ORA-02 · Public records

What a Georgia open records request costs

Georgia caps what an agency may bill you for an open records request: the first 15 minutes of staff time are free, copies run at most 25 cents a page, and prepayment is owed only past a $500 estimate.

Published 6 September 2026 · The Georgia Records Desk editorial team

Three numbers do most of the work

If you have ever hesitated before filing a request because you feared an open-ended bill, the Open Records Act sets out the ceiling for you. The rules live in O.C.G.A. § 50-18-71, and the Attorney General’s open government FAQ walks through them in plain terms. The FAQ reduces the money question to three figures: a quarter, fifteen minutes, and five hundred dollars. Everything an agency can legitimately charge you hangs off one of those three.

A custodian “can collect a reasonable fee for the search, retrieval and other direct administrative costs for complying with an Open Records request.” That sentence from the FAQ is the whole fee structure in miniature: you pay for the labor of finding the record, for making copies, and for redaction if redaction is needed. What you never pay for is the record itself.

How much is a page?

When an agency hands you copies, it “may charge a uniform copying charge not to exceed 25 cents a page.” Two words carry the rule here. “Uniform” means the agency cannot quote you one price and your neighbor another for the same kind of copy. “Not to exceed” means 25 cents is a ceiling, not a fixed tariff. The FAQ does not say agencies commonly charge less, so treat the quarter as the most you can be asked to pay per page, not as a guaranteed price.

Agencies are also told to use “the most economical means available” for providing copies. Where records are kept on a computer, they should be made available electronically where practicable, subject to reasonable security restrictions that keep you out of material you did not ask for. In practice, a request for a digital file can end up costing you nothing at all.

What does the staff time cost you?

Search and retrieval labor is billed by the hour, and the FAQ sets the cap in an unusual way: “The hourly charge for these costs cannot exceed the salary of the lowest paid full-time employee who, in the discretion of the custodian, has the necessary skill and training to perform the request.” The agency picks who is qualified, but it must price that person at the bottom of the pay scale that qualification allows. A request simple enough for a clerk cannot be billed at an analyst’s rate.

Before you do the arithmetic, subtract the free block. “No charge can be made for the first 15 minutes of these actions.” Fifteen minutes of searching, retrieving and direct administration come off the bill before anything is owed. Plenty of requests fit inside that window and cost only the copies.

Where does the money table stop?

The figures the Act fixes are few enough to sit in one small table. Anything an agency quotes you beyond these lines deserves a written explanation.

Can the agency make you pay up front?

Usually, no. In the opinion of the Attorney General, prepayment may not be required except in two situations spelled out in the Act: where the requester failed to pay the legal costs of a previous request, or where the estimated cost of the current request exceeds $500. Outside those cases, an agency’s obligations under the Act are automatic and set by law; the law makes no provision allowing the agency to condition compliance on paying first.

An agency does keep the right to collect what it is properly owed. The FAQ says it may proceed directly to collection measures, without a prior court adjudication, if costs go unpaid. And when an agency intends to charge, it must estimate the costs and notify you in writing within three business days of receiving your request. That notice is your exit ramp: you can modify or withdraw the request rather than take the charge. Ordinarily the agency need not start collecting the records until it knows you accept the cost.

If you want the mechanics of the request itself, the three-business-day production deadline and the written follow-up an agency owes you when it misses it, the companion page on how a Georgia open records request works lays them out step by step.

Do you pay for redaction?

Sometimes, yes. Redaction is “the striking out of specific information from a record,” usually shown by blacking out the protected text, though computer records may be redacted by printing only the designated fields. An agency cannot refuse to produce a record just because it contains exempt material, such as Social Security numbers, medical information, bank account information or the home addresses of public employees, judges and law enforcement officers. The record comes out with those items removed.

The agency may bill for that work, and the rate is based on the cost associated with the lowest paid employee capable of properly performing the redaction. If it plans to charge, the FAQ says it should estimate the cost in advance and notify you, giving you the choice to accept, withdraw or modify your request. You never discover a redaction bill after the fact.

What you cannot be billed to create

One cost the Act takes off the table entirely is the cost of inventing a document for you. A public officer or agency “is not required to prepare reports, summaries, or compilations not in existence at the time of the request.” You can ask for what the office already holds; you cannot commission new analysis at public expense. The narrow exception, drawn from O.C.G.A. § 50-18-70(d), covers a printout of information already sitting in an electronic record where no significant programming is needed to produce it.

This boundary matters when you draft a request. Ask for the existing salary file and you are within the Act; ask for a spreadsheet combining three files in a way the office never built, and the office can decline without quoting a price at all. The section on where Georgia publishes its own accounts names several files that already exist in the open, which is often the cheaper route to the same number.

Reading the FAQ before the invoice arrives

Every figure in this article comes from one page: the Attorney General’s open government FAQ, which answers cost questions alongside the three-business-day rule and the exceptions that protect personal information. It is the document to have open when an agency sends you a cost estimate, because it names the statute behind each ceiling and shows the exact wording a custodian is working from.

Before you file your next request, write it around one record that already exists, in the electronic format the office keeps it in. A request framed that way usually lands inside the free fifteen minutes, and the official page is linked above if the custodian’s quote needs checking.

What law.georgia.gov is

The site is the Office of the Attorney General of Georgia. Its open government FAQ answers questions on the Open Records Act and the Open Meetings Act, covering fees, deadlines, redaction, closed meetings and which entities the two Acts reach. The cost rules summarized here come from that page, under O.C.G.A. § 50-18-71 and related sections.