How much does a trademark really cost in 2026

Ask what a trademark costs and you will usually hear $350. That is the USPTO base fee for a single class of goods or services, and it is accurate as far as it goes. It just does not go very far. A registration that survives examination and stays alive for a decade almost always costs several times that, and the extra spend is predictable enough that you can budget for it before you file.

The government fees, in full

For 2026 the fees that matter to most applicants are straightforward. Filing costs $350 for every class you claim. If you write your own description of goods and services instead of selecting preapproved wording from the USPTO identification manual, you pay a surcharge of $200 per class. If you file on an intent to use basis, you pay another $150 per class when you later file the statement of use proving the mark is actually in commerce.

Maintenance is the fee most applicants forget. Between the fifth and sixth year you file a declaration of continued use, and at the ten year mark you file a combined declaration and renewal. Across that first decade, budget roughly $975 per class in government fees on top of everything you paid to get registered.

Classes multiply everything

Every one of those fees is charged per class. A clothing brand that also sells software needs two classes, and that doubles the filing fee, the surcharge if any, the statement of use fee and the maintenance bill. The single most effective way to control trademark cost is to be honest about which classes you genuinely need now, rather than claiming everything you might sell one day.

Clearance search: the cheapest insurance available

A full clearance search with a written opinion costs $500 to $1,500. It feels like money spent on nothing, because the deliverable is a document telling you whether to proceed. It is nonetheless the highest value line in a trademark budget. A refusal based on likelihood of confusion with an existing registration can waste your entire filing fee, and a rebranding forced two years after launch costs vastly more than any search.

Free searching in the USPTO database is better than nothing and will catch identical marks in identical classes. It will not reliably catch phonetic equivalents, common law rights that were never registered, or marks that an examining attorney will consider confusingly similar.

Who prepares the filing

Three routes dominate. Filing yourself costs only the government fees. Budget filing services charge $500 to $1,000 and mostly translate your answers into the correct form fields. Experienced trademark counsel charges $1,000 to $2,500 for a single class and is paid for judgement: whether the mark is registrable at all, how broadly to describe the goods, and what to do when the examining attorney pushes back.

The cost difference is real, but so is the difference in outcome. Applications that are poorly scoped tend to attract office actions, and office actions are where the savings from a cheap filing disappear.

Office actions: the line item nobody quotes

An office action is a formal objection or requirement from the examining attorney. A large share of applications receive at least one. Simple issues, such as clarifying a description of goods or supplying a better specimen, cost $500 to $1,000 to answer. Substantive refusals for descriptiveness or likelihood of confusion cost $1,500 to $3,500 to argue properly, and may still fail.

This is why our calculator shows a risk weighted figure rather than pretending office actions do not happen. If you file with custom wording, no clearance search and no professional input, your odds of drawing one rise sharply.

A realistic budget

For a single class, standard wording, already in use, filed with a budget service after a clearance search, a realistic total to registration lands somewhere in the low thousands once office action risk is factored. Add maintenance and the ten year cost is higher again. A do it yourself filing with no search can genuinely cost $350 and work out fine. It can also cost $350 and fail entirely.

What we deliberately leave out

Opposition proceedings, cancellation actions, infringement litigation and international filings under the Madrid Protocol are all real costs, but they are not typical and their ranges are so wide that including them would make the estimate less useful, not more. Treat them as tail risk you may never face.

Run your own numbers in the trademark registration cost calculator.