How Much an ESTA Costs from the UK in 2026, and What Else You Owe

The last time a lot of British travellers filled in an ESTA it cost $21. It costs $40.27 now, and $10.27 of that is charged whether or not you are let in.

The United States is co-hosting the 2026 World Cup, which is why plenty of households have been pricing an American trip for the first time in years. Three of the charges involved moved in the past twelve months. A fourth item, the one that produces the most alarmed messages in the family group chat, has not moved at all, because it is still only a proposal, and almost every page on this subject blends the two together.

Below is the split, with a date on every row. Everything here was checked against the Federal Register, DHS, the State Department fee schedule and gov.uk on 24 August 2026. Sterling conversions use $1 = £0.73, the European Central Bank reference rate published for 21 August 2026.

What a British family of four pays before they fly

A British passport does not need a US visa for an ordinary holiday. It needs an ESTA, which is a different document and a far cheaper one. Two adults and two children on UK passports are all covered by the Visa Waiver Program, and each of them applies separately. There is no family rate. The fee is charged per authorisation.

The middle row is worth reading twice. CBP charges $10.27 of the ESTA fee on refusal exactly as it does on approval, and collects the remaining $30 only when the authorisation is granted. A refusal is not free. It costs about £7.50, and it moves that person onto the visa track, where the bill is $435 and the wait is counted in months rather than minutes.

So apply for all four at once and apply early, while a refusal still leaves room for the slower route instead of landing a fortnight before the flight.

Where the $40.27 comes from

Three charges stapled into one. A $17 travel promotion fee, $13 added by the 2025 budget law, and $10.27 that covers CBP's cost of running the system. DHS published the split and the 27 cent inflation adjustment in November 2025. The total was $21 until 30 September 2025, went to $40 on that date, and to $40.27 on 1 January 2026. It is adjusted for inflation every American fiscal year, so the pence will shift again next January.

An approved ESTA runs two years from the date of approval, or until your passport expires, whichever comes first (8 CFR 217.5). Spread across four or five trips it is small money, and that is the honest way to read the increase.

Apply only at esta.cbp.dhs.gov. CBP's own filings describe a persistent problem with copycat sites that charge large fees for applications which never reach it. The real one takes $40.27 and nothing else.

One other in-force charge can reach a British traveller. Driving into the States from Canada or Mexico, which a World Cup itinerary can easily involve, means a $30 I-94 if you apply for one at a land border port of entry, in force since 30 September 2025. CBP said so explicitly when it set the charge. Arrive by air or by sea and it does not touch you.

Your ESTA dies with your passport

This is the trap that catches people who have done everything else properly.

An ESTA is issued against one passport. When that passport goes, the authorisation goes with it, because the validity runs two years or to the passport's expiry date, whichever arrives first. Renew in the spring and the ESTA you bought last year stops covering you, so you pay $40.27 again.

Get the order right and it costs nothing. Renew the passport, wait for the new one, then apply for the ESTA against the new number. Do it the other way round and you have spent about £29.50 on an authorisation with a short life left in it. Renewing an adult passport online is £102 as of 24 August 2026, so the two together are a real line in a family budget once you multiply by four.

There is a happier side to the same rule. If your ESTA was approved before 30 September 2025 you paid $21 for it, and two years of validity means a good number of those are still live. Check the expiry date before you pay for a new one. An authorisation approved in August 2025 runs to August 2027 at the old price, and nothing about the increase shortens it.

If anyone in the party needs a visa

Not every British household travels on British passports. A partner, a parent or an adult child holding a passport outside the Visa Waiver Program does not apply for an ESTA at all. They pay $185 to apply for a B1/B2 visitor visa, non-refundable, unchanged since May 2023, plus $250 on issuance for the visa integrity fee. That is $435, about £319, before a flight is booked, and it comes with an appointment in person.

Roughly eleven times what the person in the next seat pays for the identical holiday.

Now a position, and one a reasonable person could argue with. Treat the $250 as money spent, not money parked.

The statute (HR-1 section 100007, now 8 USC 1806) says the Secretary of Homeland Security "may provide a reimbursement", not shall. The fee cannot be waived or reduced. Reimbursement only becomes possible once the visa's own period of validity has expired, which for a ten-year B1/B2 means ten years, and only if the holder met every condition and left within five days of the end of that period, or was granted an extension or a green card.

Then there is the machinery, which does not exist. As of 24 August 2026 no State Department rulemaking implementing the fee appears in the Federal Register, and the official fee page still carries no line for it. The Alliance for International Exchange reported in September 2025 that senior consular officials had received no guidance from DHS, and that the Congressional Budget Office expected implementation to take years. Some posts charge it. Others do not. A refund that needs a discretionary decision, a decade of waiting and a system nobody has built is not a deposit. Budget the full $435 and treat any reimbursement as a surprise.

Applicants from fifty named countries face a further step. A consular officer may direct a bond of $5,000, $10,000 or $15,000, posted through Pay.gov on Form I-352 and refundable if the terms are met. The State Department last updated the country list on 13 May 2026. Bond holders may only enter and leave through commercial air ports of entry, which rules out a land crossing from Canada and rules out a charter flight.

The other cost is the calendar, and it follows the consulate rather than the passport. These are State's own figures from its Global Visa Wait Times table as published on 9 July 2026. It is updated monthly, and an average is reported only where the next appointment is more than three months out.

Toronto is nearly two years out and Hanoi is a fortnight. Where somebody applies drives the schedule far more than which passport they hold, and a third-country applicant living in a jammed post is worst off of all.

State's answer is a $750 expedite fee, about £549, live since 1 July 2026 and running to 31 December. Its own rule puts the median global wait near 30 days, concedes that some posts exceed twelve months, names the 2026 World Cup and the 2028 Los Angeles Games as the reason to test the idea now, and projects that 25,705 people will pay it. Read what it buys before you do. An appointment inside ten business days at selected posts, in capped quantities, and nothing beyond that. No faster adjudication, no shortcut through administrative processing, no promise of a visa at the end. Miss or cancel the appointment and the $750 is gone.

Proposed, and not the rule yet

If you came here to find out whether you have to hand over five years of social media accounts for an ESTA, the answer on 24 August 2026 is no.

CBP put that requirement in a 10 December 2025 Federal Register notice, alongside phone numbers used in the past five years, email addresses going back ten, IP addresses and photo metadata, family members' names, birth dates and birthplaces, and biometrics. The same notice proposes retiring the ESTA website so that the mobile app becomes the only way to apply, which would change how a parent files for a child. Comments closed on 9 February 2026. No follow-up notice has been published since, and none of it is being collected today.

One item from that notice is already approved, through an emergency clearance. A selfie alongside the passport photo page, including when a travel agent or a family member files on your behalf.

Proposals turn into rules on their own timetable and this one may well arrive. Until a notice says it has, do not fill in fields the form is not asking for.

The order to do it in

Passports first, then ESTAs, then flights. That sequence costs nothing extra and it is the only one where a refusal or an expiring passport surfaces while you can still do something about it. If anyone in the party needs a visa, look up their post's wait before you buy anything at all, because a 13-month queue is not a problem you fix with money. The $750 buys an appointment, never a decision.

Anyone building a trip around the tournament gets the awkward version of this, since the 2026 World Cup runs across three countries and a knockout draw nobody can call in advance. Our guide to planning a trip around the tournament covers re-routable multi-city plans, and the same discipline applies to the paperwork. Know which border needs a document and which needs only a boarding pass. It is worth reading the mirror image as well, because the EU's own entry rules now apply to a British passport on the way out, on a separate timetable with its own gap between what is live and what has merely been announced. And once the entry paperwork is paid for, the next avoidable line on the bill is usually the phone, which we costed out in the roaming and eSIM maths.

Fees move. This page reflects the Federal Register, travel.state.gov and gov.uk as of 24 August 2026. The ESTA charge is adjusted for inflation every American fiscal year, so expect the pence to drift again on 1 January.