What does it cost to transfer a car title?

Pick a state. You get the title fee in plain English, a worked example, the other fees that come with it and the deadline for new residents, each with the state’s own official words behind it. New to this? How a title transfer works.

Reference only, not legal or tax advice. Confirm with the agency. Full statement

Title fees across the country

Each figure is the title fee a state’s own page prints, copied from the quote at the top of that state’s page, where its source and the date we read it are shown. A plus sign means the quote prints more than one amount and the tile shows the lowest. It is one line on the bill, not the whole bill: open a state for the fees that come with it.

Lower title fee
Higher
+More than one amount quoted (coloured by the lowest)
No single figure to show
Not read

The same figures, with deadlines and tax wording, are in the comparison table.

What gets added up

The title fee, where the state’s page prints one flat amount for every case. Where the quote prints more than one amount, all of them are shown and none is added.
A second line, all the quoted flat fees due on a title transfer, adds the other fees whose official words say they are charged on every title transaction, such as a filing or processing fee. It appears only for states that have one.
An out-of-state fee or a lien fee, when those boxes are ticked and the quote ties a flat amount to exactly that.
Nothing else. Tax, registration and plates, late fees and county add-ons are shown with their quotes and left out of the sum. Where a state prints one percentage of the price, the tool shows that arithmetic beside the quote.

All states

49 of 51 are covered, counting the District of Columbia. For Massachusetts and Tennessee, official pages refused our script and we found no other official source for the title fee, so nothing is filled in.

Where this comes from

State motor-vehicle agency pages and manuals, state revenue department pages, and statutes and codes on official state sites. Nothing comes from other websites. A script reads every source and matches every quote word for word, and the site is rebuilt only from a check that passed in full. How it works has the detail and how to send a correction.