Here is the short answer. A Virginia notary can charge up to $10 for each notarial act on paper, and up to $25 for each electronic or remote act. Those 2 caps are set by state law, not by the notary. The only thing that may be added on top is the actual cost of traveling to you, and only if you agreed to it before anyone got in the car.
Now the part that costs people money, because the word "act" does not mean what most people assume it means, and because the number you were quoted probably came from somebody who drives to you rather than somebody behind a counter.
The 3 numbers Virginia actually sets
Section 47.1-19 of the Code of Virginia sets the ceiling. There are only 3 numbers in it worth knowing:
- $10 maximum, for each notarial act on paper. That is subsection A. It went up from $5 on 1 July 2024.
- $25 maximum, for each electronic or remote online act. That is subsection B, and it covers notarizing over a live video connection.
- Travel has no cap, but it is fenced in. Subsection D allows a notary to recover "any actual and reasonable expense of traveling," and only "with the agreement of the person to be charged."
That is the entire list. A notary who charges you more than the cap for the act itself is not negotiating, they are breaking a statute that says in plain words it "shall be unlawful."
The word "act" is where the confusion starts
The cap is per act. It is not per document, not per page, and not per appointment. That single distinction explains almost every argument anybody has ever had over a notary bill.
- 1 document signed by 2 people is 2 acts.
- 1 person signing 3 documents is 3 acts.
- A 40-page document with 1 notarized signature is 1 act. The page count changes nothing.
So "the notary charged me $30" is not automatically an overcharge. 3 acts at the state ceiling is $30, and that is exactly what the law allows. Before you decide a number is wrong, count the acts: signers multiplied by the documents each one signs.
It is also why any honest quote from a mobile notary in Suffolk starts with 2 questions: how many people are signing, and how many documents each of them signs. Those are the same 2 questions that decide what you need to have on the table before anybody arrives.
If a page still says $5, it is out of date
Virginia's cap sat at $5 for a long time, long enough that it made its way into printed guides, old blog posts, and a surprising number of notary websites that nobody has touched since. The statute was amended in 2024 and the paper cap became $10 on 1 July of that year.
This matters more than it sounds. If you are reading a "Virginia notary pricing" page that still prints $5 and you use it to argue about a bill, you are arguing from a rule that no longer exists. Check the date on any page quoting a Virginia fee, including this one.
What the travel fee is, and what it is not
The law names exactly 1 thing a notary may recover on top of the act fee: the real cost of driving to you, agreed by you in advance. 2 things follow from that, and both of them protect you.
The number comes first. "Agreed in advance" means before the trip, not on your doorstep with the documents already on your table. If a notary will not give you the travel number until they arrive, that is the moment to stop, not after.
It should be its own line. Nothing in the statute forces a notary to itemize, but a single blended number above $10 looks like an overcharge on its face, and there is no way to check it. A quote that reads "$10 for the act, this much for the trip" can be checked in 5 seconds. That is why we write ours that way.
Some notaries also charge for genuinely separate work: printing a loan package, a courier run, or walking a document through the state for you. Those are their own services and they stand on their own. They are not part of the notarial act, and they should never be folded into it.
What is free, and what free will not do
Plenty of banks and credit unions notarize at no charge for their own account holders, and for a simple form that is a fine answer. Shipping and mailbox stores charge for it, and they are capped at the same $10 by the same law, so nobody in Virginia is beating that ceiling.
The catch is not the price, it is the list, and the second catch is the calendar. Every free option is shut by 5 and shut on Sunday, which is its own problem covered in finding a notary open on a weekend. Many banks will not touch a will, an advance directive, or a bedside signing at all, and none of them are open at 9 at night or driving to a hospital room in Suffolk. If your document is on the short list a bank refuses, the free option is not actually an option.
Why a mobile visit is a different purchase
When a notary drives to your kitchen table, an office, or a bedside, the stamp is the small part of what you are buying. You are buying the trip, the hour, and somebody who shows up when the family can actually get everyone in the same room, which is rarely between 9 and 5 on a Tuesday.
That is the honest way to think about the travel figure. It is not a markup on the stamp. It is the price of the drive, and the state fee for the act underneath it never moves. That is why 2 visits with the same document count can cost different amounts depending on how far the car went, while the state fee underneath both of them is identical.
It also explains why the visits that matter most to families, the hospital and bedside signings, are almost never the cheapest option on paper and almost always the right one. It helps to know in advance that most hospitals will not have a notary for you.
The 4 questions to ask before you agree to any price
- How many notarial acts is this? Count your signers and the documents each of them signs. That number times $10 is the legal ceiling on the act portion.
- Is the act fee its own line? If the answer is a single lump number, ask for the split.
- What is the travel, and can I have it before you drive? Subsection D expects your agreement first. Asking for it in writing is not rude, it is the statute working the way it was written.
- Is anything else being charged, and for what? Printing, a courier, or a filing service can all be legitimate. They just need a name.
The 1 thing no notary can charge you for
Advice. A Virginia notary who is not an attorney cannot draft, complete, select, or explain a document for you, which means nobody should be billing you for it either. Nobody can charge you to decide which power of attorney you need either. The same goes for telling you whether your will needs a notary at all. If somebody quotes you a fee for helping you decide what to sign, that is not an expensive notary, that is a notary breaking the law. We put the full list on our page about what a Virginia notary cannot do, because knowing it before you book saves everybody an awkward conversation.
Notaries in Virginia are commissioned by the Office of the Secretary of the Commonwealth, which is also who you would contact if you ever needed to check that a notary's commission is real.
Apostille work is priced differently, and here is why
If your document is headed to another country, the notarization is only step 1, and the state charges its own separate fee to attach the apostille certificate. That process has its own timeline and its own trip to Richmond, and we walked through all of it in how to get an apostille in Virginia.
How we quote it
And if you were hoping to avoid the fee entirely by asking a relative who happens to be commissioned, read the rule on notarizing for family first, because it is narrower than people think and wider than they hope.
You get 1 written number before anyone drives, with the state's fee for each act listed separately from the trip. Nothing gets added at the door, and if we cannot legally do what you need, we say so on the phone instead of after the drive.