Passport fees around the world in 2018: the most and least expensive passports

The document that lets you cross a border is priced very differently depending on which border you started from. Comparing the cost of a standard adult passport across dozens of countries in 2018, the gap between the cheapest and the most expensive was more than twentyfold — before income is even taken into account.

The comparison below covers 41 countries with a clear published fee, drawn from each government's own passport office and converted to US dollars at 2018 exchange rates. For each country the cheapest standard adult passport with the longest validity was used, so the figures describe the least a citizen could reasonably pay to travel. Every number here is as of 2018; fees have since been revised, mostly upward.

The most expensive passports

Australia held the top spot. From 1 January 2018 a 10-year adult Australian passport cost AUD 282 — about US$223 at the time — after a decade of increases that lifted the fee roughly 41% from AUD 200 in 2008. Australia was widely reported that year as issuing the world's most expensive passport for citizens applying at home.

Turkey came a close second at about US$177 (764 Turkish lira), and Japan third at about US$150 — the ¥16,000 fee for a 10-year Japanese passport. After that the field dropped away sharply, which is what makes the top three stand out.

Where the US and UK sat

Neither of the two most-searched passports topped the table. A first-time US passport book cost US$110 plus a US$35 execution fee — US$145 in total, or US$110 to renew by mail — placing the United States firmly mid-pack. The UK was similar in dollar terms: the 48-page "jumbo" adult passport was priced at about £85.50 online in 2018, roughly US$110–120. Both cost around half what an Australian paid.

The cheapest passports

At the other end, Indonesia had the lowest fee in the comparison, at about US$11 for its cheapest standard passport, with India (about US$23) and Bulgaria (about US$25) just above. The average across all 41 countries worked out to US$72.48 — so the Australian passport cost roughly three times the global mean, and about twenty times the Indonesian one.

Cost per year tells a gentler story

Headline fees hide the fact that passports last different lengths of time — anywhere from five to ten years. Spread over their validity, even the priciest passport looks modest. Australia's US$223 fee, valid for a decade, works out to about US$22 a year; Indonesia's to just over US$1 a year. Measured this way the passport is one of the cheaper line items in any trip.

Averaged over ten years, the world's most expensive passport costs about the price of a single restaurant meal per year.

Affordability is the figure that bites

A flat fee means something very different to a worker in Sydney than to one in Mexico City. Setting each passport against the local minimum wage reorders the table completely. On that basis Mexico had the least affordable passport in 2018: at a minimum wage of 88.36 pesos a day, buying one took roughly 198 hours of work — close to five 40-hour weeks. Russia (about three weeks) and Japan (about 2.8 weeks) followed. The most affordable was Luxembourg, where the fee amounted to under five hours of work.

These affordability figures are a 2018 estimate built from published minimum-wage data, and minimum wage is an imperfect proxy — median income would tell a slightly different story. But the direction is unambiguous: the true cost of a passport is far less about the sticker price than about who is paying it.

These fees are historical

Passport prices move, almost always in one direction. Since 2018 Australia's 10-year fee has climbed to AUD 422 (from January 2026), Turkey's has risen several-fold, and US fees have edged up. Japan is the rare exception, cutting its 10-year passport fee from 16,000 to about 9,000 yen from July 2026. Treat every number above as a 2018 snapshot, and confirm the current fee on the relevant government website before applying.

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