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Worked example
Real numbers from this tool, line by line.
A 120-person software company that registers 25 people in the H-1B lottery and expects nine to be selected will spend $76,295 on that season. The HR lead who priced it from a chatbot is budgeting $62,890.
The $13,405 gap is not a rounding error. It is three separate fee changes that landed after most of the internet stopped updating.
First, the lottery registration fee. It was $10 per beneficiary for five years. From FY2026 it is $215. On 25 registrations that single line moved from $250 to $5,375, and you pay it whether or not anyone is selected.
Second, the Form I-129 base fee. On April 1, 2024 it went from $460 to $780 for petitioners with more than 25 full-time equivalent employees. Small entities and nonprofits still pay $460, which is why so much half-right advice is floating around.
Third, the Asylum Program Fee. It did not exist before 2024. USCIS now charges $600 per petition for entities with more than 25 FTE, $300 for small entities with 25 or fewer, and $0 for nonprofits.
Stack them and a standard for-profit filer owes $3,380 in USCIS fees per selected petition: $780 for the I-129, $1,500 ACWIA, $500 fraud prevention, $600 asylum. Nine petitions is $30,420, plus $5,375 of registration fees, plus outside counsel at $4,500 each, or $40,500. That is the $76,295.
The second number on that budget line is the one that turns a budgeting mistake into a wage claim. Of the $76,295, exactly $25,020 is money you may never recover from the worker: the Form I-129 base fee, the ACWIA training fee and the Fraud Prevention and Detection fee, on all nine petitions. A repayment agreement that reaches those fees does not cure it. Where the worker ends up paying the fraud fee, 20 CFR 655.810(b)(1)(v) allows a civil money penalty of up to $2,364 per violation on top of back wages. Across nine petitions that is $21,276 of exposure sitting behind a line item someone entered from memory.
The shape changes sharply with who is filing, which is the other thing a generic answer gets wrong. An 18-person startup registering three people and landing one pays $6,155 for the season, because the small-entity column is $460 for the I-129, $750 ACWIA and $300 asylum - $2,010 per petition. A nonprofit hospital with 4,200 employees registering twelve and landing five pays $24,880, because nonprofits owe no Asylum Program Fee at all: $2,460 per petition, not $3,380. A university or an affiliated research nonprofit pays $960 per petition - $460 and the $500 fraud fee, with ACWIA waived entirely. Same statute, four different answers, and the number you need is whichever column you actually sit in.
H-1B Fee Split Check 2026 is a browser extension and a web page that price any of those plans. You enter headcount, petitioner type, how many people you will register and how many you expect to be selected, and it returns the fee column that applies to you, the per-petition cost, the season total, the share that can never be billed to the worker, the shortfall against the pre-2024 table and the penalty exposure. Every calculation is free, in the browser, with no key and no limit. The $60 licence adds a different job: it exports the per-petition schedule as CSV for your budget or board pack, and sets a reminder for each filing date you save.
Immigration counsel charge a flat $2,000 to $5,000 per cap petition, with a $3,500 median at technology employers. Rebuilding a season budget with them is billable time on top of that. This takes about forty seconds.
15 seconds — what it actually does
Full walk-through
Questions people ask
What does H-1B Fee Split Check 2026 actually do?
You enter your US headcount, petitioner type, how many beneficiaries you will register and how many you expect to be selected. It prices the season on the 2026 USCIS fee table — registration, Form I-129, ACWIA, fraud prevention and the Asylum Program Fee — then splits the total into the part you may never recover from the worker and the rest.
Who is this for?
HR and People Ops leads, startup founders and immigration paralegals at US employers who have to put an H-1B cap season into a budget before the registration window opens. It is built for the person who owns the number in the spreadsheet, not for the attorney who files the petition.
Why can I not just ask a chatbot for the H-1B fees?
Because the fee table moved three times and most training data did not. The lottery registration fee went from $10 to $215, the Form I-129 base fee went from $460 to $780, and the $600 Asylum Program Fee did not exist before 2024. A chatbot quoting the pre-2024 table prices a 25-registration, 9-selection season at $62,890 instead of $76,295 - short by $13,405.
What is free and what costs money?
Every calculation is free, in the browser and in the extension popup, with no key, no limit and no watermark. The $60 licence adds two things on a different axis: CSV export of the per-petition fee schedule so the numbers leave the tool, and a reminder for each filing date you save. Nothing is held back from the answer itself.
What would this cost me to work out another way?
US immigration counsel charge a flat $2,000 to $5,000 per H-1B cap petition, and the median at technology employers is $3,500. Asking counsel to rebuild a season budget is billable time on top of the petition work. The calculation here is free and takes about forty seconds, and the $60 licence only adds export and reminders.
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