The honest answer to "what does a trademark cost" is that the government fee is the smallest part of the question. The USPTO fee is fixed and published. What varies is how many classes you file in, how carefully the application is prepared, and whether the filing runs into problems that require additional submissions.
The fee structure also changed substantially on 18 January 2025, so any guide written before then is out of date. Here is what a federal trademark actually costs in 2026, from filing through the first ten years.
The Base Filing Fee: $350 Per Class
The USPTO retired its old two-tier system — TEAS Plus at $250 and TEAS Standard at $350 — and replaced it with a single base application fee of $350 per class of goods or services. Applications are now submitted through Trademark Center, which replaced the legacy TEAS platform.
The critical word is per class. Trademarks are registered against categories of goods and services, not against a business as a whole. One class costs $350. Two classes cost $700. Three cost $1,050. Class selection is therefore the single largest cost lever in the entire trademark filing process, and it is a decision made before you file rather than one you can adjust afterwards.
The Surcharges That Catch Most Filers
The $350 figure is a floor, not a ceiling. It assumes a clean application, and the 2025 restructure introduced surcharges that apply per class when it is not.
- Insufficient information — $100 per class where required details are missing at filing, such as an applicant's citizenship, a translation of non-English wording, or a description of the mark
- Free-form identification — $200 per class where you write your own description of goods and services instead of selecting pre-approved language from the USPTO's Trademark ID Manual
- Length surcharge — a further $200 per class for each additional 1,000 characters beyond the first 1,000 in your goods and services description
- These stack. A single-class application using a custom description costs $550 rather than $350, and a long, complex multi-class filing can add well over a thousand dollars in surcharges alone
Why Using the ID Manual Usually Pays
The surcharge structure is an incentive rather than a penalty. Pre-approved descriptions from the ID Manual are already vetted, which means faster examination and a lower chance of an Office Action questioning your wording.
The trade-off is scope. Pre-approved language may not describe an unusual product precisely, and accepting a narrower description to avoid $200 can limit what your registration actually covers. That is a judgement call about your business, and it is worth making deliberately rather than defaulting to whichever option is cheaper.
Costs That Arrive Later
If you file on an intent-to-use basis because you are not yet selling under the mark, additional fees follow. A Statement of Use costs $150 per class when you begin using the mark in commerce, and each six-month extension request costs $125 per class, with a maximum of five extensions available.
An Office Action — the USPTO's formal notice that something in your application needs addressing — does not itself carry a government fee, but preparing a substantive response has a cost in professional time. Applications refused on likelihood of confusion or descriptiveness grounds require legal argument, not paperwork.
Maintenance: Registration Is Not the Finish Line
A federal registration must be maintained or it lapses. Between the fifth and sixth anniversary of registration you must file a Section 8 Declaration of Continued Use, currently $325 per class, with a six-month grace period available for an additional surcharge.
Renewal under Section 9 follows every ten years, filed alongside a further Section 8. An optional Section 15 Declaration of Incontestability, available after five years of continuous use, strengthens your registration against certain challenges. Fees are adjusted periodically, so confirm current figures on uspto.gov before filing.
The consequence of missing these deadlines is severe and largely unforgiving. The USPTO does not send reminders in the way a domain registrar does, and a registration allowed to lapse cannot simply be reinstated.
Budgeting Realistically
For a straightforward single-class filing using ID Manual language, with no Office Action and no intent-to-use complications, government fees over the first ten years come to roughly a thousand dollars — the initial filing plus Section 8 and the first renewal.
Add professional support for searching, preparation and any Office Action response, and total out-of-pocket cost for most small businesses lands considerably higher. What that support costs varies widely, and the useful comparison is not price against price but scope against scope: ask precisely what is included, what triggers additional charges, and who handles a refusal if one arrives.
One thing to plan around regardless: USPTO fees are non-refundable. If your application is refused, the money is spent. That is the strongest argument for spending time on a clearance search before spending money on filing.
