Anyone applying for an ESTA travel authorization on or after Oct. 16 will pay $40.62, up 35 cents from the current $40.27. U.S. Customs and Border Protection set the new amount in a notice published in the Federal Register on Oct. 1, signed by Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin. The increase is an annual inflation adjustment written into the 2025 tax-and-spending law that President Trump signed on July 4, 2025, known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
The question for travelers from visa-waiver countries is simple: what the authorization costs on the day the application is filed, and whether a denied application still costs money. The notice answers both, and the date matters because the fee is charged when CBP assesses it, which starts Oct. 16, 2026.
Oct. 16 is the first day the new ESTA, EVUS and parole amounts apply, and it catches anyone who applies that day or later.
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Three pieces make up the $40.62
The ESTA fee is not a single charge. The notice breaks it into $17 plus a $10.62 cost-recovery fee plus $13, which adds to $40.62. The year before, the same formula produced $17 plus $10.27 plus $13, or $40.27. Only the middle piece moves with inflation: it rose by $0.35, from $10.27 to $10.62. The $17 and $13 components are fixed.
The cost-recovery piece matters most to travelers whose applications fail. The notice says that fee applies to every ESTA application whether it is approved or denied. A traveler who is turned down therefore pays $10.62 from Oct. 16, against $10.27 before.
How the inflation adjustment was figured
The adjustment rests on the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers. The notice compares July 2025, when the index stood at 323.048, with July 2026 at 333.918, a rise of 3.36 percent. Congress wrote the rounding rules into the statute, and they differ by fee.
- ESTA: the inflation amount is added to the prior year’s cost-recovery fee with no rounding, which is why the increase is 35 cents.
- EVUS: the $1.03 calculated increase is rounded down to the next lowest quarter, leaving $1.00.
- Land-border I-94: the $0.81 calculated increase rounds down to the nearest dollar, which is zero.
- Parole: the $34.32 calculated increase rounds down to the next lowest $10, leaving $30.
The rounding explains why some fees jump while others do not budge, even though all four use the same 3.36 percent index change.
What the other border fees do on Oct. 16
The same notice resets three other charges that come from the law. The EVUS enrollment fee, which applies to Chinese nationals holding a 10-year B-1/B-2 visa, rises to $31.75 from $30.75 and is due at the time of enrollment. The Form I-94 fee at land borders stays at $30, made up of the $24 fee from the law and a separate $6 land-border fee that is not inflation-adjusted. No I-94 fee is charged at air or sea ports, because those arrivals do not file an application for the form.
The largest figure in the notice is the parole fee, which goes to $1,050 from $1,020. It is tied to the grant of parole, not to filing a request, so it applies to any parole granted on or after Oct. 16 regardless of when the application went in. The notice lists ten case-by-case exceptions to that fee in the statute.
The notice also records that CBP, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and Immigration and Customs Enforcement all begin assessing the new parole amount on the same day, while the ESTA, EVUS and I-94 amounts are assessed by CBP alone. The earlier notices in the series ran in the Federal Register on Aug. 28, 2025 for the I-94, ESTA and EVUS fees, on Oct. 16, 2025 for the parole fee and on Nov. 19, 2025 for the first round of inflation adjustments.
How the $40 fee got here
The law did not create ESTA, but it did change what it costs. The National Business Aviation Association reported that, effective Sept. 30, 2025, the fee would be $40, nearly double the rate then in force. An immigration policy tracker summarizing the CBP rollout later noted that the first inflation adjustment moved the fee to $40.27, effective Jan. 1, 2026. The Oct. 16 change is the next inflation adjustment under the law.
The notice cites the law as Public Law 119-21, and it names the specific sections that govern each fee: section 100014 for ESTA, section 100015 for EVUS, section 100008 for the I-94 and section 100004 for parole.
Paying the ESTA fee before a trip
The only place to apply is CBP’s official ESTA website. The fee is paid as part of the application. Travelers who apply before Oct. 16 pay the current $40.27, while those who file on Oct. 16 or later pay $40.62, so the 35-cent difference is the whole saving from filing early.
Because the cost-recovery piece applies even when an application is denied, entering passport and personal details accurately on the first attempt avoids paying that piece a second time. Anyone planning a land crossing should expect the $30 I-94 fee to stay where it is, and anyone traveling by air or sea pays no I-94 fee.
The Federal Register notice is the authoritative list of what each fee was and is for fiscal year 2027, and it includes the formula and index figures behind every number above.
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This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by The Financial Wire’s editorial team.
David M. Keller is a finance writer based in Columbus, Ohio, covering personal finance and consumer-focused economic topics. He earned his degree in journalism from Ohio University and began his career reporting on local business and economic trends for a regional media outlet. Since then, he has contributed to a variety of online publications, focusing on clear, practical coverage of topics such as cost of living, debt, and everyday financial decision-making.
