An apostille is the certificate that makes a U.S. public document legally usable in another Hague Convention country. Which guide you need depends on one thing: who signed or sealed your document. Federal documents go to the U.S. Department of State. State records, court records and notarized documents go to the Secretary of State of the issuing state. Nothing else changes the route.

Which apostille guide do you need?

People usually try to route a document by its subject — “it’s for a visa,” “it’s for a marriage,” “it’s for a job in Spain.” That is the wrong question. The apostille office does not read your document or care what you need it for. It compares the signature and seal on the page against a specimen it holds on file. So the only question that matters is which government official’s signature is on the paper in front of you.

Three answers, three routes:

• A federal official signed it. FBI Identity History Summaries, USDA and FDA export certificates, Consular Reports of Birth Abroad, IRS letters, patent and trademark records. These go to the U.S. Department of State’s Office of Authentications in Washington, D.C. No state office can touch them.
• A state, county, court or notary official signed it. Birth, marriage and death certificates, divorce decrees, court judgments, diplomas signed by a school official, and any private document carrying a notary’s acknowledgment. These go to the Secretary of State of the state where that official is commissioned or where the record is held.
• A foreign government issued it. A U.S. authority cannot apostille it at all. You need the competent authority in the country that issued the document.

What does an apostille actually certify?

Under the Hague Convention of 5 October 1961, member countries agreed to replace a multi-step embassy chain with a single certificate. That certificate confirms three narrow things: the authenticity of the signature on the document, the capacity in which the signer acted, and the identity of the seal or stamp. It says nothing about whether the contents are true, whether a marriage is valid, or whether a degree is accredited.

That limitation matters in practice. An apostilled affidavit is still just an affidavit — the apostille only proves the notary was real. If a foreign registry rejects your document, the problem is usually the document’s contents or age, not the certificate attached to it.

Confirm the receiving authority’s requirements before you order anything. Foreign consulates, civil registries and employers routinely add their own conditions — a document issued within the last three to six months, a sworn translation done in-country, or a specific long-form version of a record. An apostille does not override those conditions, and the receiving office has the final say on acceptance.

Which documents can be apostilled, and who issues each one?

Two entries on that table cause most of the confusion. Diplomas are private documents unless a state official signed them, so the usual fix is having the registrar sign in front of a notary. And a Social Security benefit letter — the document retirees need for residency applications such as the Costa Rica pensionado visa — behaves differently depending on how you obtained it, which is why it is worth confirming the form of the letter before it is submitted anywhere.

How do you apostille an FBI background check?

The FBI Identity History Summary is the single most requested federal apostille, because residency and long-stay work permits in Spain, Colombia, Portugal, Italy and much of Latin America require a national-level criminal record check. The route is fixed: FBI issues it, the U.S. Department of State apostilles it, no state office is involved.

You can request the summary directly from the FBI or through an FBI-approved Channeler, which is a private company authorized to submit fingerprints and return results faster. Channelers are legitimate, but the version of the report they hand back is where problems begin. The Department of State certifies the FBI official’s signature, so the document you submit has to be the FBI-signed summary — not a channeler cover page, not a screenshot, not a results summary on the vendor’s own letterhead. If you used a channeler, check the output against that standard first. We have written specific walkthroughs for apostilling an FBI background check obtained through First Advantage Biometrics (PrintScan) and for cases where you apostille an FBI report from National Credit Reporting, because the paperwork those two vendors return is not identical.

What if you are already living abroad?

You do not have to fly home to be fingerprinted. FD-258 fingerprint cards can be taken at many police stations, consulates and private providers overseas and mailed into the process. We cover the mechanics for applicants starting from Europe in the guide to FBI fingerprinting in Lisbon, and from South America in the guide to FBI fingerprinting in Pereira, Colombia. The apostille step is unchanged: the finished report still travels to Washington.

How does the process work, step by step?

1. Identify the signer. Look at the bottom of the page. A federal seal sends the document to Washington; a state registrar, court clerk or notary sends it to a state capital. If there is no official signature at all, the document is private and needs a notary before anything else can happen.
2. Obtain a certified original. Order the certified copy from the issuing agency — the state vital records office, the clerk of court, the registrar, the FBI. Photocopies and scans have nothing an apostille office can certify. The issuing agency charges a filing fee, which is included in our flat price.
3. Add the notary or county step if required. Private documents get a notarial acknowledgment. In a handful of states, including New York, the notary’s signature must then be certified by the county clerk before the Secretary of State will act. Skipping that intermediate step is a guaranteed return.
4. File with the correct apostille office. The request goes to the U.S. Department of State or to the Secretary of State of the issuing state, with a cover request naming the destination country. The country must be named, because it determines whether you receive an apostille or a certificate of authentication for consular legalization.
5. Arrange translation and delivery. Once the apostille is attached, have any required translation prepared by a translator the destination country recognizes, then deliver the package to the consulate, registry, university or employer that asked for it.

How long does it take, and what does it cost?

Our fee is $120 per apostille, all-inclusive — government filing fees are covered inside that price, and there are no per-page add-ons or separate surcharges.

Timing is the variable we will not guess at. Processing windows at the Department of State and at individual Secretaries of State move with volume, staffing and season, and any number published in an article ages badly. Check the current posted time on the authority’s own site — travel.state.gov for federal documents, or the Secretary of State’s authentications page for state documents — and build from there. What you can control is everything upstream:

• Getting the underlying record. Ordering a certified vital record or an FBI summary usually takes longer than the apostille itself.
• Fixing defects. A returned document restarts the clock entirely, which is why the rejection list below is worth reading twice.
• Multi-state batches. Documents from three states mean three separate filings running on three separate clocks, not one.
• Local walk-in options. In some jurisdictions, in-person filing is meaningfully faster than mail — one reason our apostille services in Los Angeles, California operate differently from a mail-only process.

Which destination countries accept an apostille?

Only contracting parties to the 1961 Convention. Spain, Colombia, Costa Rica, Portugal, Italy, Mexico, Brazil, Japan and most of Europe and Latin America are parties, which is why those destinations dominate apostille demand. Membership changes as new states accede, and accession dates matter for documents already in transit, so the only reliable check is the HCCH status table for the Apostille Convention.

If your destination is not a party, the apostille route closes and consular legalization opens: the document is certified at state or federal level, authenticated by the U.S. Department of State, then legalized by that country’s embassy or consulate in the United States. It is slower and involves more offices, but for non-member destinations it is the only accepted path.

Common reasons an apostille request is rejected

Almost every rejection we see falls into one of these buckets, and every one of them is preventable:

• A photocopy instead of a certified copy. There is no signature to authenticate on a copy you made yourself.
• An informational vital record. Copies stamped to say they are informational and not valid to establish identity are not certifiable. Order the certified version.
• The wrong state. A Texas notary’s signature cannot be apostilled by any office except the Texas Secretary of State, no matter where you live now.
• A missing county clerk certification. Where a state requires it, the notarized document must pass through the county clerk first.
• Defective notarial wording. Missing venue, missing date, unsigned, an expired commission, or an acknowledgment that does not match state statutory language.
• A notary stamp on a government document. Notarizing a certified birth certificate does not add credibility; it creates two competing signatures and confuses the filing.
• A channeler summary rather than the FBI-signed report. The federal signature is the thing being certified.
• An unnamed destination country. Without it, the office cannot determine whether to issue an apostille or an authentication certificate.
• A souvenir or hospital certificate. Decorative birth or marriage certificates with footprints or calligraphy are not government records.
• A translation submitted as the primary document. Apostille the English original; a translation only qualifies separately if the translator’s affidavit is itself notarized.
• A stale document. The apostille is fine, but the receiving authority’s recency window has closed, so the whole package is refused abroad.

What should you check before you send anything?

Run this list against each document before it leaves your hands:

• Is it an original or agency-certified copy, with a visible signature and seal?
• Do the names match the passport or visa application exactly, including middle names and accents?
• If it is private, does it carry complete, current notarial wording?
• Does the destination country appear on the HCCH status table?
• Has the receiving office specified a maximum document age or a particular certified copy type?
• Does it need translation, and does that country require the translation done locally?
• Are all documents from the same state, or does the batch split across offices?

Requirements vary by jurisdiction and the receiving authority abroad makes the final acceptance decision, so when a consulate gives you a written instruction, follow it over any general rule.

What to do next

Pull out the document and look at the signature block. If a federal agency signed it, your route is the U.S. Department of State; if a state official or notary signed it, it is that state’s Secretary of State; if nobody official signed it, your first step is a notary, not an apostille office. Once you know which of those three applies, start an order with the document and the destination country and we will handle the filing end to end at $120 per apostille, all-inclusive.

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