What a surety bond costs, and how much bond your state requires

Two numbers make the price of a bond

A surety bond is a promise by an insurance company, the surety, to pay a third party if you break the rules your license or contract imposes. The state, the federal agency or the project owner decides how large that promise must be: that is the bond amount, sometimes called the penal sum. You never pay the bond amount. You pay a premium, a percentage of it, to the surety each year or once for the whole term. So the question "how much does a surety bond cost" always has two halves: how much bond the law requires, and what rate a surety charges you for it.

The usual short answer covers only the second half, and vaguely: "1 to 15 percent of the bond amount." That range is true but useless on its own, because a 1 percent bond and a 15 percent bond are not the same product sold to the same person. The amount half is a legal fact you can read in a statute. The rate half is a market price that depends on the kind of bond and on your credit. This site keeps them apart, and shows both.

The amount: what the law says, state by state

Bond amounts are written into state law, and they are not alike. A notary in Wisconsin files a $500 bond; one in Louisiana needs $50,000. The median of the 17 states read with a required notary bond is $10,000. Car dealers face larger amounts: the median of the 9 states read is $50,000, from $25,000 in Florida to $50,000 in Texas, and New York grades its bond by dealer type and sales volume. Contractors are the least uniform: California asks every licensee for $25,000, Washington $30,000 for a general contractor, Oregon sets six amounts by endorsement, Arizona grades by volume, and Nevada lets its board pick any figure between $1,000 and $500,000.

These amounts move. Pennsylvania raised its notary bond from $10,000 to $25,000 on March 28, 2026. Louisiana made a $50,000 bond mandatory for every notary on February 1, 2026, where a $10,000 bond or an errors and omissions policy used to do. Washington more than doubled its contractor bonds in July 2024, from $12,000 to $30,000 for general contractors. Every state page here quotes the line of the law or the agency page, gives its address and the date we read it, and shows the previous amount when one changed.

The premium: your credit decides most of it

For license bonds, the surety does not expect to lose money: if it pays a claim, you must pay it back under the indemnity agreement you sign. The premium is therefore priced like credit. With a personal score of 700 or more, published grids for a $50,000 Texas dealer bond run from $375 to $750 a year. Under 550, the same bond is estimated at $3,750 to $5,000, and some sureties will decline. Freight broker bonds are riskier for sureties, because claims from unpaid carriers are frequent: the $75,000 BMC-84 bond is estimated at $938 to $2,250 a year with good credit and $9,000 to $9,750 with poor credit.

No state publishes these rates. Each surety files its own with the state insurance department, and those filings could not be read in bulk. The ranges here are the envelope of the grids that bond agencies publish on their own pages, for each credit tier; the method page shows the grid, the sources and the minimum premium of $100 that most markets apply. They tell you whether a quote you receive is in the normal span, not what one surety will charge.

Bonds priced another way

Three families do not follow the credit grid. Notary bonds are small and sold at a flat price for the whole commission, usually without a credit check; Michigan's own FAQ puts its $10,000 bond at $50 to $100, and the notary bond page compares every state read. Title bonds, which let you register a vehicle whose title was lost, are set at a multiple of the vehicle's value (1.5 times in Texas) and priced on a short schedule. Contract bonds for construction are priced on the contract price in layers, about $2,500 for a $100,000 job and $13,500 for a $1,000,000 job on a standard scale, with your financial statements weighing as much as your credit; federal jobs over $150,000 need a performance and a payment bond of 100 percent each, and the bid guarantee is 20 percent of the bid.

Federal bonds that apply in every state

Some amounts are the same everywhere because a federal rule sets them. A property broker registered with FMCSA must keep a $75,000 bond or trust fund on form BMC-84 or BMC-85. A person who handles the money of an employee benefit plan must be bonded under ERISA section 412 for 10 percent of the funds handled, at least $1,000 and usually at most $500,000. A supplier of durable medical equipment billing Medicare files a $50,000 bond. The freight broker and ERISA pages compute those amounts and their premiums.

How to use these numbers

Start with the amount: find your bond and your state above, or on the hub pages for notary, auto dealer, contractor and title bonds, and check the line we quote against the official page we link. Then read the premium range for your credit score. If a quote falls inside it, it is an ordinary market price; well above it, ask why, or ask another surety. If your credit is weak, the bad credit page explains the programs that exist and their cost. Nothing here is a quote or legal advice, and the site never asks for your name, phone or e-mail.