How much does a FOIA request cost?
Three types of fees may be charged for FOIA requests -

• The costs of searching for the documents
• The costs of reviewing the documents to determine if they should be released
• The costs of duplicating the documents

The fee will depend on what kind of request you are making:

• For "commercial use," you can be charged all three types of costs
• For Non-commercial use, you will only pay search and duplication costs
• On behalf of "an educational or non-commercial scientific institution" or as a "representative of the news media," you will only pay duplication costs. (Any person or organization which regularly publishes or gives out information to the public can be considered as "news media." Many public service organizations, therefore, meet this definition.)

Regardless, fees for the first two hours or first one hundred pages of duplication in non-commercial FOIA requests are waived. And unless you have failed to pay a previous FOIA request, your advance payment cannot exceed $250.

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