How Much Does a Customs Broker Cost in 2026?

How Much Does a Customs Broker Cost in 2026?

Most U.S. customs brokers charge between $100 and $250 per entry for full-service clearance, and importers who self-file with their own software typically pay far less per entry — Strix charges $30. But the broker's fee is only one line on the bill. Government fees, your customs bond, and a layer of per-service add-ons make up the rest, and the add-ons are where quotes that looked identical stop being identical. This guide breaks down every layer of what it actually costs to clear an import, with current 2026 numbers.

The Short Answer

Here's the whole cost stack for a typical formal entry, before duty. "CBP" below is U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the agency that collects the government fees:

• Broker entry fee — $100 to $250 per entry. Set by your broker. This is the number everyone quotes.
• Self-filing software, as the alternative — $30 per entry with Strix. Set by your software vendor.
• Merchandise Processing Fee (MPF) — 0.3464% of entered value, floored at $33.58 and capped at $651.50. Set by CBP.
• Harbor Maintenance Fee (HMF) — 0.125% of value, ocean shipments only. Set by CBP, with no cap.
• Customs bond — $300 to $600 a year for a continuous bond. Set by a surety company.
• Importer Security Filing (ISF) — $30 to $75 per filing. Set by your broker, and rarely included in the entry fee.
• Add-on fees — $15 to $100 each, and the widest variance on this list. Set by your broker.

The first two are alternatives to each other. Everything below them applies either way.

Duty itself sits on top of all of this and depends entirely on your Harmonized Tariff Schedule (HTS) classification and country of origin — in 2026 it's often the largest number on the invoice by a wide margin. This guide covers the clearance cost, not the duty. If you want to understand how duty layers stack in 2026, our tariff stacking guide walks through that separately.

Layer 1: The Broker's Entry Fee

The entry fee is what your customs broker charges to prepare and transmit a customs entry to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). The $100–$250 range is real, but where you land in it depends on a few concrete things.

Entry type and complexity. A formal entry (Entry Type 01) on a single well-classified product from a country with no special trade measures sits at the low end. Entries subject to antidumping or countervailing duties (AD/CVD, Entry Type 03) sit at the high end, because getting the case numbers and duty rates right takes real work and the consequences of getting them wrong are expensive.

Line count. Many brokers quote a base fee covering a set number of HTS lines — often three to five — and charge per additional line beyond that. A 40-line entry priced off a "$125 per entry" quote can easily land at $250 once the line fees are added. Ask what the base covers.

Volume. Brokers discount for committed volume, and the per-entry rate at 300 entries a month is meaningfully below the rate at 5. If you're growing, it's worth re-opening the conversation annually rather than staying on the rate you signed at.

What "customs business" actually buys you. Filing entries on behalf of another company is legally defined as customs business, and by law it has to be performed by a licensed customs broker. You're not paying for data entry. You're paying for a licensed professional to take responsibility for the classification, valuation, and origin declarations that CBP will hold you accountable for under the reasonable care standard.

Layer 2: Government Fees You Pay No Matter Who Files

These go to CBP, not your broker, and they're identical whether you self-file or use the most expensive brokerage in the country. Any broker quote that presents these as part of their fee is muddying the comparison.

Merchandise Processing Fee (MPF)

MPF is charged on formal entries at 0.3464% of the entered value of the merchandise. That rate has not changed in years, but the floor and ceiling adjust for inflation every fiscal year.

• Through September 30, 2026: minimum $33.58, maximum $651.50.
• From October 1, 2026: minimum $34.58, maximum $670.86 (Federal Register, FY2027 customs user fee adjustment).

The practical effect under the current FY2026 amounts: any entry valued above roughly $188,100 hits the MPF cap, and any entry below roughly $9,700 pays the minimum. Between those two points you pay the straight percentage. From October 1 those thresholds shift to roughly $193,700 and $10,000. Informal entries are charged a small flat MPF instead — $2.77 for an automated informal entry not prepared by CBP as of October 1, 2026.

Harbor Maintenance Fee (HMF)

HMF is 0.125% of cargo value and applies only to commercial cargo arriving by vessel. There is no minimum and no maximum, which means on high-value ocean shipments HMF frequently exceeds MPF — a $2 million ocean container pays $651.50 in capped MPF and $2,500 in uncapped HMF. Air and truck shipments pay no HMF at all, which is a real and often overlooked input into mode selection.

Both fees are collected at entry summary and both are, in specific circumstances, recoverable through duty drawback. If you export or destroy goods you previously imported, that's worth a conversation.

Layer 3: Your Customs Bond

CBP requires a customs bond for essentially every commercial import. The bond is a financial guarantee that you'll pay the duties, taxes, and fees you owe — it is not insurance, and if the surety pays out, they will come after you for it.

Continuous bonds cover unlimited entries at all U.S. ports for 12 months. The bond amount must be at least 10% of the duties, taxes, and fees you paid in the prior year, with a $50,000 minimum. Premiums commonly run $300–$600 a year for a $50,000 bond, depending on the surety, your credit, and your import history. Larger bond amounts cost proportionally more.

Single transaction bonds cover one entry and typically run $50–$200 or more, priced off the bond amount. If you're importing more than about six times a year, the continuous bond is almost always cheaper.

One 2026-specific warning worth taking seriously: because bond sufficiency is calculated off the duties you paid last year, the tariff increases of the past two years have pushed a lot of importers into insufficient-bond territory without their noticing. CBP will render a bond insufficient and hold your entries until it's replaced. Our customs bonds guide covers sizing and the insufficiency process in detail.

Layer 4: The Add-On Fees That Change the Comparison

This is where two quotes that both say "$125 per entry" turn out to be $180 and $340 in practice. None of these fees are improper — the work is real — but you need them itemized before you sign.

ISF filing fee — $30 to $75. Importer Security Filing ("10+2") is a separate transmission required for ocean cargo at least 24 hours before loading at the foreign port. It is almost never included in the entry fee, because it's a separate filing on a separate deadline. Our ISF filing guide covers the requirement itself.

Partner Government Agency (PGA) fee — $25 to $75 per agency. Products regulated by the FDA, USDA, EPA, or similar agencies need additional data sets transmitted with the entry. Multiple agencies on one entry usually means multiple fees.

Customs declaration or filing fee. Some brokers split what others bundle, listing a "declaration fee" or "filing fee" separately from the entry preparation fee. This is a naming difference more than a substantive one — just make sure you're adding the two together when you compare.

Duty disbursement fee — commonly 1.5% to 3% of the duty advanced. If your broker pays CBP on your behalf and bills you after, they charge for fronting the money. In 2026, with duty bills far higher than they were three years ago, this has quietly become one of the largest add-ons on the invoice. On a $200,000 duty bill, a 2% disbursement fee is $4,000 — more than a year of entry fees. Paying CBP directly through your own ACH account eliminates it entirely.

Exam and hold handling — $75 to $150, plus pass-through costs. If CBP examines your cargo, the broker charges for coordinating it, and you separately owe the actual exam site and drayage charges, which the broker passes through at cost.

Post Summary Correction (PSC) — $150 at Strix, up to 10 lines. When an entry needs to be corrected after filing, that's a new submission with its own fee. Our PSC filing guide explains when a correction is worth filing.

Compliance verification, handling, and after-hours fees. Smaller line items, usually $15 to $50, for document review, courier handling, or filings outside business hours.

What Self-Filing Costs Instead

Self-filing means you transmit your own entries through Automated Broker Interface (ABI) software connected to CBP's Automated Commercial Environment (ACE). Any importer of record has the legal right to do this for its own shipments, provided the work is done by an employee of the importing company.

With Strix, self-filing is $30 per entry, plus a $500 onboarding fee that covers bond setup, filer code arrangement, and getting your initial product data loaded. The government fees and bond above still apply — those never go away. What goes away is the $100–$250 broker fee and most of the add-on layer.

The tradeoff is real and worth stating plainly: you're taking on the classification and reasonable-care responsibility yourself. That's a genuine operational commitment, not a checkbox. Our customs broker software guide covers what to look for in a filing platform, and our comparison of self-filing versus full-service brokerage covers the decision itself in more depth.

Worked Examples at Three Volumes

Clearance costs only — duty, MPF, HMF, and bond excluded, since those are identical either way.

5 entries a month, ocean, simple product mix. Brokerage at $150 per entry plus $50 ISF runs about $1,000 a month, or $12,000 a year. Self-filing runs $150 a month in entry fees, plus $500 onboarding in year one — about $2,300 the first year. The gap is real, but at this volume the deciding factor usually isn't money; it's whether anyone on your team has the time and interest to own the filing work.

40 entries a month, mixed ocean and air, some PGA exposure. Brokerage at $150 per entry plus ISF and PGA fees lands around $7,500 a month, or $90,000 a year. Self-filing runs $1,200 a month, about $14,900 the first year. At this volume the savings are large enough to fund a dedicated compliance hire and still come out well ahead.

200 entries a month, stable catalog. Brokerage at a volume-discounted $110 per entry is roughly $22,000 a month. Self-filing is $6,000 a month. The annual difference approaches $190,000 — at which point the question stops being about per-entry price and starts being about how you want to structure your compliance function.

A caveat on all three: these compare list rates against list rates. If your product mix is volatile, if you carry heavy AD/CVD or PGA exposure, or if nobody in-house wants to own compliance, a broker's judgment is worth more than the arithmetic suggests. Plenty of our clients split the difference — routine entries self-filed, complicated ones routed to our full-service brokerage team.

How to Compare Two Broker Quotes

Ask every broker the same five questions and the comparison gets much easier:

1. What does the base entry fee include, and how many HTS lines? Get the per-line overage rate in writing.
2. What is the duty disbursement fee, and can I pay CBP directly instead? At 2026 duty levels this is frequently the biggest number in the add-on layer.
3. Which fees are pass-through at cost, and which carry a markup? Exam fees, drayage, and storage should be at cost.
4. What's the ISF fee, and is it charged separately for every ocean shipment? Yes, almost always — but confirm the number.
5. Can I get a sample invoice for a real entry like mine? This single request surfaces more than the other four combined.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does a customs broker cost per shipment?
Most U.S. customs brokers charge $100 to $250 per entry for full-service clearance, with the exact figure depending on entry type, HTS line count, and your volume. Add roughly $30 to $75 for ISF on ocean shipments and $25 to $75 per partner government agency involved. Government fees and your customs bond are separate and apply regardless of who files.

What is included in a customs brokerage fee?
The base fee typically covers preparing and transmitting one customs entry to CBP, including classification review and duty calculation for a set number of HTS lines. ISF filing, PGA data sets, duty disbursement, exam coordination, and post-entry corrections are usually billed separately. Ask for a fully itemized sample invoice before comparing quotes.

Are customs broker fees the same as customs duties?
No. Duties are what you owe the U.S. government based on your product's HTS classification, value, and country of origin. Broker fees are what you pay a private company to prepare and file the paperwork. Government user fees like MPF and HMF are a third category — owed to CBP, but distinct from duty.

Is it cheaper to self-file customs entries?
On a per-entry basis, almost always. Strix self-filing is $30 per entry versus $100 to $250 for full brokerage, and it eliminates most add-on fees. The tradeoff is that you take on the classification and reasonable-care responsibility yourself, which is a real operational commitment. Self-filing tends to pay off as volume rises and product mix stabilizes.

Conclusion

The honest answer to "how much does a customs broker cost" is that the entry fee is the part everyone quotes and the part that matters least. Government fees are fixed and non-negotiable. Your bond is a small annual number that becomes a large problem if it's undersized. And the add-on layer — especially the duty disbursement fee at 2026 tariff levels — is where the real variance between brokers lives.

Get every quote itemized, ask for a sample invoice on an entry that looks like yours, and compare the all-in cost per shipment rather than the headline per-entry rate. If the all-in number is higher than you'd like, self-filing is a legitimate alternative worth pricing out honestly rather than dismissing.

Get a Straight Answer on Your Own Numbers

Tell us your monthly entry volume, shipping mode, and product mix, and we'll walk through what clearance would actually cost you both ways — self-filing and full brokerage — including the fees most quotes leave out. Strix has been filing customs entries since 2006 from Bozeman, Montana, and we run both models, so we have no reason to steer you toward the more expensive one.

Talk to a licensed broker about your volume, or see current pricing for self-filing and full-service brokerage side by side.