How our apostille service works

An apostille is a one-page certificate issued by a state or federal authority that proves the signature, seal, or stamp on your document is genuine. Once attached, the document is legally recognized in every other country that has joined the 1961 Hague Apostille Convention — over 125 nations as of 2026. The process sounds simple, but every state has its own rules about who can issue apostilles, which documents qualify, how old a certified copy can be, whether the notary block must include the county, and what the state charges to file.

Step 1 — Find My Packet

Before you spend a dollar on postage, we look at your specific document and confirm it will actually pass Secretary of State review. About a third of documents we see have a fixable defect: a birth certificate that is a photocopy instead of a certified original, a notary acknowledgment missing the county name, a diploma without a registrar signature, an FBI background check that was emailed as a PDF (which most states will not apostille without a fresh channeler signature). Catching that up front is what separates a five-day turnaround from a two-month rejection loop.

Step 2 — Your personalized Do-It-Yourself kit

Every packet is generated for your exact document type, issuing state, destination country, and intended use. It includes the correct Secretary of State cover sheet, the correct mailing address (many states have a separate P.O. box for apostille requests), the correct state fee amount, an accepted-payment cheat sheet, and — if your document needs a notary — the exact notary language required for your state and destination country. Nothing is generic; if you switch destination countries mid-order, the packet is regenerated for the new country's requirements.

Step 3 — Submission and return

You choose whether to mail the packet yourself (included at no extra cost) or add Walk-In Service ($100 add-on for California-issued documents) to skip the state mailroom queue and get a 1-3 business day counter turnaround. Either way, the apostille comes back attached to your document with tracked return delivery. If the destination country also needs certified translation or embassy legalization, we sequence those next legs immediately so nothing waits.

Timelines you can actually plan around

Standard mail-in filing takes four to six weeks in California and one to four weeks in most other states, driven mostly by state processing queues. California walk-in service produces the apostille in one to three business days at the counter, plus one to two business days for tracked return shipping — so a customer inside a two-week deadline can realistically make it. Non-Hague embassy legalization adds two to six additional weeks depending on the specific embassy's appointment backlog and whether translation is involved.