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How much does a trademark cost
A US trademark costs $350 per class to file with the USPTO and about $1,325 per class over the first ten years once maintenance filings are paid. Set your own numbers below.
Your filing
One class covers one category. Most applications cover one.
What it costs
To file
- Application, 1 class at $350
- $350
- Free-form description surcharge, 1 class at $200
- $200
- Due at filing
- $350
To keep it registered
Two dated deadlines. Miss one and you get a six-month grace period with a $100 surcharge per class; miss that and the registration is cancelled.
- Section 8 declaration, years 5 to 6, at $325
- $325
- Sections 8 and 9, years 9 to 10, at $650
- $650
- Due later
- $975
Ten-year total, government fees
$1,325
An estimate, not a quote. Government fees are current as of the USPTO fee change of January 18, 2025 and were verified August 18, 2026. Knockoff is not a law firm and this is general information, not legal advice.
How much does a trademark cost in 2026
A US trademark costs $350 per class to file with the USPTO, and about $1,325 per class over the first ten years if you keep the registration alive. Those are the two numbers to hold in your head. Everything else on this page is a surcharge you can usually avoid or a decision that multiplies one of them.
The unit is the class, not the application. A class is a category of goods or services under the international system, and your fee is charged per class every time. One class is $350, two classes are $700, three are $1,050. The same multiplication applies to every maintenance fee ten years out. An extra class you did not need costs $350 now and about $1,325 across ten years.
The ten-year figure is the part that shows up after registration. After registration, a Section 8 declaration of continued use falls due between years five and six at $325 per class. Between years nine and ten, the combined Section 8 and Section 9 renewal falls due at $650 per class, and then again every ten years. Add the $350 application and you get $1,325 per class across a decade, with the filing fee making up roughly a quarter of it.
$350
At filing
$325
Years 5 to 6
$650
Years 9 to 10
$650
Every 10 years after
If you file before you sell, there is a third block. An intent-to-use application needs a statement of use at $150 per class before it can register, and each six-month extension you take costs $125 per class, up to five extensions and a ceiling of 36 months. Take every extension and the pre-registration cost reaches $1,125 per class.
USPTO trademark fees, itemized
Every fee below is per class, with its USPTO fee code. The tiered TEAS Plus and TEAS Standard pricing that older articles still quote was replaced on January 18, 2025 by one base fee and a set of surcharges.
| Fee | Code | Per class | When |
|---|---|---|---|
| Base application, filed electronically | 7017 | $350 | At filing |
| Insufficient-information surcharge | 7018 | $100 | At filing, when required fields are missing |
| Free-form goods description surcharge | 7019 | $200 | At filing, when you write your own wording |
| Each extra 1,000 characters of free-form description | 7020 | $200 | At filing |
| Statement of use | 7003 | $150 | Intent-to-use path, after allowance |
| Amendment to allege use | 7002 | $150 | Intent-to-use path, before publication |
| Six-month extension to file a statement of use | 7004 | $125 | Up to five, 36-month ceiling |
| Section 8 declaration of continued use | 7205 | $325 | Years 5 to 6 |
| Section 8 grace-period surcharge | 7206 | $100 | Six-month grace period |
| Section 9 renewal | 7201 | $325 | Years 9 to 10, then every 10 years |
| Section 9 grace-period surcharge | 7203 | $100 | Six-month grace period |
| Section 15 declaration of incontestability | 7208 | $250 | Optional, after five years of continuous use |
| Section 66(a) application through the Madrid Protocol | 7931 | $600 | Filed from an international registration |
The USPTO keeps the filing fee when an application is refused or abandoned. A name you should have searched first costs you the fee anyway.
How much does it cost to trademark a name and logo
Twice the number above, because they are two applications. The name is a standard character mark and the logo is a design mark, and the USPTO charges each one the full per-class fee. One class each is $700 at filing and about $2,650 over ten years. Run the calculator once for the name, once for the logo, and add them.
Name
Standard character mark
$350 at filing
Logo
Design mark
$350 at filing
If you can only pay for one, most small brands file the name. A standard character registration covers the words in any font, size, color or styling, so it survives a rebrand of the visual identity. A design registration covers the logo as drawn, and the day your designer redraws it you are protecting a logo you no longer use. The exception is a brand where the mark is the picture rather than the word, which is worth registering on its own.
What is the cheapest way to trademark a name
File it yourself, electronically, with a goods description picked from the USPTO ID Manual, in the fewest classes that cover what you sell, once you are already selling. That is $350 per class and there is no cheaper legitimate route.
Use the ID Manual. The USPTO publishes a list of pre-approved wordings for goods and services. Pick from it and your fee stays at $350 per class. Write your own description and a $200 surcharge attaches to every class, with another $200 per class for each additional 1,000 characters. That is $350 against $550 per class for the same registration, and the free-form wording also gives the examining attorney more to object to.
File on use if you can. An application based on use in commerce skips the statement of use and every extension fee behind it. If you are shipping product under the name today, you are on the cheap path already. If you are not, filing early still buys you priority from the filing date, and the price of that priority is $150 per class plus whatever extensions you take at $125 per class.
Do not buy class 35 by reflex. Class 35 covers retail store services provided to others, and filing services take a heavier evidence burden than goods. A store that sells only its own products is generally filing in the goods class instead: 25 for clothing, 21 for housewares, 3 for cosmetics. Adding class 35 you do not need costs $350 now and roughly $1,325 across ten years, and it will not protect anything the goods class was not already covering.
The one place to spend money before filing is the search. A clearance search costs $200 to $500 for a basic knockout search and $300 to $1,000 for an attorney's comprehensive search with an opinion. Compare that to a $350 per class fee the USPTO keeps either way, and a rebrand.
Should I file myself or hire a trademark attorney
You can file yourself if you are domiciled in the United States. If your domicile is outside the United States, you must be represented by a US-licensed attorney, which the USPTO sets out on its foreign applicant rule page and codifies at 37 CFR 2.11(a). That is a requirement, not a recommendation, and applications that ignore it get held up.
For a straightforward single-class application, ContractsCounsel puts typical flat fees at $750 to $1,500, with a marketplace average around $1,120. Provider tier matters more than the average: Meyer Law describes regional practices in the $400 to $800 band and national IP boutiques from $1,000 to $3,500 and up. Where work is billed hourly, the USPTO cited the AIPLA 2025 Economic Survey average of $550 per hour for intellectual property work in a 2026 Federal Register notice.
Self-filing suits a distinctive coined name, in a category you have already searched, in one class, on the ID Manual wording, filed on use. Pay someone when the category is crowded, when your search turns up something close, when the name is descriptive of what you sell, when you need more than two classes, or when an office action arrives and the reply has to argue rather than correct. Answering a refusal is the point where the fee usually pays for itself.
What people actually file
In the USPTO's daily trademark application file for August 17, 2026, 8,201 new applications appeared, and 82.1% of them covered a single class of goods or services. Another 11.3% covered two classes and 6.6% covered three or more. The average was 1.30 classes per application. If you are sizing your own filing against everyone else's, one class is the norm and not a corner you are cutting.
82.1% one class
11.3% two classes
6.6% three or more
Filing basis in the same file was a dead heat. Of the 7,965 applications filed on use in commerce or on intent to use, 50.0% were use-based and 50.0% were intent to use, with a further 3.8% of all applications filed on a foreign basis. Half of the people filing on any given day are not selling yet, which means half of them are on the path that adds the statement of use fee.
If you are not sure how many classes your own filing needs, find which classes your products fall into first and bring the count back here.
The classes people file into cluster tightly. Class 9 and class 41 each took 13.3% of applications, then class 35 at 11.6%, class 42 at 11.1%, class 25 for clothing at 10.8%, class 5 supplements and class 3 cosmetics at 5.2% each, class 28 toys at 4.8%, class 21 housewares at 4.2% and class 36 at 3.8%. Those numbers come from our own parse of the file the USPTO publishes every day.
How long a registration takes
Budget the calendar as well as the money. As of August 10, 2026, USPTO reports a new trademark application waits an average of 4.2 months for a first examiner action and 9.7 months to registration or abandonment. An intent-to-use application runs longer, because the clock only finishes once you file the statement of use.
That wait has a cost the fee schedule does not show. A pending application is not a registration, and much of what a registration unlocks stays locked until it issues. Amazon Brand Registry accepts a pending application, which is one reason to file early. Our Brand Registry requirements guide covers what that filing has to look like and what the IP Accelerator route adds on top, and the Brand Registry checker checks your filing against all seven requirements. File earlier than feels necessary.
The costs that start after registration
Your registration is a public record, and so is everyone else's application. When somebody files a name that sits close to yours, the USPTO does not write to you. It publishes the application, opens a 30-day window for anyone to object, and the window closes whether or not you were reading. The cheapest moment to deal with a lookalike mark is inside that window, and the most expensive one is three years later when it is registered and printed on a competitor's packaging.
That is the job Knockoff's US trademark watch does. It reads new USPTO applications every day, compares them against your brand names, and emails you when one reads close. It is a watch, not legal work: US filings only, no oppositions, no applications, and Knockoff is not a law firm. When somebody is already trading on your name rather than filing on it, the next step is usually a trademark cease and desist letter, and that guide covers what the letter costs and what it can and cannot do.
The watch runs alongside the rest of the product: your Shopify catalog watched for stolen product photos, a prepared case for every confirmed match, and a relist watch after you file. Plans start at $99 a month, and the trademark watch is included from $299 a month.
Common questions about trademark costs
Is it worth filing a trademark? +
It is worth it when the name is the asset. A federal registration gives you nationwide priority from your filing date, the right to use the registered symbol, a record a platform can check, and the trademark that Amazon Brand Registry and most marketplace IP programs ask for before they will act. At $350 per class to file and about $1,325 per class over ten years, the decision usually turns on whether you plan to keep selling under this name in five years.
What is the cheapest way to trademark a name? +
File it yourself, electronically, using a description picked from the USPTO ID Manual, and file once you are already selling. That is $350 for one class. Writing your own goods description instead adds $200 per class, and every extra 1,000 characters adds another $200 per class. Filing before you sell adds $150 per class for the statement of use, plus $125 per class for each six-month extension you take.
Should I get a trademark or an LLC first? +
They are separate registrations doing separate jobs, and forming the company usually comes first because it is cheaper and it is who signs the application. An LLC filing with your state creates the legal entity and reserves the entity name in that state. It gives you no trademark rights and stops nobody from selling under your brand name. Trademark rights come from use in commerce, and the federal registration is what makes them nationwide. Own the entity, then file the mark in the entity's name.
Can I trademark a name myself? +
Yes, if you are domiciled in the United States. The USPTO accepts applications filed by the owner, and its own filing system is built for it. Applicants and registrants domiciled outside the United States must be represented by a US-licensed attorney. The work you cannot skip either way is the search: filing a name that is already taken costs you the fee.
Sources
- USPTO fee schedule, for every fee and fee code on this page: uspto.gov fee schedule
- USPTO, keeping your registration alive, for the Section 8 and Section 9 windows and the grace period: uspto.gov maintenance
- USPTO trademark process, for the 30-day opposition window after publication and for the statement of use fee not being refunded when registration is later refused: uspto.gov trademark process
- USPTO trademarks dashboard, application timeline, data as of August 10, 2026: uspto.gov dashboard
- USPTO rule requiring foreign-domiciled applicants to use a US-licensed attorney, and the rule text at 37 CFR 2.11(a)
- ContractsCounsel, trademark lawyer cost, for the flat-fee range and the marketplace average
- Michael Meyer Law, for the provider tier ranges
- AIPLA 2025 Economic Survey, as cited by the USPTO in Federal Register document 2026-14389, for the average hourly rate
- Class counts and filing bases: our own parse of the USPTO's daily trademark application file for August 17, 2026
Fees verified August 18, 2026, and current as of the USPTO fee change of January 18, 2025. Knockoff is not a law firm and this is general information, not legal advice.
