Know the likely route before you pay the first fee.

Why the numbers elsewhere disagree

A cost figure without a source cannot be checked

Search for the cost of settling an estate in any state and you will get confident numbers that contradict each other. Most of them are not wrong so much as unverifiable: no citation, no date, no statement of what the figure includes. A page that says probate costs a percentage of the estate is averaging estates with real property against estates without, contested against uncontested, attorney-led against self-administered.

This site takes the opposite approach. Every figure is quoted from the statute that sets it, carries the date it was last checked against the publisher, and states what it excludes. Where the controlling amount is set by a county rather than by statute, no figure is published at all — because in a cost tool, a confident wrong number is worse than an honest gap.

Court charges are the small part

Filing charges are fixed or capped in most states, and this site computes them exactly where a statute states a schedule. What it cannot compute is usually larger: newspaper publication for creditor notice, a bond premium where no waiver applies, certified copies for every institution that demands an original, recording fees on real property, and professional help. Those are priced commercially or by negotiation, so they are named and left unpriced.

The threshold does not measure what you think

Each state counts something different. Some count personal property only and ignore real estate entirely; some count all probate property. Some measure gross value; some subtract liens first. Two estates with identical net worth can fall on opposite sides of the same limit purely because of how the property is titled — which is why this tool asks about ownership before it asks about value.