UK Probate Fees
Calculator 2026

£526 in England and Wales where the estate is worth more than £5,000, and nothing at all where it is £5,000 or less. The fee rose from £300 on 6 July 2026 under the Court and Tribunal Fees (Miscellaneous Amendments) Order 2026, which amended the Non-Contentious Probate Fees Order 2004 — a 75% increase, so any guide, checklist or cost estimate still quoting £300 is out of date.

Extra copies of the grant cost £2 each if you order them with the application and £16 each afterwards, which is a strong reason to order enough at the outset: banks, registrars and insurers each want to see one. A second application where probate has already been granted costs £22, and entering a caveat costs £4.

Yes. The Help with Fees scheme covers court fees for people on a low income or receiving certain benefits, and you apply online or on form EX160.

Eligibility turns on your savings and investments and on your monthly income, with the deceased's estate not counted as your money for this purpose — the applicant's own circumstances are what matter. One limitation is easy to miss and is stated explicitly by GOV.UK: Help with Fees can cover the £526 application fee but it does NOT cover the fee for extra copies of the probate document.

If you expect to need several copies, budget for them separately at £2 each alongside the application.

Almost never, and this is the most useful thing to understand about probate costs. The £526 court fee is fixed regardless of whether the estate is worth £50,000 or £5 million.

The two costs that actually scale are inheritance tax, charged at 40% above the available nil-rate bands, and professional fees if you instruct a solicitor — commonly quoted as a percentage of the estate, or hourly, and frequently running into thousands. On a £600,000 estate the court fee is under 0.1% of the total cost of administration in most scenarios.

Focusing on the £526 while ignoring whether the residence nil-rate band applies is the wrong way round by roughly two orders of magnitude.

Not always, and checking first can save the fee entirely. Whether a grant is needed depends on what the assets are and how they were held, not simply on the estate's size.

Property held as beneficial joint tenants passes automatically to the survivor and is outside the grant, as are jointly held bank accounts. Many banks release balances below their own threshold — commonly somewhere between £5,000 and £50,000, set by each institution rather than by law — on sight of a death certificate and an indemnity.

Assets with a valid nomination, and pension death benefits paid at the trustees' discretion, generally pass outside the estate too. Where the estate is solely-owned property, or shareholdings, or accounts above the banks' thresholds, a grant will normally be required.

The standard nil-rate band is £325,000, frozen since 2009. A residence nil-rate band of £175,000 is available on top where a qualifying home passes to direct descendants — children, grandchildren, and step, adopted or foster children, but not siblings, nieces or nephews.

That gives £500,000 for an individual and up to £1,000,000 for a married couple or civil partners, because the survivor can claim the percentage of both bands the first death did not use. The residence band tapers by £1 for every £2 of estate value above £2,000,000, so it is fully lost by £2,350,000.

Above the available bands the rate is 40%, reduced to 36% where at least 10% of the net estate passes to charity. Both bands are frozen to 5 April 2031.

No — there are three separate systems and only England and Wales uses the term probate. In Scotland the equivalent process is called confirmation, it runs through the sheriff court's commissary department, and unlike the flat English fee the court fee is scaled to the value of the estate.

Scotland also has a simplified small-estate procedure where the estate is £36,000 or less. Northern Ireland operates its own system through the Northern Ireland Courts and Tribunals Service, with a fee payable where the assets exceed £10,000.

Inheritance tax, by contrast, is a UK-wide tax, so the £325,000 nil-rate band and the £175,000 residence nil-rate band apply identically in all three jurisdictions. This calculator models the England and Wales court fee only; check the official fee tables for Scotland and Northern Ireland.

The two deadlines run on different clocks and that catches people out. Inheritance tax is due by the end of the sixth month after the month of death, and interest runs from that date.

The grant of probate will not normally be issued until the tax that must be paid up front has been paid — so on a taxable estate the executor often has to fund the tax before having the legal authority to access the assets that pay it. HMRC's direct payment scheme lets banks release funds for this, and tax on land and buildings can usually be paid in ten annual instalments, though interest still accrues.

Straightforward estates commonly take several months from application to distribution; taxable estates, contested wills or property sales take considerably longer.

It depends on the estate rather than the fee. Applying yourself costs the £526 court fee plus your time, and a simple estate — a single property, a few accounts, an uncontested will, no inheritance tax — is genuinely manageable through the online service.

The case for professional help strengthens sharply where inheritance tax is payable, where the estate holds business or agricultural assets, foreign property or trust interests, where the will is unclear or being contested, or where a beneficiary is a minor. Executors are personally liable for mistakes such as distributing before liabilities are settled, which is the risk you are really paying to transfer.

Compare a fixed quote against a percentage basis on your actual numbers before agreeing either.