How much does a cashier's check cost?

It depends on the bank, and the published fee schedules are further apart than people expect. As of their August 2026 disclosures, TD Bank charges $8.00 for an official check, Chase, Wells Fargo, U.S. Bank and Capital One each charge $10.00, and Bank of America charges $15.00. Several banks waive the fee entirely on premium or relationship accounts, so check your own account tier before assuming you will pay the headline price.

What is the difference between a cashier's check and a certified check?

A cashier's check is drawn on the bank's own account: the bank has already taken your money and is now the party that owes it. A certified check is still your personal check, on your account, with the bank certifying that the signature is genuine and that it has set the funds aside. Certified checks have largely disappeared from big-bank price lists, which is why cashier's checks are what you get offered.

Is a cashier's check safer than a money order?

For large amounts, yes, mostly because of size limits. USPS money orders cap at $1,000 each and Wells Fargo caps its own money orders at $1,000, so a five-figure payment would need dozens of them. Cashier's checks have no equivalent low ceiling. For small payments the money order is cheaper: USPS charges $2.65 up to $500 and $3.75 from $500.01 to $1,000.

What happens if a cashier's check is lost?

You wait, often for months. Wells Fargo requires an indemnity agreement and, for cashier's checks over $1,000, a 90-day waiting period before it will stop payment and reissue, though a surety bond can shorten that. Capital One replenishes your funds on day 95 after the check was ordered once you file an affidavit. This is the strongest argument for not mailing one when an electronic transfer would do.

What Is a Cashier's Check? Fees at 6 US Banks

A cashier’s check is a check the bank writes on itself. You hand over the money, the bank moves it out of your account and into its own, and then it issues a check drawn on the bank’s funds with your payee’s name on it. The person receiving it is no longer trusting you to have the money. They are trusting a federally insured bank to honour a check it has already funded.

That is the whole idea, and it explains everything else about the instrument: why a car dealer or a title company asks for one, why it costs money when writing a personal check is free, and why losing one is such a headache.

What six US banks actually charge

Most explanations of cashier’s check pricing stop at “usually around $10 to $15.” That range is real, but it is also useless if you are deciding which of your accounts to pull the check from. Here is what each bank publishes in its own current fee schedule.

Bank	Fee	Where it is published
TD Bank	$8.00 (called an “official check”)	Personal Fee Schedule
Chase	$10.00 per check	Additional Banking Services and Fees, effective 6/14/2026
Wells Fargo	$10.00 each	Consumer and Business Fees
U.S. Bank	$10.00	Consumer Pricing Information, effective August 10, 2026
Capital One	$10.00 in a branch or café, $20.00 ordered online	360 Checking disclosures
Bank of America	$15.00	Financial Center Services FAQs

Two things stand out. Bank of America is nearly twice TD Bank on the same errand, and Capital One doubles its own price if you order the check online for delivery instead of picking one up. Wells Fargo does something similar in a different shape: the check itself is $10, but an online order shipped to a US address adds an $8 delivery charge on top.

Waivers move the number more than shopping does. U.S. Bank lists unlimited cashier’s check fee waivers on some account tiers, Chase names money orders and cashier’s checks among the fees you do not pay on several of its checking products, and Bank of America waives the $15 for customers enrolled in Preferred Rewards. Before you pay, look at what your own account already includes. It is a common reason people discover their everyday account is worth keeping or closing after all.

One limit that surprises people: Bank of America will not issue a cashier’s check to someone who does not have a checking or savings account there. If a seller insists on a check drawn on a specific bank you do not bank with, that is not something you can solve by walking into a branch with cash.

Cashier’s check, certified check, money order

These three get used interchangeably, and they are not the same instrument.

A cashier’s check is drawn on the bank. The bank is the one that owes the money.

A certified check is still your personal check, on your account, with your signature. The bank certifies that the signature is genuine and that it has earmarked the funds. The obligation stays with your account, not the bank’s. Notably, certified checks have quietly vanished from the fee tables at Chase, U.S. Bank and TD Bank, none of which list a price for one alongside their cashier’s or official check. When a title company asks for “a certified check,” what they are almost always going to receive is a cashier’s check.

A money order is prepaid and capped. USPS domestic money orders cannot exceed $1,000 each and cost $2.65 for amounts from $0.01 to $500.00, or $3.75 from $500.01 to $1,000.00; postal military money orders are $0.85. Wells Fargo sells its own money orders at $5 each, also capped at $1,000, and TD Bank and U.S. Bank both charge $5.00.

That gives you a clean rule. Under $1,000 and going to someone who accepts them, a postal money order at $2.65 is the cheapest secure paper payment in the country and can be cashed free at any Post Office. Above $1,000, the cap makes money orders impractical and the cashier’s check is the instrument that scales.

When the money is actually available

The reason a cashier’s check gets accepted at closing is not just the bank’s name on it. It is the funds availability rules under Regulation CC. The Federal Reserve’s own guidance describes cashier’s checks as one of the deposit types Congress judged low enough risk that they generally must be made available for withdrawal by the business day after the banking day of deposit.

Chase’s deposit agreement shows how that works in practice. Cashier’s, certified and teller’s checks payable to you are available the next business day if you deposit them with a banker at a branch using the bank’s Next Day Funds Availability slip. Everything else runs on a slower clock, and there are named exceptions: if you deposit more than $6,725 of checks in one day, or you have overdrawn repeatedly in the last six months, the bank can hold the full amount, including the first $275, until the seventh business day. New accounts get their own rule for the first 30 days, with the first $6,725 of cashier’s, certified, teller’s, traveler’s and government checks available the next business day and the excess held to day seven.

So “cleared funds” is a real advantage, but it is conditional on how and where you deposit, not automatic because of the paper.

Losing one is the expensive part

A cashier’s check cannot simply be cancelled. The bank has already committed its own money, so it will not release you until it is confident the check will not surface later.

Wells Fargo requires a sworn indemnity agreement, and for cashier’s checks over $1,000 imposes a 90-day waiting period before a stop payment and reissue can go through, 30 days in Wisconsin and 91 in New York. A surety bond can remove the wait, at a cost that depends on the amount and the insurer. Capital One is blunter about the timeline: after you present an affidavit, the funds are replenished on day 95 after the check was ordered.

Three months without your down payment is not a rounding error. If the payment can be made electronically and the payee is willing, it should be. Person-to-person rails like the way Venmo actually moves money exist for exactly the payments where paper is the risk rather than the protection, and the rest of the everyday payment toolkit is laid out across the banking basics guides.

Where a cashier’s check is still the right answer

Real estate is the obvious one. Closing agents want funds that are already the bank’s, on a day when a bounced payment would unwind the whole transaction, which is why the down payment on a purchase financed at today’s mortgage rates usually leaves your account as a cashier’s check or a wire. The same logic applies when you settle a balance at the end of a home equity line or a refinance, where the lender needs certainty on a specific date.

Private-party sales are the other one. A used car bought from a stranger, a deposit on a rental from a landlord who does not take cards, a payment to a contractor who has been burned before. In all of those, the counterparty’s problem is that they cannot verify your balance, and a cashier’s check solves it.

What it does not solve is fraud running the other direction. A cashier’s check handed to you by a stranger is exactly what counterfeiters imitate, precisely because everyone has been taught to treat it as good as cash. If you are the one receiving one, verify it with the issuing bank using a number you looked up yourself, and wait for it to actually clear before shipping anything.

Before you pay for one

Check your account tier first, since the waiver is worth more than the shopping. Check the amount second: under $1,000, a postal money order does the same job for $2.65. Check the delivery method third, because ordering online can cost double at Capital One or add $8 at Wells Fargo compared with walking into a branch.

And if the money is sitting idle while you wait for a closing date, it should not be sitting in checking. Funds earmarked for a payment weeks out belong in a high-yield savings account until the day you need the check, which is the same reasoning behind keeping short-term cash in an interest-paying account rather than a chequing account if you are on the Canadian side of a cross-border purchase, where the equivalent instrument is called a bank draft. The fee is fixed. The interest you give up by parking money early is not, in the same way a savings bond’s fixed term makes the timing of the money matter as much as the rate.