How Much Does an Employment Background Check Cost?
Most background check companies make you sit through a sales call to hear a price. We publish ours, so let’s use real numbers: employment background checks range from about $8 for a basic criminal package to $75–100+ for a comprehensive executive screen. Here’s what you actually get at each level, what drives the price, and the fee traps to watch for.
Real-world pricing tiers
Our package pricing is representative of what screening should cost:
| Package | Price | What’s included | Turnaround |
|---|---|---|---|
| BASIC criminal | $7.95 / report | SSN trace & address history, nationwide criminal database, 50-state sex offender registry, 250+ state and federal sources | ~1 hour average |
| STANDARD criminal | $25.95 / report | Everything in BASIC, plus unlimited county criminal records and nationwide federal criminal records | Same day average |
| EXECUTIVE screen | $75.95 / report | Everything in STANDARD, plus county and federal civil records, bankruptcies/liens/judgments, education and employment verification, FFIEC banking sanctions | 2–4 days average |
À la carte searches — an MVR, a single verification, a drug panel — typically run from a few dollars to about $15 each, letting you tune any package to the role.
What drives the cost of a background check?
- Search depth. Database scans are cheap; county-by-county courthouse research and human-performed verifications cost more.
- Third-party pass-throughs. Some state repositories and DMVs charge statutory access fees (a few dollars, varies by state). Legitimate providers pass these through at cost — ask for the fee schedule up front.
- Verifications. Confirming employment, education, or licenses takes trained specialists and persistent follow-up.
- Volume — but it shouldn’t. Many providers reserve fair pricing for high-volume accounts. We don’t: no order minimums, same price at any volume.
The hidden fees to avoid
When comparing providers, ask about these — they’re where “cheap” quotes get expensive:
- Setup or account fees (ours: none)
- Monthly minimums or subscription floors (ours: none)
- Contract lock-ins with annual commitments (ours: none)
- Undisclosed pass-through markups on court and DMV fees
- “Per-user” platform charges for adding teammates
A transparent provider shows you the full price at checkout, before you order. If you can’t find pricing without a demo call, that usually tells you something.
Is a cheap background check good enough?
An instant “$2 national database scan” by itself is not a compliant employment screen — databases contain errors and stale records, which is why the FCRA effectively requires verifying database hits at the source before reporting them. The right structure is the one in the tiers above: a broad database sweep to locate records, then source verification at the courthouse level, with a Quality Assurance review before the report reaches you. That’s also why the same report can be both fast and accurate — see how turnaround times really work.
Budgeting for screening
For most employers, blended screening cost lands between $10 and $30 per hire — a rounding error against the cost of one bad hire, one negligent-hiring claim, or one FCRA process mistake. We price 15–30% below competing providers on like-for-like searches, and you’ll always see the total before you pay.
Create a free account and see live pricing for every search, or call 1-800-935-8537 for a custom package quote.
