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Your FBI Background Check Timeline, Stage by Stage

Works out how long an FBI background check takes for your particular route, stage by stage, and shows where each number came from. The FBI publishes an estimate for one submission path — up to 10 days from receipt of your fingerprint card, for requests filed online with the card mailed in — and nothing for the others. USPS publishes transit standards for the postal legs, which for an applicant abroad usually decide the total. Those figures are added up here, in calendar days, and every stage nobody publishes a figure for is shown as unpublished rather than filled in with an invention. You can enter durations you have been quoted — by a Channeler, a courier, a translator — and they are added too.

What this tool will not tell youIt does not present its total as an official figure, because no government publishes a total for this process; the headline range is this site's arithmetic over other people's numbers and is labelled as such. It does not offer an expedite: the FBI states that requests are processed in the order received.

Your route

This decides whether a published FBI figure exists for your case.

USPS publishes transit standards for its international services.

This is the one path the FBI puts a number on. Its request portal estimates up to 10 days for requests submitted electronically with the fingerprints mailed in — measured from receipt of the card, not from the day you post it, so the outbound post sits on top of that figure rather than inside it.

Stages in this journey
IncludeStagePublished figureDays you were quoted

Getting fingerprinted

A local arrangement — a police station, a livescan provider, an embassy. Nobody publishes a national figure because there is no national process. Outside the United States this is often the step that takes longest to arrange.

Not publishedWhoever takes your prints

Post: your fingerprint card to the FBI

The FBI's estimate runs from the day your card arrives, so this leg sits entirely outside it. For an applicant abroad it is frequently the single longest stage in the chain.

6–10 business days, for many major marketsUnited States Postal Service

FBI request and processing

The FBI states that requests are processed in the order received and that it does not expedite. It publishes an estimate for one submission path and nothing at all for the others.

Up to 10 days from receipt of your fingerprint cardFederal Bureau of Investigation, CJIS Division

Return of your result

Nil if you accept the result electronically. If you need the printed copy — and you do, if it is going on to be apostilled — this is a second postal leg.

6–10 business days, for many major marketsUnited States Postal Service

Channeler handling

The company's own processing, on top of the FBI's. Whatever figure it advertises is its commitment to you, not a government estimate.

Not publishedThe Channeler you engage

U.S. Department of State authentication or apostille

Current processing information is published by the office itself and changes without notice, so this site links to it rather than reproducing a number that would be stale within the month.

Not publishedOffice of Authentications

Consular legalization

Only for destinations outside the Apostille Convention. Set by the mission concerned, and published — when it is published at all — by that mission.

Not publishedThe destination's embassy or consulate

Translation

A commercial arrangement. The duration is whatever the provider commits to.

Not publishedThe translator or agency engaged

Not an official figure

Assembled by this site from the published figures below, plus anything you entered. No government publishes a total for this process, and this is not one.

18–38 calendar days and up

Treat that as a floor rather than an estimate. 1 of the 4 stages you have included have neither a published duration nor a figure from you, so they currently count as zero: getting fingerprinted.

Where each number came from

Published figures used
Post: your fingerprint card to the FBI — 6–10 business days, for many major markets; FBI request and processing — Up to 10 days from receipt of your fingerprint card; Return of your result — 6–10 business days, for many major marketsPublished by United States Postal Service and Federal Bureau of Investigation, CJIS Division, linked in full below.
Figures you supplied
—If a Channeler, a carrier, or a translator has quoted you a duration, enter it above and it will be added.
Stages with no figure
1 of 4Counted as zero, which is why the total is a floor. That every one of these is unpublished is itself the finding, not a gap in the tool.
Unit conversion
Business days converted at five per weekUSPS publishes transit in business days and the FBI publishes in days. To add them, the business-day figures are multiplied by 7/5 and rounded up. That conversion is this site's, not USPS's.

One structural point the arithmetic cannot show: these stages run in sequence, and a document that has to be re-requested restarts the chain rather than resuming it. A rejected fingerprint card is the usual cause, and it costs the outbound post and the FBI stage a second time over. If your destination also sets a recency window, plan backwards from the date the document must be accepted rather than forwards from today — the expiration calculator does that part.

Government sources

Every figure this tool uses, at its source, with what each body does and does not publish.

This tool runs in your browser. Nothing you enter here is transmitted or stored, and no result from it is an approval, a guarantee of acceptance, or a recommendation of any provider — see the terms of use and the privacy policy.

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