Ask "how much does a provisional patent cost?" and you'll get two answers that differ by two orders of magnitude — and both are correct. The government fee can be $65. A properly drafted provisional from a patent attorney can be $5,000. Understanding why both numbers exist is the whole game.
The USPTO Fees
Under the fee schedule in effect since January 2025, filing a provisional patent application costs:
| Entity size | Filing fee | Who qualifies |
|---|---|---|
| Micro entity | $65 | Individual inventors meeting income limits (roughly three times the U.S. median household income) who haven't been named on more than four prior non-provisional applications |
| Small entity | $130 | Independent inventors, small businesses under 500 employees, universities, nonprofits |
| Large entity | $325 | Everyone else |
That's genuinely all the government charges. There's no search fee and no examination fee — because, and this is the part people miss, nobody at the USPTO ever examines a provisional. It sits in a file. It is never granted, never rejected, never even read unless you later file a non-provisional application that claims its date.
What $65 Actually Buys
Three things. A priority date — if a competitor files a similar application next month, your earlier date can win. A 12-month clock — you have exactly one year, not extendable, to file the full non-provisional application, or the provisional evaporates as if it never existed. And the legal right to write "patent pending" on your product, packaging, and pitch deck.
What it does not buy: any enforceable right. You cannot sue anyone with a provisional. It's a placeholder, not a patent.
Why Attorneys Charge $1,500–$5,000 for a "Simple" Filing
Here's the trap in the low fee. When your non-provisional application is examined a year or two later, your claims only get the provisional's early date for whatever the provisional actually taught. If your provisional was three paragraphs and a sketch, and your real application claims details the provisional never described, those details get the later date — and anything published in between (including your own product launch) can be used against you.
So a good provisional is written almost like a full application: thorough description, variations, alternative embodiments, drawings. That drafting effort is what the professional fees buy. Typical quoted ranges run from roughly $1,500–$2,500 for a mechanical invention of moderate complexity to $3,500–$5,000+ for software, electronics, or biotech — plus the government fee, which at that point is a rounding error. Whether that's worth it depends on the same logic as hiring a patent attorney generally: the cost of doing it wrong is invisible until the exact moment it's unfixable.
The DIY Middle Path
Plenty of inventors file provisionals themselves — the process is genuinely accessible, and we walk through it step by step in our provisional filing guide. The honest framing: DIY makes sense when the invention is simple, money is tight, and you understand that you're buying a real date attached to exactly what you manage to describe. Write it as if the reader knows nothing; include every variation you can imagine; add drawings even if they're rough. The applications that fail their inventors are the ones written in an afternoon of excitement.
The Cost Nobody Budgets: Month 13
The provisional is the cheapest step you will ever take in the patent process — and that's a warning as much as a comfort. Within 12 months you either file a non-provisional (government fees several times higher, attorney drafting typically $8,000–$15,000+ for the full application, then years of examination and response costs) or you abandon the priority date. A provisional you never follow up on is a small donation to the US Treasury.
That's why the smartest use of the 12 months isn't just building — it's validating whether the invention justifies the real spend. And if it doesn't, remember there's an alternative that costs nothing to file and never expires: keeping it a trade secret, when the invention can't be reverse-engineered.
FAQ
How much does it cost to file a provisional patent yourself?
Just the USPTO fee: $65 as a micro entity, $130 as a small entity, or $325 as a large entity under the schedule in effect since January 2025. Most individual inventors qualify for the $65 or $130 rate.
Does a provisional patent ever become a patent on its own?
No. A provisional is never examined and expires after 12 months. To get a patent, you must file a non-provisional application within that year claiming the provisional's date.
Is a cheap provisional risky?
A cheap fee isn't risky — a thin disclosure is. Your later claims only inherit the early date for what the provisional actually described, so gaps in the write-up can quietly forfeit the protection you thought you'd secured.