Can a PDF FBI Background Check Be Apostilled? Yes, Here Is How

Yes. The FBI issues your Identity History Summary as a downloadable PDF, and that file is exactly what gets apostilled. What cannot be used is a printout of it, a scan of that printout, a phone photo of the paper, or a copy your fingerprinting vendor emailed you. The apostille comes from the U.S. Department of State in Washington, not from the Secretary of State in your state, and federal processing runs 6 to 14 business days that nobody can shorten at any price.

Three errors keep repeating with this document: people think a state apostille comes first, they think a printed copy is the same document as the FBI's file, and they think money buys federal speed. The rest of this page is the part that costs people their deadlines.

The FBI's own FAQ describes how it authenticates results:

"The FBI will authenticate all fingerprint search results by placing the FBI watermark and the signature of a division official on the results at the time of submission. The FBI will no longer place the FBI seal on U.S. Department of Justice Order 556-73 fingerprint search results."

Those authenticated documents, the FAQ continues, "may then be sent to the U.S. Department of State by the requestor to obtain an apostille if necessary."

So the authentication is applied at the moment the FBI produces the result, and the PDF you download is the authenticated artifact. Print it and you are holding a picture of an authenticated document. Scan that printout and you are holding a picture of a picture. The Department of State is authenticating a federal official's signature, so what it receives has to be the object that signature was applied to.

That is why our federal intake accepts exactly two things:

• Digital submission. If you have the original downloadable PDF issued directly from the FBI website, you submit that file digitally. No physical shipping is required, and it is the fastest way to start.
• Physical original submission. If you do not have the original downloadable PDF, you ship the original physical document to our office. Photocopies and scans of printed copies are not accepted.

If you are wondering whether the file the FBI emailed needs to be printed or prepared somehow first: it is already finished. Upload it as it arrived, without printing, re-saving, flattening, or merging it into anything else.

This is the most common blocked intake on federal orders. What you receive forwarded from the agency that took your fingerprints is usually a set of scanned copies, and scanned copies cannot be used for federal apostille processing. What is needed is the original digital PDF downloaded directly from the FBI website; the FBI itself will point you to the page carrying the colored seal and signature as the one that matters, and re-downloading the original solves it.

It does not matter who took your fingerprints. It matters whether the file in your hands is the FBI's own signed result or somebody's copy of it. If you are booking through an FBI-approved channeler and an apostille is the point of the exercise, ask before you pay whether you will be given the FBI's own downloadable Identity History Summary PDF.

The Department of State's preparation guidance for federal apostilles is blunt: seals and signatures must be original, the document must show a date of issuance, and "do not notarize your original document, as your document will no longer be valid if it is notarized." An FBI report on the federal route needs no notary at all, which surprises people whose tax forms in the same order do need one. FBI checks follow a completely different pathway: they are processed as a federal apostille through the U.S. Department of State, which authenticates the FBI document directly rather than through a notary.

If your document is signed by a U.S. federal official and you will use it in a country party to the 1961 Hague Convention, the Department of State issues the apostille certificate. There is no earlier state stage. As our FBI apostille page puts it: "A state office has no jurisdiction over federal records, so it cannot issue a valid apostille for one, regardless of which state you live in."

A recurring question is whether the report has to be apostilled in your own state first and in Washington afterwards. No, because that sequence does not exist. The same answer covers the person searching for how to get an apostilled FBI background check in Michigan, and people writing from abroad: the authority is fixed by the document, not by where you or the report happen to be. From abroad we take the PDF and ship the finished apostille internationally, which is covered in getting an apostille from abroad.

Worth separating: some destinations want a state criminal history record as well as the FBI check, and a few want one instead. If both are required they are apostilled separately, the FBI record federally and the state record through that state's designated apostille office. Ask which one your authority means before ordering either.

The Office of Authentications publishes these service windows:

The emergency appointment is not a rush tier anyone can buy. The office reserves it for someone who must travel abroad within two weeks because an immediate family member outside the United States has died, is dying, or has a life-threatening illness or injury, and it requires documentary proof of both the travel and the emergency.

Our estimate sits inside that published band: FBI background checks are processed through the U.S. Department of State for a federal apostille, the estimated processing time is 6 to 14 business days excluding federal holidays, federal processing cannot be expedited under any circumstances, and processing time is separate from shipping time.

Customers regularly arrive holding a checkout tier they believe covers it, or offering to pay whatever a rush costs when a visa appointment moves up. The expedited service tiers on our website, the 1 business day option included, apply to state-level apostille processing only. There is no upgrade or rush option for federal processing, so no additional fee changes the turnaround.

Two consequences land harder than the timeline itself. There is no interim status while the file sits at the federal office; the next communication after intake is the completion and shipping notification once the documents are ready. And the count is business days. A file that reaches us on a Saturday starts on Monday.

At submission, the box marking an item as an FBI background check does three things: it routes that document federally, it replaces your tier's completion estimate with the 6 to 14 business day window, and it separates the item from any state documents in the order.

Federal apostille processing starts at $149 per document. Because the federal window is fixed, buying a faster tier does not move an FBI document's completion date. It moves the state documents in the same order and nothing else, so an order containing only an FBI report finishes on the same day whichever tier you pick.

Shipping is charged per shipment, $49 domestic overnight or $87 international. State and federal items go to different processing offices and come back as two packages, so an order holding a birth certificate and an FBI check carries two domestic shipping charges, $174 in total. If you pick the wrong document type at checkout, it is not yours to fix: we correct the routing, with nothing to redo and nothing further to pay.

Six to fourteen business days is roughly one and a half to three calendar weeks before shipping is added. A certified translation adds about another business day and should ride on the same order rather than being arranged separately; the per-page rate depends on total length, so see certified translation. Two shipping details catch people out: several countries require the recipient's tax identification number for customs clearance, and we can send the finished apostille to a foreign authority instead of to you, so the checks reach the office handling your file directly.

The apostille certificate does not expire. The report underneath it effectively does, because most receiving authorities measure the age of the FBI report rather than the age of the apostille. Most countries require the check to be recent at the time you submit it to them, not just at the time it was apostilled, and the window is measured from the date the FBI issued the report, varying by country and by receiving authority.

There is no universal number of months, so we do not publish one. Of the destination notes we have verified, South Korea's teaching programs typically expect a recently issued check, often no older than about six months, and Spain expects some immigration documents to be only a few months old. Confirm the exact window with your receiving authority. Both are typical requirements set by the receiving authority, not guarantees.

That makes the sequence matter. Confirm the freshness requirement first, request the FBI report so the clock starts as late as possible, then submit it the day it arrives. If your authority wants a report under three months old and the federal step alone can take three calendar weeks, a report you ordered two months ago "to have ready" may already be unusable by the time it comes back.

A True Copy State Apostille can be finished in as little as one business day, because it is a state-level product: a notary certifies a printed copy and the Secretary of State apostilles the notary's certification. For most documents this is our default service and it works well. For FBI background checks it is a fallback, and we disclose why every time: true copy apostilles for FBI reports have a low acceptance rate with most receiving authorities. Confirm with your specific receiving authority, in writing, that a state-level true copy apostille will be accepted before pursuing this route; acceptance is always the receiving authority's decision and cannot be guaranteed by any processor.

That is a real distinction rather than a disclaimer. The apostille would be genuine and verifiable by its number with the issuing Secretary of State. The open question is whether the authority reading it wanted a federal certificate on the federal record.

Two situations make it worth considering. You cannot obtain either accepted format at all, say the only paper results were lost with a deadline pending, in which case the first move is requesting fresh results from the FBI and specifically asking for the digital version. Or you have already called your receiving authority and been told a state-level true copy is acceptable, in which case Priority Express at $249 per document plus overnight shipping straight to the authority can meet a deadline days away. Otherwise, if you hold the FBI PDF and the deadline allows, the federal route is the one your authority asked for.

Two parts of it were never ours to do. We do not run background checks and we do not coordinate fingerprinting; you obtain your FBI Identity History Summary on your own before processing can begin. Nor can we request the record for you, because the FBI releases it to the individual.

The apostille step you can file yourself, per the Department of State's instructions. Send Form DS-4194, the document, $20 per document by check or money order payable to the U.S. Department of State, and a self-addressed prepaid return envelope, to the Office of Authentications, 44132 Mercure Circle, PO Box 1206, Sterling, VA 20166-1206. By mail that is the five week window; dropped off in person in Washington it is seven business days. What a service sells on this document is preparation and the return leg: correct paperwork the first time, an intake that is not rejected for the wrong copy type, tracked shipping to you or to a foreign authority, and translation attached to the same job. It is not speed at the federal office.

If you have the FBI PDF, upload it and choose the federal option at submission. The estimate you will see is 6 to 14 business days plus shipping. If you are not sure whether what you hold is the FBI's file or a copy of it, send it through the free document review before paying for anything, because that is the one check that prevents a rejected intake.

If state documents are in the same batch, read state versus federal apostilles so the two shipments and two timelines do not surprise you, and if you are shipping the physical FBI original rather than the file, how to prepare documents for a federal apostille covers what belongs in the envelope. If your appointment is inside the next two weeks, do the arithmetic before you order: 6 to 14 business days is the federal step alone, and getting the report faster does not help if the apostille cannot catch up.

The information provided in this article is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. While we aim to ensure accuracy and completeness, we make no guarantees regarding applicability to your specific circumstances. For formal legal advice, consult a qualified professional.