Apostille
Two questions decide where your document goes
First the country, then the office. Get either one wrong and the document comes back unprocessed, weeks later.
Question one. Is the destination country a Contracting Party to the 1961 Apostille Convention?
If yes, you need an apostille, and everything below applies. If no, an apostille does not apply at all and the document needs consular legalization instead. The treaty body counts 130 Contracting Parties. The United States has been one since 15 October 1981, so only the destination is in question. Apostille or legalization →
Question two. Who issued the document?
Almost every expensive mistake in this process comes from this one. Whoever issued it, authenticates it.
Federal documents
FBI background checks, naturalisation certificates, federal court records, IRS letters, DD-214s. These go to the U.S. Department of State, Office of Authentications in Washington. No state can touch them.
- ·Fee: $20 per document
- ·By mail: Five weeks from receipt, per the State Department. Applicants commonly report six or more.
- ·In person: No appointments. Couriers walk in, drop off, and collect on a pick-up slip roughly two weeks later.
- ·Form: DS-4194
State documents
Birth and marriage certificates, court records, diplomas, and anything signed in front of a notary. These go to the Secretary of State of the state that issued them.
- ·Fee and turnaround differ by state
- ·Some allow walk-ins, most do not
- ·A document from Texas cannot be apostilled by California
Both questions in the government’s own words: “The country where you will use the document determines whether you will need an apostille or an authentication certificate.” and “If the country where you want to use your document is on the 1961 Hague Convention member list, you will need an apostille. Documents such as vital records issued by a U.S. state will need an apostille from that state’s secretary of state. Federal documents will need an apostille from the U.S. Department of State.” USAGov, Authenticate an official document for use outside the U.S., read 2026-08-19 at usa.gov. Federal fees and timings above: U.S. Department of State, Office of Authentications, read 2026-08-04. One warning about that first quote: the “member list” usa.gov links to is the list of HCCH Members, not the list of countries bound by this treaty. The two lists differ →
The single most common error. An FBI background check is federal, so it goes to Washington. Sending it to your state Secretary of State gets it returned unprocessed, and most people lose about a month. How to recover →
Straight answers
Questions the rest of this category gets wrong, each verified against a primary source.
By document type
By state
Each state sets its own fee and turnaround. We publish a page once we have checked that state’s own source, not before.
Going abroad?
The receiving country sets the rules, and it sets them per consulate rather than nationally. We read each post’s own instructions and quote them, because the consulates do not agree with each other. Every destination below is a Contracting Party, so an apostille is the right document. If yours is not, read this first →
We will tell you when your consulate changes the rules
Consulates revise their instructions without announcing it. When one of the posts we track changes a window, a fee, or what it asks for, we send a short note saying what changed and what it means. No more than that, and nothing else.
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