A little more than 2 months ago, the State Department began a beta release of its online passport renewal system. There are certain criteria of who is eligible to renew online, but it allows most U.S. citizens who live in the United States, and are age 25+, who are just looking for a simple renewal of a soon-to-expire passport (read: no name changes, etc.).
Convenience of doing it online
Being able to renew your passport online definitely has its advantages. You don’t have to fill out the form by hand. You don’t have to get photos printed. You don’t even have to give up/mail in your current passport while you wait for the new passport to arrive. And if you’re like me, you don’t have to go to the post office to mail the big ol’ envelope with everything in it.
Mailing my passport renewal in July, 2023: “As Samantha said, Godspeed, passport renewal application and old passport…. ($1.83 stamp artwork is Joe’s. He collected stamps as a kid. He has leftovers and looks for every opportunity to use them. I told him if he wants me to use them, he has to lick ‘em)”
But what about wait times?
The State Department currently says that the turnaround time for processing passports is about 6 to 8 weeks, or 2 to 3 weeks if you pay for expedited service (and that doesn’t include mailing time in either direction).
That’s actually a pretty decent time compared to a few years ago when the wait was typically 4+ months.
One would hope that applying online would cut some of your wait time to get your new passport, since doing things electronically tends to shorten turnaround time (i.e. sometimes you’d send you renewal application to one processing center and they’d mail it to another processing center. That would take extra days).
Apparently, that’s the case.
I scoured the internet to get an idea of how long people were waiting when they renewed their passports online. My searches were limited to various groups and posts on Facebook, as well as a handful of subreddits on Reddit. And this is what people are saying:
- Applied June 15th, received June 21st (6 days)
- Applied June 20th, received June 27th (7 days)
- Applied June 21st, received June 29th (8 days)
- Applied June 24th, received July 2nd (8 days)
- Applied July 10th, received July 19th (9 days)
- Applied July 15th, received July 26th (11 days)
- Applied July 16th, received July 26th (10 days)
- Reported July 19th: “Renewed my passport online with their beta system. Got it back in 2 weeks. Didn’t expect that. Pleasantly surprised.“
- Applied July 25th, received August 5th (11 days)
- Applied August 1st, received August 8th (7 days)
- Reported August 2nd: “New passport in exactly one week, without paying expediting fee, via new passport renewal beta site!“
- Applied August 8th; new passport in hand August 16th (8 days)
- Applied August 15th, received August 23rd (8 days)
- Reported August 21st: “14 day turnaround!”
- Reported August 22nd: “I just did it. It took 8 days. Mind. Blown.”
Of these 15 responses:
- 1 received their passport in 6 days
- 3 got their passports back in 7 days
- 5 had their passports in hand in 8 days
- 1 received their passport in 9 days
- 1 got their passport back in 10 days
- 2 had their passports in had in 11 days
- 2 received their passports in 14 days
And the average wait time for all of them was about 9 days.
Nine days. And that’s without expedited service! Just nine days. As opposed to 6 to 8 weeks.
Of course, we don’t know where these people lived compared to where their passports were mailed from; that probably added some days to some people. But still…9 days!
That…doesn’t suck, y’all!
Caveat
As a reminder, the online renewal form is only in beta. That means the government can pull it at any second. They also limit how many people can apply on any given day. However, most people seem to do OK if they follow the directions for when it opens for use every day.
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