Two bills, and only one of them has a price on it
Do probate yourself in England and Wales and the money you actually hand over is small and largely fixed. On a straightforward estate it comes to somewhere between £550 and £900, most of it a single court fee. That is the priced bill, and it is the same fee a solicitor would pay on your behalf, so DIY does not make it cheaper. What DIY removes is the professional fee sitting on top of it.
The second bill has no invoice. It is your hours, spread over months, plus the liability you carry personally as personal representative if the administration goes wrong. Whether DIY is a good deal turns almost entirely on that second bill, which is what most of this page is about. For the cost picture across every route, see our main guide to how much probate costs. What follows is general information rather than legal advice.
The priced bill, item by item
| Item | Cost | When you pay it |
|---|---|---|
| Probate application fee (estate over £5,000) | £526 | With the application |
| Probate application fee (estate £5,000 or less) | No fee | Not applicable |
| Sealed copies of the grant, ordered with the application | £2 each | With the application |
| Sealed copies ordered after the grant is issued | £16 each | Later, and avoidably |
| Certified copy death certificate | £12.50 each (£38.50 priority) | At registration, or later |
| Deceased estates notice in The Gazette | £96.55 plus VAT via the online form | Before distributing |
| Local newspaper notice, where the estate includes land | Priced by each paper | Before distributing |
Court fee and copy prices come from GOV.UK's probate fees page, certificate prices from the General Register Office, and the notice price from The Gazette's price list (£131.70 plus VAT for formats other than the online form or template). One line rewards planning: sealed copies are eight times dearer once the grant has issued, so count your banks, platforms and insurers before you apply, as our guide to how many copies of the grant you need explains. If your estate sits near the £5,000 line, see probate court fees.
One line is missing on purpose. Valuations can be free (banks, registrars, Land Registry title copies) or can run to a surveyor's fee where a property needs a defensible figure for HMRC, a decision with its own logic set out in how much a probate valuation costs.
The receipt on a real estate
Iwan and Bethan are cousins, named as co-executors by their aunt Glenys: a £245,000 terraced house, £58,000 across two building society accounts, £7,000 of contents and a car. Valid will, everything split four ways between nieces and nephews, no inheritance tax, no argument. They apply themselves.
- Probate application fee: £526
- Five sealed copies ordered with the application: £10
- Four certified death certificates: £50
- Gazette notice at £96.55 plus VAT, and a notice in the local paper because the estate includes land: roughly £150 to £300 combined
- Postage, recorded delivery, printing: about £30
Call it £820, all of it reimbursed from the estate once the accounts are settled. Instructing a firm for the full administration would have added a professional fee on top, and observed market rates for an estate of this shape run from roughly £1,000 to £5,000 or more depending on the firm and the charging basis (see probate solicitor costs). Those are ranges we see quoted, not a price list.
The other column of their ledger records no money at all. The estate took nine months from death to final distribution, and between them they spent something like fifty evenings chasing the building society, listing contents, selling the house and keeping the estate accounts straight. That sits squarely inside the 40 to 100 hours a full administration commonly absorbs.
Want this checked against your specific situation?
Leave your details and a one-line summary. A probate specialist will reply within 24 hours, with no obligation.
The liability you take on for free
A personal representative is not a volunteer with limited exposure. Distribute an estate and a creditor surfaces afterwards, and you can be pursued for that debt personally, whatever the beneficiaries have already spent. The protection is cheap, and it is the DIY line item people skip. Under section 27 of the Trustee Act 1925, publishing a notice in The Gazette (and, where the estate includes land, a newspaper circulating in that district) and waiting at least two months before distributing means you are not liable for claims you had no notice of. Our explainer on the section 27 notice sets out what it does and does not reach, and it does not reach missing beneficiaries. At around £116 including VAT for the Gazette element, it is the best value line on the whole receipt.
When DIY is right, and when it is not
Plenty of estates suit a personal application, and paying a professional for those buys reassurance rather than necessity. The profile: a valid will with a clear appointment, an excepted estate with no inheritance tax account to file, assets you could list on one side of paper, beneficiaries who are adult, contactable and getting on, and an executor with the time for admin. If that is your situation, £526 and a few hundred pounds of extras really is the whole cost. The cost of probate on a simple estate covers that case in detail.
The situations where paying for help is reliably the right call are narrower and recognisable:
- Any dispute, or the credible threat of one. A challenge to the will's validity, or an Inheritance Act 1975 claim, moves this into contentious probate.
- A beneficiary you cannot find. Section 27 does nothing here; tracing, insurance or a court direction does. See missing beneficiaries.
- An estate that may be insolvent. Debts above assets means a statutory order of payment, and paying the wrong creditor first is a personal liability. See insolvent estates.
- Business or agricultural assets. Business relief and agricultural relief must be claimed correctly on a full inheritance tax account, and the rules changed from 6 April 2026.
- Property or accounts abroad. A second jurisdiction usually means a second process: see overseas assets.
- A trust in the will. Life interests, discretionary trusts and property protection trusts create duties and registration obligations well beyond the grant.
There is a middle option: a grant-only or fixed-fee service where a professional prepares and files the application while you do the legwork. Observed pricing runs from a few hundred pounds to around £1,500, worth weighing if the paperwork is the part that worries you rather than the administration. Our comparison of whether you need a solicitor for probate sets out the three routes side by side.
Put your own numbers in before deciding. The DIY versus solicitor probate calculator models the out-of-pocket total against a professional quote for an estate your size, and the probate pillar guide walks through the process end to end so you can judge how much of it you want to own. If the estate shows any of the features listed above, a short conversation with a probate specialist before you file is time well spent, and we are happy to arrange that conversation for you. Knowing early whether yours is a DIY estate beats finding out at distribution.