How much a provisional patent costs, in real numbers

The USPTO fee, by entity size

The government filing fee for a provisional is $325 for a large entity, $130 for a small entity and $65 for a micro entity. That is the USPTO fee schedule effective 19 January 2025, still current as of October 2026.

A provisional has no search or examination fee because it is never examined. The only other USPTO charge you are likely to see is a size fee if the description and drawings run past 100 sheets: $450, $180 or $90 for each extra 50 sheets.

Which entity size you are

Small entity: an individual, a university or nonprofit, or a company with 500 or fewer employees including affiliates, that has not assigned or licensed the invention to a larger company and is not obligated to.

Micro entity: a small entity whose inventors and owners each had a gross income last year at or under $262,380, the limit since 15 September 2026, and who are named on no more than four earlier applications, not counting provisionals.

Everyone else pays the large entity fee. Status is rechecked every time a fee is paid, so confirm it with your attorney.

What professionals charge

Prices published online in October 2026 run from under $1,000 at online document services, which cap the page count and charge extra for drawings and searches, to about $2,000 to $7,000 at law firms that publish a flat fee.

Firms that bill by the hour give an estimate rather than a price. When you compare quotes, check what is in them: drawings, a prior art check, a page limit, and whether the fee is credited toward the nonprovisional.

What drives the cost

Mostly the drafting. A provisional only secures a date for what it actually describes, so the work is writing down how the invention works in enough detail that someone skilled in the field could build it, along with the variations you may later want to claim.

Software and AI inventions take more description than a simple mechanical one, because the steps, the data flow and the alternatives all need to be on the page. Drawings, a prior art search before drafting and the number of variations add to it.

The USPTO fee barely moves the total.

Why the cheapest provisional can cost more

A provisional cannot be amended after it is filed.

If your nonprovisional later claims something the provisional did not describe and enable, those claims do not get the earlier date, and anything that became public in between, including your own launch, can be cited against them.

That gap is the real risk of a thin provisional, and nothing warns you about it at filing.

Our fixed prices

Provisional: $2,500. That includes a prior art check by your attorney before drafting, the drafting, drawings, and filing within 3 business days of a complete record, and it is credited in full to any plan if you continue within 12 months.

Solo, for one inventor paying out of pocket: $4,000 for the provisional and the nonprovisional together, paid as $1,000 at start and $3,000 when the nonprovisional is filed. USPTO fees are passed through at cost.

What comes after the provisional

A provisional expires after 12 months and never becomes a patent on its own. To keep its date you file a nonprovisional within that window.

The USPTO fees to file, search and examine a nonprovisional filed online are $2,000 for a large entity, $730 for a small entity and $400 for a micro entity, and the issue fee at grant is $1,290, $516 or $258.

Professional fees for the nonprovisional are the bigger number: with us, $9,500 to $12,000 depending on the plan, or $3,000 on Solo.

The first step

Start with a $300 prior art search report: US and worldwide patents, published applications and technical literature, written up with an overlap map within 2 business days. It shows what already exists before you pay for drafting.

Or get started free with Tao AI, which writes your invention disclosure in about 10 minutes, and book a call with our team when you want to talk scope.

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