How much does the EB-5 visa cost? Investment, filing fees, and what you actually pay

The EB-5 visa cost splits into two buckets that behave completely differently, and treating them as one number is the most expensive mistake an investor can make at the planning stage. One bucket is the qualifying investment, either $800,000 or $1,050,000, which is capital you place at risk in a U.S. business and expect the project to repay. The other bucket is money that's spent and gone: USCIS filing fees, a regional center administration fee, and the legal and documentation work behind the petition.

For a single investor with no dependents, that second bucket runs roughly $7,700 to $9,900 in USCIS filing fees across the full case, plus an administration fee that regional center projects commonly set in the tens of thousands of dollars, plus legal costs. Below is every line item, stage by stage, including the ones no government fee table shows. For how the program itself works, from job creation to the conditional green card, start with the EB-5 visa guide.

How much does the EB-5 visa cost in total?

Budget for the investment and the fees as two separate numbers, because only one of them is designed to come back to you. Here's the whole picture for one investor.

The gap between $7,700 and $9,900 in government fees comes down to two choices: whether you invest directly or through a regional center, and whether you finish your green card inside the United States or at a consulate abroad. Dependents change the math again, since your spouse and each child pay their own green card stage fees.

Everything past the investment is a real, unrecoverable expense, so it belongs in your budget at full value rather than as a rounding error next to a seven-figure investment.

The EB-5 visa investment: $800,000 or $1,050,000

The minimum EB-5 investment is $800,000 for a project in a targeted employment area or a qualifying infrastructure project, and $1,050,000 for a standard project outside those categories. Both amounts apply to petitions filed on or after March 15, 2022, when the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act took effect.

A targeted employment area, or TEA, is either a rural area or an area where unemployment runs at least 150% of the national average. Project sponsors identify and document TEA status, so in practice the location of the project you choose determines which of the two amounts you pay, rather than anything about you personally. The USCIS EB-5 classification page sets out both definitions in full, and our EB-5 visa guide covers how TEA status interacts with job creation and visa set-asides.

One date belongs on your calendar. These amounts adjust for inflation every five years, and the first adjustment takes effect for petitions filed on or after January 1, 2027. Investors planning around today's figures should confirm the amount in effect on the day they file, not the day they start gathering documents.

There's also a rule about the shape of the investment that catches people who expect a fixed return. USCIS doesn't count money as qualifying capital if it comes with a guaranteed rate of return or a contractual right to repayment, which means the capital has to sit genuinely at risk for the petition to work. That constraint is what makes the investment an investment rather than a fee.

Everything about the EB-5 visa in one placeInvestment amounts, job creation, processing times, and the path from conditional to permanent green card.

Read the EB-5 visa guide

EB-5 filing fees: what USCIS charges at each stage

USCIS charges at three points in an EB-5 case: the investor petition, the green card application, and the petition to remove conditions two years later. These are the current amounts from the USCIS fee schedule on Form G-1055.

Fees and investment amounts are current as of August 2026. USCIS updates these periodically, so check the linked official pages for the latest figures before you file.

Adjustment of status is the route for investors already living in the United States, and it means filing Form I-485 without leaving the country. Investors abroad go through consular processing instead, completing Form DS-260 with the Department of State and paying that agency's immigrant visa application processing fee, then the $235 USCIS Immigrant Fee once the visa is issued and they travel. Neither route is inherently cheaper once you count the medical exam, travel, and document costs that attach to each one.

Two optional filings sit alongside adjustment of status. While your Form I-485 is pending you can request a work permit, formally an Employment Authorization Document or EAD, on Form I-765, and a travel document on Form I-131. For applicants with a pending I-485 filed with a fee, the I-765 currently costs $260 and the advance parole travel document costs $630 by paper or $580 online. Biometrics, the fingerprint and photo appointment, doesn't carry a separate charge for any of these forms on the current schedule, since it's folded into the filing fee.

Family size is the biggest single variable in the government-fee column. Your spouse and unmarried children under 21 join the same EB-5 case, but each of them pays their own green card stage fee, so a family of four adjusting status inside the United States pays four I-485 fees rather than one. At $1,440 each by paper, that's $5,760 at that stage alone, before the investor petition and the removal of conditions.

Estimate the cost of your EB-5 case

The EB-5 costs nobody quotes you before you wire the money

The line items that surprise investors sit between the investment and the government fees, and together they usually cost more than every USCIS form combined.

The regional center administration fee is the largest of them. Projects charge it to cover offering documents, economic impact reports, escrow administration, compliance, and the annual reporting a designated regional center owes USCIS. Each project sets its own number, and it's commonly in the tens of thousands of dollars. Ask for it in writing before you sign, and ask separately whether any part of it is refundable if your petition is denied, because policies differ project by project.

Regional centers also carry their own compliance costs, which is part of why the administration fee exists. USCIS charges designated centers an annual EB-5 Integrity Fund fee of $20,000 when they had more than 20 investors in the preceding fiscal year, and $10,000 when they had 20 or fewer. That's the center's obligation rather than a fee you file, but it's real money inside the project's cost structure.

Escrow and banking costs come next. Most projects hold subscription money in escrow until a defined trigger, and the escrow agent charges for that service. International wires of this size attract bank fees, intermediary bank charges, and currency conversion spreads, and on an $800,000 transfer a spread of even half a percent is thousands of dollars that never reaches the project. Investors moving money out of countries with currency controls often need multiple transfers and additional documentation, which raises both the cost and the paper trail you'll need later.

Source-of-funds documentation is the third cluster, and it's the one that scales with the complexity of your finances. You have to trace the lawful origin of the capital with a complete paper trail, which can mean commissioned valuations of property you sold, forensic accounting reports, tax records reconstructed across several years and jurisdictions, and certified English translations of every foreign document. A salaried investor with one clean sale of a primary residence spends far less here than an investor drawing on business proceeds, gifts, and inheritance across three countries.

Then there are the professional fees. An immigration attorney prices EB-5 work by stage, typically quoting the investor petition separately from the green card stage and again from the removal of conditions, and many firms bill a response to a Request for Evidence, or RFE, as extra work on top. Some investors also pay for independent due diligence on the project itself, a securities attorney to review offering documents, or a tax adviser to plan for U.S. residency. Each of these is a legitimate expense that earns its place in a case of this size, and each one belongs in the budget from day one rather than as a surprise in month eight.

Invested capital vs. spent money: what each EB-5 cost actually buys

The $800,000 or $1,050,000 is an investment in a business, and the fees are the price of the immigration process. Keeping that line clear changes how you evaluate the whole thing.

Your capital goes into a new commercial enterprise that has to create at least 10 full-time jobs for qualifying U.S. workers. It has to stay genuinely at risk through the sustainment period, and the project repays it according to the terms of the offering, usually years later and usually after the removal of conditions. Repayment depends on how the project performs, so the realistic outcomes range from full return with a modest yield to partial return, and the offering documents are where those scenarios are spelled out.

Job creation is where the two buckets touch. If the enterprise fails to create and sustain the required jobs, USCIS can deny the Form I-829 petition to remove conditions, which puts the green card at risk even in cases where the money itself is eventually returned. That's why project due diligence carries more weight in an EB-5 case than the size of the administration fee.

Everything in the second bucket buys process rather than equity. Filing fees buy adjudication, legal fees buy the preparation and presentation of your case, and the administration fee buys the structure that lets a pooled project qualify at all. None of it comes back, whether your petition is approved or denied, which is the argument for pricing it accurately at the start instead of discovering it stage by stage. If you're weighing this against a smaller, renewable investor route, our comparison of the EB-5 vs the E-2 visa puts the two cost structures side by side.

EB-5 cost with Tukki: one end price, government fees included

Tukki quotes one end price for an EB-5 case, and that price already includes the USCIS filing fees and any RFE response the case needs. Law firms that bill per service quote the legal work and then add the government fees, the RFE response, and often the later stages as separate engagements. Both models are used across the industry and both can be the right call: per-service billing gives you granular control over what you buy and when, while a single end price gives you one number to plan against from the start. What matters is knowing which one you've agreed to before you commit capital.

Inside Tukki's end price you get case strategy and eligibility review, preparation and filing of the investor petition, the USCIS filing fees for the forms in scope, source-of-funds documentation support, the response to any Request for Evidence, and the green card stage filings covered by your quote. The our process page walks through each step and what happens in it, and the pricing tool returns a personalized estimate for your visa type and nationality. For how flat-fee, per-service, and self-filed approaches compare more broadly, read what immigration help actually costs.

How much does a visa cost?Get a personalized price and timeline estimate based on your visa type and nationality.

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Pricing your own EB-5 case: next steps

Start by pinning down the three variables that move your number most: whether your project sits in a targeted employment area, whether you'll invest directly or through a regional center, and how many family members are on the case. With those three answers, the government-fee column stops being a range and becomes a figure you can actually plan around.

If you're still deciding whether the EB-5 is the right route at all, the visa match tool compares employment-based options against your profile, including paths that don't require capital. Investors who already have a project in mind usually get more out of a conversation about their specific source-of-funds picture and timeline.

Tukki is a U.S. immigration services provider that helps investors build and file EB-5 cases, document the lawful source of their capital, and plan the path from the investor petition through the conditional green card to permanent residence, with dedicated immigration attorney support and full case visibility at every step.

Map the cost of your EB-5 case with our team