How to Get a Passport in NC (and Every State) for 2026
How to get a passport in NC, Florida, Michigan, PA, Illinois or Texas: the process and fee are federal. What differs locally is the office and the wait.
The short answer
How to get a passport in NC is the same process as anywhere else in the country. File Form DS-11 with a $165 first-time adult fee at an acceptance facility, which in North Carolina is often a county Register of Deeds office rather than only a post office. The federal process, forms and fees never change by state. What changes is which office is nearby, whether it takes walk-ins, and how long the local line runs.
Searching by state feels like the right instinct, because the office, the hours and the wait genuinely are local. The paperwork underneath them is not, and treating this as a state-by-state process is how people end up at the wrong counter or budgeting the wrong fee.
This covers what is identical everywhere, what actually varies in North Carolina, Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Illinois and Texas, and one table to compare the six without reading six separate government pages.
What do you need before you apply?
- Proof of US citizenship: a certified birth certificate, naturalization certificate, or a previous US passport
- A government-issued photo ID
- One 2×2 inch color photo, taken within the last six months
- The completed Form DS-11, unsigned until you are in front of the acceptance agent
- Two separate payments: a check or money order for the application fee, and a second method for the facility’s execution fee
Is the passport process actually different by state?
No. Every applicant nationwide files the same Form DS-11 and is judged against the same eligibility rules, regardless of which state, county or facility processes the form. A first-time adult passport book costs $165 total everywhere: a $130 application fee to the State Department plus a $35 execution fee to whichever facility accepts the application.
What genuinely differs by state is the acceptance network itself. Some states route most applications through post offices. Others lean on county government offices, and a few use public libraries heavily. None of that changes the form, the fee or the processing time once the application reaches the State Department.
Note: the $35 execution fee is paid once per application, to the facility, not the State Department, and it is separate from any local photo fee some offices also charge. Bring more than one payment method.
Which offices process passports where you live?
Three kinds of local office do this work under contract with the State Department, and knowing which kind is near you saves a wasted trip.
Post offices
The largest single network, and the only one with a consistent national booking system at usps.com/scheduler. Most USPS locations now require a scheduled appointment for a first-time application; a smaller number still offer limited walk-in windows.
County clerk, court and register offices
Naming varies by state: Register of Deeds in North Carolina, Clerk of Courts or Prothonotary in Pennsylvania, Circuit Court Clerk in Illinois, District Clerk in Texas. All perform the same acceptance-agent role a post office does, and several run appointment systems entirely separate from the USPS scheduler.
Public libraries and tax collector offices
Less common, and concentrated in a handful of states. Florida is the clearest example, with public library systems and county tax collector offices both authorized acceptance facilities alongside the post office and clerk of court.
How to get a passport in North Carolina
North Carolina is the one state on this list where a *Register of Deeds* office, not a post office, is often the default answer. Wake County’s Register of Deeds has processed passports since 2022. It takes both walk-ins before 1 p.m. and scheduled appointments to 3 p.m., Monday to Friday, 7:45 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Guilford County’s office is stricter: walk-in only, no appointment accepted, Monday to Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. Its execution fee is the standard $35, payable by cash, check or card.
Both counties charge the same federal fee as any other facility in the country. What differs is simply whether you can walk in or need to book ahead, and that varies county by county even within North Carolina.
How to get a passport in Florida
Florida spreads acceptance facilities across more office types than most states: post offices, county clerk of court offices, public libraries and county tax collector offices all participate. The Miami-Dade Public Library System runs passport service by appointment only, one slot per applicant, across several branches.
Broward County’s Clerk of Courts has been warning applicants of longer-than-normal wait times because of high application volume as of this writing. That is worth checking before a same-day trip. Okaloosa County’s Tax Collector offices, in the Panhandle, also require an appointment.
How to get a passport in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Illinois
These three states lean on different local structures, but the same federal rules apply to all of them.
Michigan’s network is dominated by USPS locations, and most now require a scheduler appointment rather than a walk-in, the same national policy that applies everywhere. Several county clerk offices also accept applications; call ahead, since hours and appointment policy vary office to office.
Pennsylvania routes a significant share of applications through county courthouse offices, named Prothonotary in some counties and Clerk of Courts in others. York County’s Prothonotary accepts passport applications by appointment only.
It also mails original citizenship documents back after processing, rather than returning them the same day. Plan around that if you need the birth certificate back quickly for anything else.
Illinois uses county Circuit Court Clerk offices alongside post offices. Cook County’s Clerk of the Circuit Court processes applications by appointment only, at the Probate Division on the 12th floor of the Daley Center in downtown Chicago, 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. weekdays.
Anyone traveling within 14 days should use the separate Chicago regional passport agency instead, not this county office. It is covered in full in our guide to passport offices and regional agencies.
How much is a passport in Texas?
The same as everywhere else: $165 for a first-time adult book, $135 for a child’s book, $65 for an adult card, and $130 to renew an eligible book by mail with no execution fee. Texas sets no separate state fee, and no Texas agency, including the Department of Public Safety that issues driver’s licenses, processes passports at all.
What Texas does have is a dense network of county District Clerk offices acting as acceptance facilities. Travis County runs both models at once: walk-ins are accepted at its main Airport Boulevard location until 3:30 p.m., while two additional Travis County locations are appointment-only.
The full national fee table, including the card, renewal and expedite pricing, is broken down in how much a US passport costs.
Passport offices by state, compared
| State | Common facility types | Appointment or walk-in | Local note |
|---|---|---|---|
| North Carolina | Register of Deeds, post office | Both, varies by county | Wake County allows walk-ins before 1 p.m.; Guilford is walk-in only |
| Florida | Post office, clerk of court, library, tax collector | Mostly appointment | Miami-Dade libraries and Okaloosa Tax Collector are appointment-only |
| Michigan | Post office, county clerk | Mostly appointment | USPS scheduler is the primary booking system statewide |
| Pennsylvania | Prothonotary, clerk of courts, post office | Appointment-only at most county offices | York County mails citizenship documents back after processing |
| Illinois | Circuit court clerk, post office | Appointment-only at Cook County | Chicago regional agency is separate, for travel inside 14 days |
| Texas | District clerk, post office | Both, varies by county | Travis County mixes walk-in and appointment-only locations |
What goes wrong when you pick the wrong office?
- Showing up without an appointment where one is required. A growing share of facilities, including most post offices, no longer take walk-ins for a first-time application. Check the specific location before driving over, not just the general policy for that state.
- Budgeting the fee shown on a county website. Some county acceptance-facility pages have not been updated since the State Department’s fee restructuring, and still list the older $130 total rather than the current $165. Confirm the total on the State Department’s own fee page before you go.
- Assuming a state agency handles it. Passports are never processed at a state DMV, tax office, or driver’s license bureau by default. If a facility is not a post office, library, or county clerk, court or register office, it is very likely not an acceptance facility at all.
- Bringing only one payment method. The application fee and the execution fee are usually paid separately, sometimes to different payees, and not every facility accepts the same forms of payment for both.
What if no nearby office processes passports?
- Search the official locator, the State Department’s Passport Acceptance Facility Search, rather than guessing from a search engine result that may be outdated.
- Widen the search to a neighboring county. Coverage is uneven even within a single state, and a bordering county’s office is often no further than the one you first checked.
- Call before you drive, especially for a facility with limited hours like a library branch or a courthouse office that closes for lunch.
- Use USPS’s scheduler directly at usps.com/scheduler if county offices in your area are booked out, since post office appointment slots often open on a rolling basis.
- Consider a regional passport agency only if travel is inside 14 days. It is not a faster general-purpose option, and appointments there require proof of imminent travel.
Frequently asked questions
In short
The federal passport process, forms and fees are identical no matter which state you apply from. That includes the $165 first-time adult total, which applies in North Carolina, Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Texas and everywhere else.
What changes locally is only the office: a Register of Deeds in North Carolina, a library or tax collector in Florida, a Prothonotary in Pennsylvania. Illinois uses a circuit court clerk, and Michigan and Texas mix post offices with county offices.
Confirm your specific facility’s hours and appointment policy before you go, since those details change faster than the federal rules underneath them.
Rules and local office details in this article were checked against official state, county and federal sources in September 2026. If something here no longer matches what you found at the counter, tell us and we will correct it.
Once the office is sorted, the next practical questions are what the whole thing costs and what you can pack for the trip that passport is for. How much a US passport actually costs breaks down the fee table in full, and getting a passport for a baby or minor covers the extra consent rules that apply regardless of state.
Sources
- US Department of State: Passport Fees
- US Department of State: Passport Acceptance Facility Search
- Wake County Register of Deeds: Passport Information
- Guilford County Register of Deeds: Passport Services
- Miami-Dade Public Library System: Passport Services
- Broward County Clerk of Courts: Passports
- Okaloosa County Tax Collector: Passports
- York County, PA: Passport Services
- Cook County Clerk of the Circuit Court: Passport Services
- Travis County District Clerk: Passport Services
- USPS: Passport Services
