Before any of this: you may not need a solicitor, and you may not need probate
Before anything else: you might not need probate. If everything was held jointly, or there were only savings, it may pass to the survivor without a grant at all. Ring the bank and ask. It costs a phone call and it can save you the fee, the forms and the firm.
Who that applies to: Anyone dealing with an estate where the person who died only had savings, or held shares, money, land or property jointly with somebody else who survives them. Joint tenancies and joint accounts normally pass to the survivor automatically. Each bank, insurer and building society sets its own limit, so the answer comes from ringing them, not from a guide.
You are allowed to do this yourself. The government runs the service, the form is the form, and the court charges the same fee whether a solicitor sends it or you do. It is not the right call for everybody, and nobody should feel got at for handing it to a firm. But it is a choice, and a lot of what is written about probate is written by people who would rather you did not know that.
Who that applies to: In England and Wales, an executor named in the will, or the closest living relative if there is no will. You need the estate valued and any Inheritance Tax dealt with first. It is hardest where the estate is taxable, where the will is disputed, where assets sit abroad or where a trust is involved, and those are the cases where paying somebody is a reasonable decision rather than a defeat.
There is a scheme that cuts the court fee, or removes it, for people on a low income or on certain benefits. Almost nobody selling probate services mentions it. Apply before you pay if you are applying by post, because online you pay in full first and wait for the refund.
In England and Wales there is one fee to apply for a grant of probate, and the size of the estate makes no difference to it above the first few thousand pounds. It is £526, and it is the same figure whether a solicitor sends the application in or you do.
The probate application fee in England and Wales, by the value of the estate
In England and Wales the court charges one fee to grant probate, and it does not care how big the estate is beyond the first five thousand pounds. A three hundred thousand pound estate and a three million pound estate pay exactly the same £526. Hold on to that when a firm quotes you a percentage of the estate for the same piece of paperwork.
The other two nations do it differently
Scotland: confirmation, charged on a scale
Nothing up to £50,000, then £351, then £705 once the estate passes £250,000
Scotland charges on a scale, so the size of the estate does change the court fee, unlike England and Wales where everyone over five thousand pounds pays the same. Even at the top the fee is £705, which is still a fraction of what a percentage-of-the-estate bill would come to on the same estate.
Scotland: small estates, and the clerk who fills the form in with you
£36,000 or less is a small estate, and the sheriff clerk will help you fill in the forms
Scotland has something England does not: a court official who will sit down and fill in the form with you, free, if the estate is £36,000 or less. Make an appointment at the sheriff clerk's office. It also spares you a bond of caution, which is an insurance policy you would otherwise have to buy.
£326 where the estate is worth more than £10,000, and nothing at or below that
Northern Ireland charges one grant fee whatever the estate is worth above ten thousand pounds, and the order that sets it has already written down next year's figure and the one after. Then there is a second fee, and it lands on exactly the people who are doing the work themselves.
Northern Ireland: the extra charged for doing it yourself
£81 on top, charged only if you apply yourself rather than through a solicitor
Northern Ireland charges you extra for doing it yourself. The grant fee is the same either way, and then a personal applicant pays £81 on top. It is the only one of the three UK systems that works this way, and it is almost never mentioned in a guide written for the whole United Kingdom.
The copies, which are the part people get caught by
Order the copies when you apply. Every bank, insurer and registrar wants to see the grant, and posting one original around the country in turn is how a straightforward estate takes eleven months.
£2 for each extra copy, if you order them with the application. £16 for each copy ordered after you have applied. The same sheet of paper costs two pounds on the day you apply and sixteen afterwards. Nothing about the document changes. Work out how many organisations need to see it before you send the form.
Twelve of the pricing pages we read print the court fee as part of a total. Nine of them print a figure that is out of date, and every single one of those is too low, by up to £371. A total built on the wrong fee is wrong in the firm's favour, whether or not anybody meant it to be.
We are not calling anybody dishonest. A disbursement line that nobody refreshed is carelessness, and saying so accurately is more useful than saying so angrily. What it means for a reader is simple: check the court fee yourself against the court's own page before you take anyone's total on trust.
What each firm's pricing page states the probate court fee to be, against the fee the court publishes, in alphabetical order
The difference column is our arithmetic, added up from the sourced figures on this page.
One further page states the fee and is not in the table: its firm publishes rates with no currency marker anywhere on the page, so under our own evidence rule it publishes no price we can stand behind, and its row is held back in full rather than half rendered. The reading still counts, which is why the tally above says twelve and the table shows eleven.
The clearest single receipt here is a firm whose own page states two different court fees. Our note on their grant-only row, in full: From nine hundred and fifty pounds for the grant. Their page prints the court fee twice, once correctly at £526 and once at the old £300, a few paragraphs apart. If a firm that publishes carefully can carry two different court fees on one page, check the fee yourself before you take anyone's total on trust.
Both figures, on their page: Needle Partners, read 24 September 2026.
The same thing happens with the fee for registering a lasting power of attorney. The Office of the Public Guardian charges £92 to register one lasting power of attorney. One of the pages above prints that fee as £82 instead. That is £10 light on every single one. Counting that reading with the rest, eleven of the sixteen statutory fees we have read off firms' own pages are out of date, and not one of them is too high.
The page that states it: Bindmans, read 24 September 2026.
What firms publish for the work itself
Firms that offer uncontested probate have to publish their prices, which is why this table can exist at all. Two jobs get priced: getting the grant, and administering the whole estate. They are very different amounts of work and they should never be compared with each other.
Getting the grant only
Getting the grant is one job, and these firms all publish what they charge for it. The spread is better than two to one before anyone adds VAT. Every one of them is doing the same piece of paperwork, and the court charges the same fee whichever of them sends it in.
Published as £900 to £1,950 before VAT to get the grant, across the firms we read. That is a spread of published figures and not a comparison: the top of it is a minimum rather than a price, and the bottom is a fixed fee, so the two ends are not two quotes for the same promise.
What each firm publishes for obtaining the grant only, in alphabetical order, with the firm's own page beside it
Source: every one of these is a firm's own published price page. Every row in the table links the page it was read from.
Administering the whole estate
Full administration means the firm does the lot. What firms publish for that ranges from under a thousand pounds to fifteen thousand, and the ones at the top are not doing a different job from the ones at the bottom. Read the basis beside every figure, because a fixed fee, a range and an hourly estimate are three different promises.
Published as £780 to £15,000 before VAT to administer an estate, across the firms we read. Both ends of that come from the same firm, whose page says the job runs from a few hours of work to sixty. That is the most useful sentence on any pricing page we read, and it came from a firm rather than from us.
What each firm publishes for administering an estate, in alphabetical order, with the firm's own page beside it
Source: every one of these is a firm's own published price page. Every row in the table links the page it was read from.
The firms that price it on the size of the estate
Two of the firms above charge a share of the estate rather than a price for the work. Their own published examples are the clearest argument against the practice, so here they are in their own words, with nothing added.
Hugh James
2.75% of the gross value of the estate, with a minimum of £3,000
What it covers
Full estate administration
Priced at
any estate, priced on its gross probate value
How it is quoted
a share of the estate, not a price for the work
VAT
plus VAT, currently at 20%
We charge a fixed fee of 2.75% of the gross probate value of the estate but with a minimum fee of £3,000.
Two and three quarter per cent of the estate, with a floor of three thousand pounds. Their own published examples run from about £4,350 on a £75,000 estate to about £40,350 on a £1.2 million one. The court charges £526 for the grant in both cases. Nothing about the paperwork got nine times harder.
3% of the value of the estate, or a flat £5,000 at or below £165,000
What it covers
Probate and administration of the estate
Priced at
any estate, with a flat fee at or below £165,000
How it is quoted
a share of the estate, not a price for the work
VAT
plus VAT
We usually charge an average rate of 3% on the value of the estate plus VAT. If the estate is £165,000 or below, a flat fee of £5000 plus VAT will be charged.
Three per cent of the estate, and below £165,000 a flat five thousand plus VAT instead. The flat fee is not a discount for a small estate. On a modest estate it is a larger share of it than the percentage would have been, and the same firm will get the grant alone for £950 plus VAT.
Hold those against the court fee. The court charges £526 to grant probate on a modest estate and £526 to grant it on a large one, because it is the same application either way. Nothing about the paperwork changes with the value of the house.
How to read these tables without being misled by them
The kind of number differs. A fixed fee is a promise. A number marked from, or marked as a minimum, is a floor the bill only climbs from. A range gives a lowest and a highest and nothing else. A worked example is one estate the firm chose.
VAT is inside some and outside others. A figure before VAT looks a fifth cheaper than the same figure after it. Each one here is quoted exactly as the firm quoted it.
The court fee is on top of all of them, and it is the one line on the bill that nobody can discount, mark up or compete on.
The lowest figure is not the cheapest firm. These are not like for like and this is not a league table. It is something to read a real quote against.
Questions people ask
How much does probate cost?
There are two separate bills. The court charges one application fee, which in England and Wales does not change with the size of the estate. Anything a firm charges for the work sits on top of that, and the firms on this page publish anywhere from several hundred pounds for getting the grant to five figures for administering an estate.
Do I have to use a solicitor for probate?
No. The government runs the application service and an executor can apply directly, online or by post, and the court charges the same fee either way. It is harder where the estate is taxable, where the will is disputed, where assets sit abroad or where a trust is involved, and paying somebody for those is a reasonable decision rather than a defeat.
Why do some firms charge a percentage of the estate?
Because it is allowed, and because it is worth a great deal of money on a large estate. The work of getting a grant does not scale with the value of the house, and the court's own fee does not move at all, which is why one of the firms on this page says in its own words that it prices the work rather than the value.
Why is the court fee wrong on so many firms' pages?
Because a disbursement line is easy to write once and never look at again. The fee has risen more than once and the pages carrying old figures all carry figures that are too low, never too high. Our build compares each firm's stated fee against the court's own published figure every time it runs, so the count on this page is recomputed rather than remembered.
Where to go next
How much a will costs: what firms publish for a will, the free routes, and what you actually need.
Bank probate limits: what each bank's own page says it will release without a grant.
About WillSum: who publishes this, and why there is no form anywhere on it.
WillSum is an information site. We are not a law firm, a will writer, a probate practitioner or a tax adviser. We do not draft anyone's will and we do not conduct anyone's probate. Figures are from official sources and firms' own published prices; check the source before you rely on them.