The process
How to get an FBI background check
There are two ordinary routes to the document, and the choice between them is decided less by preference than by circumstance. This page sets out what each one requires, and what the regulation actually fixes — as against what gets repeated about it.
What the document is called, and why that matters
The thing almost everyone means by “an FBI background check” is an Identity History Summary. It is the record the FBI holds under your fingerprints, and 28 CFR 16.31 defines it: a compilation of arrest information, and of any disposition information that was submitted alongside it.
The same section says something most descriptions of this document leave out. The arrest data on your record comes from the agencies that submitted the fingerprints. The FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services Division holds the compilation; it is expressly not the source of what is in it.
That is not a technicality. It is the reason 28 CFR 16.34 sends a challenge about an entry to the agency that contributed it rather than to Clarksburg. If you find something wrong on your summary, the correction is made where the entry came from, and the FBI amends its copy once that agency responds. People lose months writing to the wrong body about this.
What the regulation fixes
Three things are set by the regulation itself rather than by anyone’s pricing or policy, which makes them the only figures on this site stated without qualification.
The fee is $18. It is set by 28 CFR 16.33, it is payable to the Treasury of the United States, and it is the same $18 whoever submits the request. Any larger amount you are quoted is somebody’s service charge sitting on top of it, which is a legitimate thing to charge for and a useful thing to be able to see separately.
There is a fee waiver. The same section provides for the $18 to be waived on a claim and proof of indigency, submitted together with the original request. This is very rarely mentioned anywhere. If cost is the obstacle, it exists.
The written procedure is specified. 28 CFR 16.32 sets out a request mailed to the FBI CJIS Division in Clarksburg, West Virginia, with proof of identity consisting of name, date and place of birth, and a set of rolled-ink fingerprint impressions on a standard fingerprint card. That is the route the regulation describes, and it is available to anyone, anywhere.
Route one: requesting it yourself
You send the request in your own name — by post as 16.32 describes, or electronically where the FBI offers that — you pay the $18, and you receive the summary. Nobody is between you and the FBI. That is the whole of the advantage, and it is a real one: it is the cheapest way to get the document and for some people it is plainly the right choice.
It is also unforgiving in one specific way. There is no review step. Nothing inspects your fingerprint card before it is submitted, nobody tells you the ridge detail is too faint, and a rejection is discovered after the fact. A rejected submission does not resume where it stopped — it starts again, and the second attempt takes as long as the first.
So the honest way to describe this route is as a set of conditions rather than as an option. It works when all six of these hold. Any one of them failing is enough to make it the harder road, because there is nobody inside the route to catch the problem.
| Condition | Why it is load-bearing |
|---|---|
| Clear fingerprint ridge detail | Nothing in the self-service route inspects your prints before they are submitted. If the ridge detail is not readable, that is discovered after the fact, and the fee and the waiting both start again. |
| No deadline pressing on it | The thing to plan around is not the average, it is the restart. A rejected submission does not resume where it stopped; it begins again, and the second attempt runs the full length a second time. |
| Comfortable working it out alone | There is no one to ask inside the self-service route. The FBI processes what arrives; it does not review a request with you beforehand or explain a rejection afterwards. |
| Can absorb a rejection | Worth separating two questions: how likely a rejection is, and what it costs you if it happens. People underestimate the second one, and it is the one that should decide this. |
| In a major US city | Where you are changes what the self-service route even is. The regulation's own procedure is a mailed request with rolled-ink impressions on a card; convenient electronic capture is a practical matter of what exists near you. |
| Needs the report and nothing else | If the summary is an input to something else — an apostille, a sworn translation, a foreign ministry — then the handoffs between those steps are where this usually goes wrong, and each one has its own way of rejecting what it is handed. |
These are conditions, not preferences, and the list is conjunctive: all six, not most of them. That is a description of how the route behaves rather than a judgement about it.
Route two: an approved channeler
An FBI-approved channeler is a private company the FBI has authorised to submit fingerprints electronically on an applicant’s behalf and to return the result. It is not a government body and it does not decide anything about your record. The FBI publishes the list of which companies hold that authorisation; that list is the place to choose from, and it is the FBI’s to maintain, not ours to restate.
Going this way costs more than $18. What the difference buys is narrower than most descriptions of it suggest, and worth stating precisely: somebody looks at the submission before it goes in. Most rejections are about the submission rather than about the record — a card that cannot be read, a form filled in wrongly, a set of prints taken by someone who does not take many. A review step removes most of that class of failure and none of any other.
Whether that is worth paying for depends almost entirely on what a rejection would actually cost you, which is the question people skip. Any one of the circumstances below is enough to make it the better fit.
| Circumstance | What it changes |
|---|---|
| A date they have to hit | When a date is fixed, the question stops being which route is cheaper and becomes which route has a recovery path if the first attempt fails. |
| Worried about getting it wrong | That worry is worth taking at face value. The self-service route is unforgiving in a specific way: it does not tell you that you have made a mistake until the outcome arrives. |
| Wants a person handling it | Having someone review the submission before it goes in is the single difference that removes most of the rejection risk, because most rejections are about the submission rather than the record. |
| Outside the United States | From outside the US the self-service route means ink prints taken locally and mailed internationally, in both directions. Post transit is added at both ends, and a card rejected on quality has to make the round trip again. |
| Not near a metro area | The practical question is what is actually near you. If electronic capture means a day of travel, the self-service route's main convenience is not available to you in the first place. |
| No time to work it out | Worth being honest about the real cost: the self-service route is not just the fee, it is the hours of reading, and the second round of hours if something comes back. |
| Needs more than the report | Once an apostille or a translation is involved, the steps have to be done in a specific order and each one can reject what the last one produced. That sequencing is where most of the lost time in this process actually goes. |
| For a job or a licence | When an employer or a board is waiting on it, a rejection is not just a restart, it is a restart you have to explain to someone. That changes the arithmetic. |
Unlike the six above, this list is disjunctive. One line applying to you is the whole argument; you do not need several.
If all six conditions hold, do it yourself
Steady fingerprints, no date you have to hit, comfortable working through a government procedure alone, able to absorb a restart, somewhere near you that takes prints properly, and the summary is the finished document rather than the first step in something longer — that person should send the request themselves and pay the $18. There is no reason to pay anyone else, and this page is not going to invent one.
The reason to say that plainly is not fairness. It is that the same reasoning, applied honestly, is what makes the other conclusion trustworthy. A page that routed everyone the same way would be discovered within a handful of readings, and a reader who decides the guidance is a funnel discounts everything it said, including the parts that were accurate and useful.
Where you are changes what the choice even is
This is the factor most consistently left out, and for a large share of readers it settles the question before any of the others are reached.
Electronic fingerprint capture is a matter of what physically exists near you. In a major US city it is straightforward. An hour outside one it is a day. From another country it is generally not available at all, and the route the regulation describes — ink prints on a card, mailed to West Virginia — means international post in both directions, with the whole round trip repeated if the card is rejected on quality. The self-service route is not equally open to everyone; it is a route whose main convenience is unevenly distributed, and pretending otherwise is how people abroad end up several months into a process they were told was simple.
Two situations this comparison does not cover
If either of these is you, the choice above is not your choice, and the most useful thing this page can do is say so early rather than send you down a route that answers a different question.
| Situation | What actually applies |
|---|---|
| Anything firearms-related | Three different processes get called this. The dealer's check at the point of purchase is name-based — the dealer runs it from the information on the purchase form, and you neither submit prints for it nor receive a copy. An Identity History Summary is a different document and does not substitute for it. Fingerprints do apply to ATF paperwork for NFA items and to most state carry permits, and those want prints in a format the receiving authority specifies. Ask that authority which format it accepts, then find somewhere local that produces it. |
| Several people at once | Past a handful of people the constraint stops being the process and becomes capturing prints from everyone. On-site capture — a technician coming to you rather than the group travelling — is generally how this gets solved. Self-service does not scale here: it multiplies every failure mode by the number of people. |
Sources
Everything stated above in this site’s own voice comes from 28 CFR Part 16, Subpart C — sections 16.30 to 16.34, which govern requests for an Identity History Summary, the fee, and how a disputed entry is challenged. It is public and it is the instrument that fixes these things, so it is worth checking rather than taking our word for.
For current processing times, the approved-channeler list, and the electronic request procedure, the authority is the FBI: fbi.gov — Identity History Summary Checks. Those are outside links, offered because they are the source. This site has no relationship with the FBI and cannot act on your request.
Last updated 2026-08-05