What the FCDO Legalisation Office Actually Is
Almost everything written about UK apostilles treats the FCDO as a black box: you post a document in, an apostille comes out. That vagueness is the reason so many applications are rejected, so this guide opens the box. The Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office is the government department responsible for Britain's foreign policy and diplomatic network, and buried inside it is a small, unusually specialised unit called the Legalisation Office. That unit, and nobody else in the United Kingdom, issues apostilles.
The legal basis for this is Article 6 of the Hague Convention of 5 October 1961 Abolishing the Requirement of Legalisation for Foreign Public Documents. Every contracting state must designate the authorities competent to issue apostilles on its own public documents. Some countries designate dozens — in the United States each Secretary of State handles documents from their own state, and in Germany the job is spread across federal and Land authorities. The United Kingdom took the opposite approach and designated a single national body. Whether your document was issued by a register office in Truro, a university in Aberdeen or the High Court in Belfast, the apostille comes from the same office.
💡 FCO, FCDO, "the Foreign Office" — all the same body
You will still see "FCO apostille" and "Foreign Office apostille" everywhere, including on some official-looking websites. The Foreign & Commonwealth Office merged with the Department for International Development in September 2020 to form the FCDO. Apostilles issued before that date carry the FCO name and remain completely valid — there is no need to re-do them, and no foreign authority should question them. If a recipient does query an older certificate, point them at the online verification service described in section 8, which covers historic apostilles too.
🏛️ Hanslope Park, not Whitehall
The Legalisation Office does not operate from the FCDO's grand headquarters on King Charles Street. It works from Hanslope Park, a secure government estate near Milton Keynes in Buckinghamshire that the FCDO shares with several technical and security functions. It is not a public building, it is not somewhere you can turn up with an envelope, and the site is deliberately low-profile.
This matters practically, because the postal address for documents is issued to you after you complete the online application, and it is not published as a general contact address. Copying an address from a third-party blog is one of the quietest ways to lose a fortnight: mail sent to a superseded address may be forwarded slowly or returned to sender. Always use the address the online service gives you, and always send originals by a tracked service.
Since Dec 2023 There is no public counter anywhere in the UK
Until the end of 2023 the FCDO ran a Premium same-day legalisation service from a public counter in Westminster, central London. Members of the public could book a slot, hand documents over and collect the apostilles the same afternoon. That service closed on 29 December 2023 and has not been replaced. Since then there is no walk-in apostille counter anywhere in the United Kingdom. The only remaining in-person channel is at Hanslope Park and it is restricted to companies registered with the Legalisation Office as business users. If a website is still advertising a "same-day counter appointment in London" as though the public can book one, its information is more than two years out of date.
📧 How the office is contacted
The Legalisation Office publishes an email address, legalisation@fcdo.gov.uk, and a 24-hour telephone line on 020 4623 3100 for questions about the process or problems with an application in progress. What it will not do is give advice on whether your destination country will accept a particular document, whether you need a translation, or whether a solicitor's certification is the right route. Those are precisely the judgement calls that decide whether an application succeeds, and they sit outside the FCDO's remit — which is one of the main reasons an experienced agent is worth the difference in price.
📞 Want a straight answer about your own document?
A two-minute call usually settles what the FCDO will and will not accept, and it is free. Apostille is £90 per document, or £120 if solicitor certification is needed — both prices include the FCDO fee.
What the FCDO Does — and Does Not — Check
This is the single most misunderstood point in UK document legalisation, and getting it straight in your head will explain nearly every other rule on this page.
The FCDO verifies the signature, seal or stamp of the UK official on your document. It does not verify the document's contents, and it does not certify that anything written on it is true.
The Legalisation Office maintains a register of specimen signatures and seals supplied by UK public officials: registrars, court officers, notaries, practising solicitors, university registrars, Companies House officers, government department signatories and registered doctors. When your document arrives, an examiner locates the signature or seal on it and compares it with the specimen held on file. If it matches, the apostille is attached. If it does not match, or the office holds no specimen for that person, the application stalls or fails.
Nothing else happens. Nobody reads the substance. An apostille on a degree certificate confirms that the university registrar's signature is genuine — it says nothing about whether you attended, what you studied or what class you were awarded. An apostille on a statutory declaration confirms that a real, practising solicitor witnessed it — it does not endorse a single word of what you declared. An apostille on a marriage certificate confirms the registrar's signature and the General Register Office seal; it does not confirm that you are still married.
✅ What an apostille proves
- • The signature on the document is genuine
- • The signatory held the capacity claimed (registrar, solicitor, notary, court officer)
- • The seal or stamp belongs to the authority named
- • The document is a UK public document, or has been properly certified as one
- • The certificate itself was issued by the UK's designated authority and can be verified online
❌ What an apostille does not prove
- • That the facts stated in the document are true
- • That a qualification was actually awarded or is accredited
- • That the document is still current or has not been superseded
- • That the destination country will accept the document
- • That a translation attached to it is accurate
🧩 Why this rule shapes everything else
Once you accept that the FCDO is authenticating a signature rather than a document, the rest of the system becomes logical rather than arbitrary.
It explains why private documents need a solicitor
A company letter signed by a finance director carries a signature the FCDO has never seen and cannot check. A solicitor or notary certifies the document, adding a signature that is on file — and that is what gets apostilled. The solicitor is not vouching for the truth of the letter either; they are supplying a verifiable signature.
It explains why photocopies cannot go directly
A photocopy of a passport has no original signature or seal on it at all. Certify the copy in front of a solicitor and it acquires one.
It explains why damage and lamination are fatal
If the examiner cannot see the seal clearly, they cannot compare it. Lamination in particular makes a seal impossible to inspect and makes attaching the apostille impossible.
It explains why an apostille never expires
A signature that was genuine in 2019 is still genuine today, so the apostille remains technically valid indefinitely. Any expiry you encounter — the common "issued within the last six months" rule in the Gulf — comes from the receiving authority, not from the FCDO.
Need your document apostilled?
From £90 per document (£120 where solicitor certification is needed), apostilled the next working day. Send us a photo on WhatsApp and we’ll confirm what you need in minutes — no commitment.
FCDO Service Tiers, Fees and Timelines in 2026
The FCDO runs four service tiers. Two of them are open to the general public and two are restricted to organisations registered with the Legalisation Office as business users. The figures below are the official government fees as published on GOV.UK and current as of 3 August 2026.
| FCDO service | Who can use it | Fee per document | Published turnaround |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard (paper-based) | Anyone — apply online, send documents in | £45 | Up to 25 working days |
| e-Apostille | Anyone — eligible PDFs, e-signed by a UK notary or solicitor | £35 | Up to 2 working days |
| Next-Day (paper-based) | Registered businesses only | £40 | Next working day |
| Restricted Urgent (paper-based) | Registered businesses only, pre-approved by email | £100 | Same day |
Two details in that table catch people out. First, the cheapest tier is not the standard public one — the e-Apostille is £10 less and vastly faster, but only a minority of documents qualify for it. Second, the Restricted Urgent same-day service is not a premium option you can simply buy: each individual application must be pre-approved by the Legalisation Office by email before it is submitted, and approval is discretionary. It exists for genuine emergencies such as medical repatriation, urgent court deadlines and time-critical commercial filings, not for a holiday you booked late.
🚚 The costs the fee table does not include
On any paper route the £45 is only part of the bill. Return delivery is charged separately, and you also have to get the documents to Hanslope Park in the first place at your own cost and risk.
| Return destination | FCDO courier charge |
|---|---|
| United Kingdom, including BFPO | £6 per 1.5kg |
| Most European countries | £32 per 1.5kg |
| Rest of the world | £42 per 1.5kg |
A handful of European countries — Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Liechtenstein, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia and Turkey — sit outside the European courier band and are charged at the rest-of-world rate. Legalised documents currently cannot be returned to Russia, Ukraine or Belarus at all; you must have them delivered elsewhere and forward them yourself, or use the e-Apostille if your document qualifies. If you want the documents back at a UK address you can skip the courier entirely by enclosing an A4 envelope addressed to yourself with enough UK stamps on it.
⚠️ The fee is not refunded if your document cannot be legalised
GOV.UK states this plainly: if the Legalisation Office cannot apostille what you sent, you do not get your money back. Send in a photocopy that should have been certified, a commemorative certificate instead of the legal one, or a document signed by someone whose signature is not on file, and the £45 is gone along with several weeks. This is the real cost of a DIY mistake, and it is why the document check that a registered agent performs before submission is worth more than it looks.
⏳ What "up to 25 working days" means in practice
The published figure is a maximum, not a promise, and the online service shows the current live time frame when you apply. In quiet periods standard applications have come back considerably faster. But the number you should plan around is not the processing time — it is the whole door-to-door journey:
A realistic DIY timeline for one standard paper apostille
- • Day 0: apply online, pay £45, print the cover sheet, package the original.
- • Days 1–2: tracked or special delivery to Hanslope Park.
- • Days 2–27: in the queue and under examination — up to 25 working days, which is five calendar weeks.
- • Add days if a signature needs verifying: where the Legalisation Office has to write to the issuing body for confirmation, the clock effectively restarts. They will tell you if this happens.
- • Days 27–30: courier or post back to you.
- • If rejected: obtain the correct document or solicitor certification, pay a fresh £45, and start again.
Worst case, a single document takes six to seven weeks. Two consecutive attempts can run past three months. If you are working to a visa appointment, a term start date or a property completion, that is the risk you are carrying.
Our own pricing sits alongside these government fees rather than on top of them — the £45 is already inside our figure. The full breakdown of every cost in a UK apostille, including solicitor fees, translation and embassy charges, is in our apostille cost guide.
Which Documents Go Straight to the FCDO
Because the FCDO authenticates signatures it already holds, documents fall into two camps: those signed by someone on the register, which go directly, and everything else, which needs a UK solicitor or notary in front of it. GOV.UK sets out four categories that qualify for direct submission.
Court documents sealed with a wet ink court seal
Decrees absolute and final orders, sealed court orders, grants of probate, letters of administration and judgments. The critical word is wet ink: a printed or scanned seal on a downloaded PDF is not the same thing, and many people are caught out by court portals that issue electronic copies. If in doubt, ask the court office for a sealed hard copy.
Documents from a public registry
Birth, death, marriage, civil partnership and adoption certificates from the General Register Office, National Records of Scotland or GRO Northern Ireland; and company documents from Companies House such as certificates of incorporation, change of name certificates and certified filings. See our birth certificate guide for which version of a certificate is accepted.
Government department documents signed by an official
HMRC certificates of residence and letters of confirmation of tax registration, DVLA confirmations, Home Office correspondence, and ACRO police certificates. The signatory must be an official whose signature the FCDO holds — a mail-merged letter with a printed signature block will not do.
Medical certificates signed by a registered doctor
A medical or fitness certificate signed personally by a doctor on the GMC register can be apostilled directly. A letter from a clinic's administration team, or one signed by a practice manager, cannot.
📝 Everything else: the solicitor or notary route
Any other document can still be apostilled, but only once a UK "public official" — in practice a practising solicitor or a notary public — has certified it. GOV.UK gives powers of attorney, contracts and qualification certificates as examples, along with copies of documents such as passports and driving licences.
✅ Direct to the FCDO — £90 with us
- • GRO / NRS / GRONI birth, marriage, death certificates
- • Decree absolute and final orders (wet ink sealed)
- • Companies House certificates
- • ACRO police certificates
- • HMRC certificates of residence
- • Sealed court orders and grants of probate
- • Doctor-signed medical certificates
- • Many original university award certificates
📝 Solicitor certification first — £120 with us
- • Powers of attorney and affidavits
- • Statutory declarations
- • Commercial contracts and board resolutions
- • Employment and reference letters
- • Bank statements and letters
- • Photocopies of passports and driving licences
- • Certified translations
- • Transcripts and letters from a university registry
Rule of thumb: if a UK public authority issued the document and a named official signed or sealed the physical original, it goes straight to the FCDO. If a private individual or company produced it, or if it is a copy, a translation or a printout, a solicitor or notary has to put a verifiable signature on it first.
Degree and academic documents are the classic grey area, because some universities' award certificates are on the FCDO register while transcripts, confirmation letters and replacement certificates usually are not. Our degree certificate apostille guide works through which academic documents take which route and what to ask your university registry for.
The e-Apostille and Its Critical Exclusions
The e-Apostille is the FCDO's fully digital route. Instead of posting an original, you upload a PDF that has been electronically signed by a UK notary or solicitor. The FCDO checks the digital signature, applies an electronic apostille, and emails you the finished file. You can download it as many times as you like and share it by email, on a memory stick or simply by showing it on a screen. At £35 with a published turnaround of up to two working days, and no courier fees at either end, it is the fastest and cheapest thing the FCDO offers.
It also has hard limits that catch out a great many applicants, and because the fee is not refunded when a document cannot be legalised, applying on the wrong route is an expensive way to learn.
❌ You cannot get an e-Apostille for any of these
- • Birth certificates
- • Death certificates
- • Marriage certificates
- • Civil partnership certificates
- • Adoption certificates
- • Any other General Register Office document
- • ACRO police certificates (England and Wales)
- • DBS certificates (England and Wales)
- • Disclosure certificates (Scotland and Northern Ireland)
- • Fingerprint certificates
- • ACCA membership certificates
Between them, GRO certificates and criminal record certificates account for a very large share of all apostille demand — visa files, marriage abroad, spouse sponsorship, residency applications. If your document is on this list, the paper route is the only route, whatever a comparison site tells you.
There is a second constraint that is easy to miss. Even for an eligible document type, the e-Apostille only works if the PDF carries a qualified electronic signature applied by a UK notary or solicitor. A scan you made yourself, however clean, has no digital signature attached and cannot be processed. So an e-Apostille always implies the £120-style certification route in practice: someone qualified has to sign the file first.
⚠️ Will your recipient accept a digital apostille?
This is the question to settle before you choose the route, not after. Many European authorities, universities and multinational employers now accept e-Apostilles happily. Plenty of others — Gulf ministries, some Latin American consulates, older municipal registries and a good number of banks — still insist on paper with a physical seal they can hold. GOV.UK is explicit that you may need the paper apostille if the person asking for the document wants one. Ask them in writing, and keep the answer.
We compare the two routes side by side — cost, speed, acceptance, and the document types that work for each — in our e-Apostille vs paper apostille guide. If your document is an ACRO police certificate, the specific rules and timings are in our ACRO police certificate apostille guide.
Applying Yourself vs Using a Registered Agent
We are an agent, so treat what follows with appropriate scepticism — but we would rather be honest than lose your trust. For a single, straightforward, non-urgent document, doing it yourself is genuinely cheaper. The FCDO's public service exists precisely so that people can use it directly, and if you have a GRO birth certificate, six weeks to spare and no deadline, there is no good reason to pay anyone.
What you are buying from an agent is speed, error-catching and the removal of risk. Here is the comparison without the spin.
| Doing it yourself | Registered agent (LegaliseNow) | |
|---|---|---|
| Cash cost, one document | £45 FCDO fee + £6 UK courier + your outbound tracked postage (roughly £8–£10) ≈ £60 | £90 all in, FCDO fee included — £120 if solicitor certification is needed |
| Time | Up to 25 working days at the FCDO, plus post both ways — realistically 5–7 weeks | Apostilled the next working day after your document reaches us |
| Document check before submission | None. The first you hear of a problem is the rejection | Every document reviewed before it goes in; we ask for a scan first, at no charge |
| Cost of getting it wrong | £45 lost (no refunds) plus the whole timeline again | Caught before submission; we source the correct document or certification instead |
| Solicitor certification | You find, book and pay a solicitor separately | Arranged for you and included in the £120 price |
| Non-Hague chains (embassy, MOFA) | You manage each embassy yourself, with its own forms, fees and queues | Handled end to end from £150 per document |
| Effort | Online form, printing, packaging, tracking, chasing, re-doing if rejected | Send the document; we do the rest and keep you updated |
| Insurance on your original | Whatever your postal service covers | Insured to £2 million; documents hand-carried to the Legalisation Office |
⚖️ So when is each one right?
📮 Do it yourself if…
- • You have one document and no deadline
- • It is unquestionably a public document with an original wet signature or seal
- • The destination is a Hague country, so no embassy step follows
- • No translation is involved
- • You are comfortable posting an irreplaceable original and waiting
⚡ Use an agent if…
- • There is a visa appointment, term start, court date or completion date
- • The document needs solicitor or notary certification
- • You have several documents, where the per-item saving shrinks fast
- • The destination is non-Hague and an embassy chain follows
- • You are abroad and cannot manage UK post
- • You genuinely cannot afford a rejection
💰 What our prices include
Our £90 and £120 are complete: the FCDO fee is inside them, along with the pre-submission document check, hand delivery to the Legalisation Office, tracking and return by your chosen method. There is no separate handling charge and no invoice at the end you did not expect.
📄 How registered business access actually works
The FCDO's Next-Day and Restricted Urgent tiers are not open to individuals. They are available to organisations that have registered with the Legalisation Office as business users and that submit documents regularly and in volume through the channel at Hanslope Park. Documents go in before a daily cut-off, stay with the office overnight, and the apostilles are issued the following working day. That registration is the whole reason a competent agent can turn a five-week wait into twenty-four hours — it is not a trick, a queue-jump or a paid upgrade you could buy yourself. LegaliseNow has held that status for more than fifteen years.
What Is Physically on an Apostille Certificate
The apostille is not a stamp on your document. It is a separate certificate, in a format fixed by the annex to the 1961 Convention, physically attached to the document it authenticates. Every apostille issued by every one of the 120-plus contracting states carries the same ten numbered fields, in the same order, under the same French heading — APOSTILLE (Convention de La Haye du 5 octobre 1961). That uniformity is the entire point: an official in São Paulo who has never seen a British document can still read a British apostille.
The ten fields on a UK apostille
Fields 2, 3 and 4 are worth reading carefully when your apostille arrives, because they tell you exactly what the FCDO certified. If field 3 says "Notary Public", the apostille authenticated your notary, not the underlying document — which is entirely normal for a certified copy or a contract, but occasionally not what a receiving authority expected. Spotting a mismatch on the day it arrives is much cheaper than discovering it at a consulate counter overseas.
🚨 Never detach the apostille
The certificate is attached to your document — normally stapled and sealed, or bound with an eyelet and ribbon for notarised sets. That attachment is part of the authentication. Removing the staple, re-stapling it, unbinding a notarial set to photocopy it, or separating the pages to scan them destroys the evidential link between the apostille and the document, and receiving authorities are entitled to reject the result. If you need a copy, photocopy the whole bundle intact or ask us to arrange a certified copy. The same applies to laminating: never laminate an apostilled document.
Your original is not defaced, overwritten or retained. It comes back to you exactly as it went in, with the apostille attached. And because the apostille certifies a signature that was genuine at the time, it does not expire — any time limit you are given comes from the authority receiving it.
How to Verify an Apostille
One of the quiet strengths of the UK system is that anyone, anywhere in the world, can check an apostille online for free in under a minute. The FCDO runs a public verification service, reached from gov.uk/verify-apostille and hosted at verifyapostille.service.gov.uk. It covers both paper apostilles and e-Apostilles.
Find the two details on the certificate
You need the date the apostille was issued (field 6) and the apostille number (field 8). Both are printed on the certificate itself. You do not need the document, an account, or any personal details of the applicant.
Enter them on the government service
Go to gov.uk/verify-apostille and follow "Start now" through to the verification form. The service is free and needs no registration.
Read the result
The service confirms whether the FCDO issued an apostille with that number on that date. A "not found" result usually means a transcription error — a mistyped digit or the wrong date format — rather than a forgery, so check the details and try again before drawing conclusions.
💡 Send the link with your document
If you are submitting an apostilled document to an overseas employer, university or ministry that has not dealt with UK paperwork before, include a short note pointing them to the verification service. It pre-empts the "how do we know this is real?" query that otherwise costs a week of email, and it is particularly useful for e-Apostilles, where the recipient has nothing physical to hold.
Why the FCDO Rejects or Delays Documents
Rejections are not random. In fifteen years of submissions the same handful of causes come up again and again, and every one of them is avoidable if you know about it beforehand. Remember that the fee is not refunded when a document cannot be legalised, so each of these carries a real price.
❌ The signatory is not on the FCDO register
The most common single cause. The document is signed by a real, senior, entirely legitimate person — a company director, an HR manager, a school head, a clinic administrator — but the FCDO holds no specimen signature for them and has no way to check it. There is no appeal against this; the fix is solicitor or notary certification. Occasionally the Legalisation Office will write to the issuing body to confirm a signature, which is what "may take longer if there's a signature that needs to be verified" means on GOV.UK. Expect that to add weeks.
❌ Uncertified copies and printouts
Photocopies, scans, PDFs printed at home, screenshots of an online record and downloaded portal documents all lack an original signature or seal. A copy has to be certified by a solicitor or notary before it means anything to the FCDO. This trips up people whose court documents arrived as a portal PDF, and people who have sensibly kept the original safe and sent a copy instead.
❌ Laminated documents
Lamination is fatal twice over: the examiner cannot inspect an embossed or raised seal through plastic, and there is no way to attach the apostille to the document. Older degree certificates and some overseas-issued paperwork are frequently laminated by well-meaning owners. There is no safe way to remove it — you will need a replacement from the issuing body, or a solicitor-certified copy.
❌ Damaged, torn or illegible originals
Water damage, fading, tears through a seal, heavy folding along a signature and biro annotations all cause rejections. Never write on a document you intend to have apostilled, including helpful notes in the margin. If the seal or signature is not clearly legible, order a fresh certified copy from the issuing authority first.
❌ The wrong service for the document type
Applying for an e-Apostille on a birth certificate, an ACRO certificate or a DBS certificate is an automatic failure, because those categories are excluded outright. So is uploading a self-made scan to the e-Apostille service instead of a file e-signed by a notary or solicitor. Both cost the fee and the time.
❌ Documents that did not originate in the UK
The FCDO can only apostille UK documents. An Indian birth certificate, a Nigerian degree or a Spanish marriage certificate must be apostilled by the competent authority in the country that issued it, however long you have lived in Britain. The one workaround is a solicitor-certified copy, which authenticates the solicitor's certification rather than the foreign document — check with the receiving authority first, because not all of them accept it.
❌ Court documents without a wet ink seal
GOV.UK specifies a wet ink court seal. Court services increasingly issue sealed orders as PDFs, and the printed seal on those is not accepted for direct apostille. Ask the court office for a hard copy bearing the physical seal, or have the printout certified.
❌ Commemorative and decorative certificates
The pretty certificate handed over at a wedding, a graduation memento, an order of service or a venue's own certificate has no legal status. The FCDO apostilles the certified copy of the register entry, not the keepsake. If your document looks decorative, that is usually the clue that it is the wrong one.
⚠️ Have a scan checked before you post the original
We look at a scan of any document free of charge and tell you which route it needs before anything is submitted or paid for. It takes us a few minutes and it is the single highest-value step in the whole process. Email info@legalisenow.com, send it on WhatsApp to +44 7494 434224, or call 0203 916 6250. Apostille from £90, FCDO fee included.
After the Apostille: Embassies and Translation
For most destinations the apostille is the finish line. The Hague Convention has more than 120 contracting states, and in every one of them a UK apostille is the only authentication required — no embassy, no consulate, no further stamps. The United States, Canada, Australia, India, Japan, South Africa and every EU member state fall into this group.
Two things can still stand between you and a completed application.
Embassy attestation for non-Hague countries
The UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Egypt, Thailand, Malaysia and Angola are not Hague members. For them the FCDO apostille is step two of three or four: the document is certified, apostilled, then attested by the country's embassy or consulate in London, and in the Gulf frequently by the destination's own Ministry of Foreign Affairs after arrival.
From £150 per document with us, handled end to end. Timing depends on the embassy.
Translation, in the right order
Many non-English-speaking authorities want a translation as well. The order matters enormously and varies by country: Spain and France generally want a sworn translator in-country to translate the apostilled document; Italy often wants the translation done and apostilled in the UK; Gulf states usually want Arabic translation carried out locally after attestation.
Translating in the wrong order is one of the most expensive mistakes in this field, because the work has to be redone.
Our apostille and translation guide sets out the sequence country by country, including which authorities accept a UK certified translation and which insist on a local sworn translator. For the full non-Hague chain in the busiest destination we handle, see the working in the UAE guide, which walks through apostille, UAE Embassy attestation and MOFA in Dubai or Abu Dhabi.
🔍 Not sure which chain applies to you?
Our What Do I Need? tool covers 127+ destinations. Pick your country and document type and it tells you in about thirty seconds whether you need an apostille alone or apostille plus embassy attestation, what it costs and how long it takes. For the wider picture — every document type, every route, every country — the Complete UK Apostille Guide 2026 is the place to start.
💰 What it costs with LegaliseNow
| Service | When it applies | Price | Turnaround |
|---|---|---|---|
| Apostille — no solicitor | Public documents that go straight to the FCDO | £90 | Next working day |
| Apostille with solicitor certification | Private documents, copies, translations, declarations | £120 | Next working day |
| Embassy attestation | Non-Hague destinations after the apostille | From £150 | Embassy dependent |
| FCDO fee | Already included in every price above | £0 extra | — |
Government fees change from time to time. Everything on this page was checked against GOV.UK on 3 August 2026; if you are reading it much later, confirm the current FCDO figures before budgeting, or call us and we will tell you what they are today.