Filing a trademark yourself costs about $350 per class in government fees. Doing it with an attorney costs $1,200 to $2,500 per class all in. Neither number is the real number, because a trademark is not a one-time purchase. Add an office action response, a statement of use, and two rounds of maintenance filings across the first ten years and a single-class registration handled by counsel lands somewhere between $2,600 and $5,400 by year ten. Handled yourself, the same registration runs $825 to $1,300 across that decade.
Here is where every dollar goes, in the order the USPTO asks for it.
The Government Fee Stack
The USPTO restructured trademark fees in January 2025. The old two-tier TEAS Plus and TEAS Standard split was replaced by a single base application fee with surcharges layered on top when your filing is incomplete or nonstandard. The practical effect for a careful filer is roughly the old TEAS Plus experience at a slightly higher number.
| Filing | Fee (per class) | When it is due |
|---|---|---|
| Base application | $350 | At filing |
| Insufficient-information surcharge | $100 | If required fields are left blank |
| Free-form goods description surcharge | $200 | If you write your own description instead of using the ID Manual |
| Extra-length description surcharge | $200 | Per additional 1,000 characters of free-form text |
| Request for extension of time (intent-to-use) | $125 | Every 6 months, up to five times |
| Statement of use (intent-to-use) | $150 | When you begin selling |
| Section 8 declaration of continued use | $325 | Years 5 to 6 |
| Section 15 incontestability (optional) | $250 | After 5 years of continuous use |
| Combined Section 8 and 9 renewal | $650 | Years 9 to 10, then every 10 years |
| Late-filing grace surcharge | $100 | 6-month grace window on maintenance filings |
Fee figures move. Check the current USPTO fee schedule before you write the check, because the agency adjusts these on its own calendar and the number in any article ages the day it publishes.
Two structural points drive the total more than any single line item. First, everything is per class. A tool sold with a branded carrying case and a branded blade subscription might touch three International Classes, which triples the base fee to $1,050 before anyone reads the application. Second, there is no partial refund. Abandon the application after an office action and the $350 stays with the USPTO.
The Cheapest Version: Pro Se, One Class, Clean
An inventor who files one class, uses ID Manual descriptions, has a live product already selling, and draws no office action pays this:
- Base application, one class: $350
- Section 8 declaration at year 5 or 6: $325
- Combined Section 8 and 9 renewal at year 9 or 10: $650
Ten-year total: $1,325. Add nothing for the search if you run it yourself at tmsearch.uspto.gov, which is free.
That path exists and people complete it. It requires that the mark be distinctive, that the goods description match a pre-approved entry, that you already sell the product, and that no examiner finds a conflicting mark. The odds of all four holding are better for a coined word in a narrow class than for a descriptive phrase in a crowded one.
Where the Costs Show Up
Three line items account for most of the variance between a $1,300 trademark and a $5,400 one.
Office actions. The examining attorney reviews the application six to twelve months after filing and issues a refusal or a requirement if anything is off. Common grounds: likelihood of confusion with a registered mark, mere descriptiveness, an unacceptable specimen, or a vague goods description. There is no USPTO fee to respond. There is an attorney fee, and it runs $400 to $1,500 depending on whether the response is a formality fix or a substantive argument on likelihood of confusion. A likelihood-of-confusion refusal that requires a full legal brief and evidence of the marketplace can reach $2,500.
Extra classes. Each class multiplies the base fee, the statement-of-use fee, and every maintenance filing. Filing three classes does not cost three times as much in attorney time, but it does cost three times as much in government fees at every step for the life of the mark. Most independent inventors need one class. Some need two. Very few need four, and the ones who file four are usually paying for classes they will never use in commerce, which creates its own vulnerability to cancellation.
Intent-to-use extensions. File before you sell and you file on an intent-to-use basis. The USPTO examines, publishes, and issues a Notice of Allowance, and then you have six months to prove you are selling. Not selling yet? Buy another six months for $125 per class, up to five times, for a maximum of 36 months past allowance. Five extensions on a two-class filing is $1,250 in fees for the privilege of waiting, plus $150 per class for the statement of use at the end. The timing decision behind that spend is worked through in whether you need a trademark before launch.
Attorney or Pro Se
United States applicants are not required to use an attorney. Foreign-domiciled applicants are. That is the legal rule. The practical rule is different.
Attorney fees for a straightforward single-class application run $500 to $1,500 for the filing itself, and many firms quote a flat fee that includes a clearance search and one routine office action response. Full-service flat packages run $1,200 to $2,500 per class.
The case for paying is not that the form is hard. The form is not hard. The case for paying sits in three places.
The identification of goods and services is the part inventors get wrong. Write it too narrowly and you protect a slice of what you sell. Write it too broadly and you invite a refusal or a later cancellation for goods you never offered. You cannot broaden the identification after filing. That is a permanent decision made in about twenty minutes by someone who has never made it before.
Distinctiveness assessment is the second. If the mark is descriptive, an attorney tells you in five minutes and saves you $350 plus a year. Filers on their own tend to fall in love with names that describe the product, which is exactly the category examiners refuse.
The office action response is the third, and it is where the value concentrates. A likelihood-of-confusion refusal is a legal argument with a body of case law behind it. A first-time filer answering one on their own is arguing an area of law they learned last week against an examiner who does it full time.
A reasonable middle path: run the free knockout search yourself, get a one-hour consultation with a trademark attorney to check distinctiveness and draft the identification, file it yourself, and hire counsel only if an office action arrives. That runs $250 to $500 up front rather than $1,500, and it puts the money where the risk is.
Cost Comparison Across Ten Years
| Scenario | Year 0 | Years 1 to 4 | Years 5 to 6 | Years 9 to 10 | Ten-year total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pro se, one class, clean | $350 | $0 | $325 | $650 | $1,325 |
| Pro se, one class, one office action self-answered | $350 | $0 | $325 | $650 | $1,325 |
| Pro se filing, attorney for one office action | $350 | $900 | $325 | $650 | $2,225 |
| Attorney flat fee, one class, clean | $1,700 | $0 | $700 | $1,100 | $3,500 |
| Attorney, one class, intent-to-use, two extensions | $1,700 | $1,050 | $700 | $1,100 | $4,550 |
| Attorney, two classes, one office action | $2,900 | $1,200 | $1,050 | $1,750 | $6,900 |
Attorney rows include both government fees and professional fees, and assume the firm charges $250 to $400 to prepare each maintenance filing on top of the USPTO fee. Those maintenance charges are the line most people forget when they compare quotes.
What a Trademark Costs Relative to Everything Else
Set the trademark next to the rest of the bill and the proportions change how it feels.
A provisional patent application costs $130 to $325 in government fees for a small or micro entity, and $1,499 through a filing service. An attorney-drafted utility application runs $8,000 to $20,000 through issuance. Injection mold tooling runs $12,000 to $60,000 for production steel. Against those, a $1,325 trademark that renews forever is one of the better ratios of protection to spend an inventor gets, which is the argument made in more detail across the full inventor cost breakdown.
It is also the protection with the longest tail. Patents expire. Utility patents run 20 years from filing, design patents 15 years from issuance, and then the invention is public. Trademarks renew every ten years indefinitely. The differences in what each right buys you are laid out in trademark versus patent.
For the patent side of the same budget question, the full stack including attorney fees, office actions, and maintenance is broken down in what a patent costs.
Costs People Do Not Budget For
Specimen rejections. The USPTO wants proof the mark is used in commerce as a source identifier. A mockup does not qualify. A digitally added logo on a product photo does not qualify and can draw a fraud inquiry. Photographing real product with real labels, or capturing a live e-commerce listing with a working add-to-cart, costs time and sometimes a short production run.
Post-registration audits. The USPTO audits a share of Section 8 filings and asks for proof of use on additional goods listed in the registration. If you cannot prove use on an item, you delete it, and there is a deletion fee after the audit begins. Filing broad classes you do not use creates this exposure.
Foreign filings. A Madrid Protocol international application through the USPTO costs a certification fee plus WIPO’s basic fee and per-country designation fees. Budget $2,000 to $5,000 for a handful of countries, and more where local counsel is required.
Monitoring and enforcement. Registration does not police itself. Watch services run $200 to $800 a year. A cease-and-desist letter from counsel runs $500 to $1,500. Opposition or cancellation proceedings before the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board run $10,000 to $80,000. Most inventors never see this line. The ones who do wish they had budgeted for it.
FAQ
What is the cheapest legal way to register a trademark?
File yourself, one class, using a pre-approved description from the USPTO’s ID Manual, after the product is already selling so you avoid intent-to-use extension fees. That is $350 at the USPTO and nothing else until year five. The USPTO trademark basics section walks through the requirements at no cost.
Do I pay again if my trademark application is refused?
Not to the USPTO for a standard office action response. You lose the original fee if you abandon the application, and you pay again in full to refile. If you hire counsel to respond, expect $400 to $1,500.
How much does a trademark cost per year?
Averaged across the first ten years, a clean single-class pro se registration works out to about $133 a year. With counsel handling filings and maintenance, closer to $350 a year. Neither number includes enforcement.
Is a trademark search included in the filing fee?
No. The USPTO does not run a clearance search for you and does not charge you for one. Its examiner searches for conflicts only after you file and only to decide whether to refuse. Anything you want to know before filing you either search yourself for free or pay counsel $300 to $1,500 to search and opine on.
Are trademark costs deductible as a business expense?
Registration fees and related legal costs are generally treated as business expenses or capitalized intangibles depending on the situation, and the treatment depends on facts a tax professional should look at. The Small Business Administration publishes free guidance on startup cost categories, and it is worth a read before your first filing year closes.
The move that saves the most money is the one that costs nothing: run the free search before you print packaging, order labels, or buy a domain. Enhance handles the patent-side clearance with a $399 patent search, and if you want a read on how the naming and filing sequence should run against your specific launch date, that conversation starts at the contact page.