Government filing fees are published in the USCIS fee schedule and should be read at the time of filing. Beyond them, the substantial costs are the evidence-gathering inside the company and the professional fees for assembling a specialized-knowledge case.
The expensive part is internal time
The fee schedule, Form G-1055, is the authoritative source for current amounts, including any optional premium request, and figures quoted anywhere else age quickly. For a manufacturer filing its first specialized-knowledge petition, the larger expense is usually the hours spent by engineering and human-resources staff producing evidence that has never been collected in one place: training curricula, procedure authorship, escalation data, an organizational chart, and a comparison with what the U.S. labour market offers. Legal fees reflect that same work, because the case is built from those materials rather than from a form. If the employee will be placed at dealer sites, the service agreements may need review and possibly amendment, which is a legal cost on the commercial side. Budgeting only for filing fees consistently understates a first case.
Hypothetical example: A Canadian seed-sorting equipment company needs a specialist in Iowa to commission a proprietary optical calibration process. Its budget should include the hours needed to retrieve foreign payroll records, explain the corporate relationship, and assemble technical proof from engineers and field-service staff. Those internal costs often exceed the published filing charge. The petition still requires a qualifying year of foreign employment inside the preceding three years and evidence of specialized knowledge, not merely a scarce worker. Service-site agreements may add commercial review if the employee will work at customer facilities. A cost estimate that ignores those documents encourages rushed substitutions such as generic testimonials, which do not resolve the issue. The company should also project the five-year L-1B ceiling before paying for a deployment that cannot last as long as the contract.