How long does it take to get a U.S. passport?

The headache — and sometimes heartache — of waiting more than three months to get a passport seems to be over. This week, the U.S. State Department said it now takes about six to eight weeks to process a routine passport application. And the most costly expedited service is expected to take about two to three weeks for the near future.

The department still recommends that people apply early if they have travel plans and need a new passport or have to renew theirs.

In its latest time estimate, the Bureau of Consular Affairs notes that “with this update, we have fulfilled our commitment to return to benchmarks from March 2020.” In other words, pre-pandemic speeds.

It has been a rough journey — or perhaps lack of journey if you’re talking to people who missed trips because of the lengthy delays in the interim. At its peak, people were waiting months to receive their passports and some likely missed trips they’d planned or hoped to take.

Between March and October 2023, times were running 10 to 13 weeks for routine passport processing and seven to nine weeks for expedited service. That was better than June 2021, when routine processing time was reportedly 18 weeks, according to an October 2023 article on The Points Guy

The delays have in part been simply high demand. The department update says that between October 2022 and September 2023 (the fiscal year for the federal government), more than 24 million passport books and cards were issued, which was a record number. There are 160 million valid U.S. passports in circulation and nearly half of Americans have one.

But as the Deseret News earlier reported, during COVID-19, travel pretty much dried up and staff was reassigned or let go. Ramping back up has been rocky.

Processing times, by the way, do not include the time that your application or passport is in the mail. The notice says that “it may take up to two weeks for us to receive your application after you mail it to us and up to two weeks for you to receive your completed passport after we mail it to you.”

There’s a way to cut that time down, if you’re desperate, traveling soon and can get to a location that expedites passports. That requires an appointment and you must have international travel within 14 calendar days, according to The Thrifty Traveler.

That article notes that times may be even shorter. “When Thrifty Traveler co-founder Nick submitted his passport earlier this month, he had it back in hand less than three weeks from the day he dropped it in the mail … and that was without paying for expedited service,” the article said.

That’s a far cry from what the past year or so have been like, per the article: “Travelers reported long wait times on the phone, paying additional fees for expedited service or rushed delivery, or even booking additional flights to get to a passport agency with scarce in-person appointments — if they could find one at all. Many even turned to members of Congress for help,” Thrifty Traveler’s Allie Johnson wrote Monday.

To improve service, the State Department says it is actively recruiting workers, it’s begun notifying passport holders their passport is expiring and it at some point will allow some online passport renewal, though that’s still in the future. The department did a pilot test of that and is looking over how it worked.