What does a passport photo cost? Every store, one table
Six names come up when people ask where to get a passport photo. Here is what each one charges — from their own pages, not the aggregator lists, several of which are still carrying last year’s numbers:
| Walgreens | $16.99 — two 2×2 prints, walk in; free emailed digital copy included |
|---|---|
| CVS | $17.99 — two prints, select locations; emailed digital copy +$3.99 at select locations |
| USPS | $15 — select Post Offices, mostly by appointment |
| Walmart | $7.64 — prints a compliant photo you upload; a photo sitting is not promised |
| The UPS Store | Varies by location — franchise pricing, no published national price |
| Costco | No longer offered — the in-store photo service is gone |
The spread is wider than it looks. Three of those rows are walk-in services: someone stands you against a wall, takes the photo, prints it. The Walmart row is not — $7.64 is a print price, and the compliant photo has to exist before it reaches the counter. The fine print on each is below.
And keep the whole number in perspective: the photo is the smallest line on a passport bill. The government’s own fees are the big one, and they have a guide of their own.
Walgreens vs CVS passport photo prices
Walgreens charges $16.99 for two 2×2 prints — walk in, no appointment, at most locations. A free emailed digital copy comes with the purchase, which matters if you are renewing online and need a file rather than paper. A USB copy costs extra, and Walgreens does not publish that price — ask at the counter before assuming it is small.
One Walgreens habit to leave at the photo counter: the promo codes. Walgreens coupons explicitly exclude passport photos — whatever a code takes off ordinary prints, it takes nothing off this.
CVS charges $17.99 for two prints, at select locations, also walk-in. The emailed digital copy is an extra $3.99, again at select locations. So the drugstore comparison is really $16.99 with the file included against $17.99 plus $3.99 if you need one.
If you have seen CVS quoted at $16.99, that number is stale — plenty of 2026 articles still carry it, but CVS’s own page says $17.99. Expect the old figure to keep circulating for a while.
The cheapest passport photos: Walmart at $7.64 — and what that buys
Walmart’s $7.64 tops every “cheapest passport photos” list, and the number is real. But read what it buys: it is the price to print an uploaded, already-compliant photo. Walmart’s page does not promise that anyone will take the photo for you — an associate “can assist” at Supercenter photo centers, and “can assist” is as far as the promise goes. It is the cheapest print on this page, not a guaranteed service.
Which means the hard part — a head sized to spec, a plain background, the right crop — is yours to solve before Walmart’s price applies. Show up with a compliant file and $7.64 finishes the job; show up without one and the trip quietly turns into a Walgreens trip.
The other budget route is USPS: $15 at select Post Offices, mostly by appointment. It undercuts both drugstores and the photo is taken for you — the trade is booking a slot and finding a Post Office that offers the service at all.
The compliant file Walmart wants is exactly what the maker builds. It replaces whatever background your selfie has with pure white — which is how a photo taken in a kitchen becomes a printable file — crops the head to 50–69% of the photo's height (1 to 1⅜ in / 25–35 mm), and hands you a print-ready 4×6 sheet (6 copies) any photo counter prints as an ordinary photo.
Turn a selfie into the print-ready file
See your finished photo and its full check report free · download it for $16.99at CVS; ours is $9 · refunded if the government rejects it
UPS Store passport photo cost — and what happened to Costco
The UPS Store has no national price, because no one sets one: each store is a franchise, and each franchise prices its own photos. The UPS figures that circulate online are aggregator guesses, and we are not repeating them as fact — the only real number is the one your local store gives you. Appointments book online across 3,900+ locations, so the honest procedure is: pick your store, then ask it.
Costco comes off the list entirely: it no longer offers in-store passport photos at all. The photo counters are gone; what remains is a Shutterfly discount for members — a print deal, not a passport photo service. Any 2026 list still sending you to Costco for passport photos is out of date.
What you’re paying for, wherever you pay
Every price on this page buys the same object, because the spec does not care who takes the photo. Printed, it must come out at 2×2 in. The background must be Plain white or off-white. Your head must fill 50–69% of the photo's height (1 to 1⅜ in / 25–35 mm), with your eyes 56–69% up from the bottom of the photo. And if you are renewing online, the upload takes one kind of file: a JPEG, sized 2×2 in (51×51 mm) · 600×600 to 1200×1200 pixels, square, weighing 54 KB to 10 MB — which is what the emailed “digital copy” the drugstores sell has to actually be to earn its surcharge.
Notice what the store price is mostly buying: labor. Someone to stand you against the right wall, frame the head, press print. The spec itself is public and short — the lines above are most of it.
The line no store’s price includes: what happens if it’s rejected
Read all six retailers’ pages to the end and one sentence never appears: a promise that the government accepts the photo. None of them makes it. If a drugstore photo comes back rejected, the reprint is on you — and so are the weeks your application sits suspended while the replacement works its way through.
That risk is measurable before anyone charges you anything. These are the eight checks a US passport photo is measured against here:
- Exactly one face, looking straight ahead
- Head sized 50–69% of frame
- Eyes at the required height (56–69% from the bottom)
- No head tilt
- Background replaced with pure white
- Even, uniform background
- Sharp focus — no blur
- Natural exposure — not too dark or bright
The difference is the order of operations: you see the finished photo and its full check report free before paying anything — and if the government rejects the photo anyway, the money comes back. No store on this page offers either half of that, at any price.
Holding a store print, or a selfie you are deciding whether to print? Measure it now, while a failed check costs a one-minute retake instead of a suspended application.
Upload a selfie — see it pass free
See your finished photo and its full check report free · download it for $16.99at CVS; ours is $9 · refunded if the government rejects it