriff clerk prepares the inventory, above which the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service is prohibited from assisting.

The fee line is the other. Under the Sheriff Court Fees Order 2026, from 1 April 2026 receiving and examining an inventory costs no fee up to £50,000, £351 up to £250,000 and £705 above that, so a £45,000 estate pays the court nothing where the same estate in England pays £526. A dative petition, needed where a large estate is intestate, is £23, and a certificate of confirmation is £10 with the inventory against £23 later.

The regulator is the Law Society of Scotland and service complaints go to the Scottish Legal Complaints Commission, but the route to the fee itself is taxation by an Auditor of Court, whose decision is binding once the client signs up to it and usually costs 3% or 4% of the fee decided, paid by the firm where the fees are found too high and by the client where they are not. Some Scottish firms always have fees taxed at the end of a matter, particularly in executry cases.

Probate in Northern Ireland, and the £81 personal application fee

Northern Ireland issues a Grant of Probate where there is a will and Letters of Administration where there is not, from the Probate Office of the High Court, with the Law Society of Northern Ireland as regulator. The fee floor is £10,000 rather than £5,000, and under the Department of Justice fee schedule from 1 April 2026 there is no fee at or below it and £326 above.

A personal application fee of £81 is charged on top where the estate exceeds £10,000, so an executor applying without a solicitor pays £407 against a solicitor’s £326. Of the three jurisdictions, Northern Ireland is the only one where the court fee rises for doing the job yourself, though oaths go the other way, free on a personal application and £49 a deponent otherwise. A duplicate grant is £244 and a caveat £123, and a grant is almost always needed where the deceased left around £20,000 in any one account, held stocks or shares, or owned property in their own name or as tenants in common.

Section 28 of the Trustee Act (Northern Ireland) 1958 makes creditor advertisement dearer as well, requiring publication once in the Belfast Gazette and twice in each of two daily Northern Irish newspapers.

Northern Ireland challenges bills through machinery of its own. Probate being non-contentious, there is a statutory right to ask the solicitor to apply for a Remuneration Certificate from the Law Society, free of charge, within one month of the bill being issued and while it is unpaid. An Order for Taxation may be sought after that, while the bill is less than three months old and extendable to six in exceptional circumstances. Neither route survives payment, an agreed deduction from money the firm holds, or a fee matching the estimate, which matters on an executry where fees usually come out of the estate.