Texas Notary Bond — $50 for the Full 4-Year Term

Texas will not commission you as a notary public until you file a $10,000 surety bond covering the full 4-year term of your commission. The bond premium is $50 for the entire four years — not per year. The Texas Secretary of State charges its own $21 filing fee on top of that, which no bond provider can waive or discount, so becoming commissioned costs $71 at minimum. Quantum Surety is a Texas Department of Insurance licensed agency, license #3480229.

We state the $21 separately because you will meet it at the SOS portal regardless of who sold you the bond, and a page that quotes $50 as the total is setting you up for a surprise.

Get Your Texas Notary Bond

  • Price: $50 bond premium for the full 4-year term, plus the state's $21 filing fee. $71 commissioned.
  • No credit check. No underwriting and no questions about your finances — eligibility is the state's list, not ours.
  • Open 24 hours a day. Apply at 2am on a Sunday; you are not waiting for an office to open on Monday.
  • Executed $10,000 bond PDF emailed to you, typically within minutes, ready to upload to the SOS portal.
  • Filing instructions included free with every bond, and a real phone number if the portal rejects something.

Get my Texas notary bond, or call (214) 666-8718.

Your notary bond does not protect you. It protects the public. If a claim is paid from your bond, the surety can come after you for the money. Being bonded is not being covered — the section below explains exactly how that works.

What a Texas Notary Bond Costs in 2026

  • Notary surety bond, $10,000 coverage, 4-year term: $50, paid to us. One payment for the whole commission period.
  • Texas Secretary of State filing fee: $21, paid to the state at the SOS portal. Unavoidable.
  • SB 693 assessment: $20 per attempt, paid to the state. The course itself is delivered by the Secretary of State; the $20 is the fee for the assessment that follows it, retakeable up to three times in three months. Required for new and renewing applicants from January 1, 2026.
  • Minimum to be commissioned: $71, or $91 if you still owe the education course.
  • Errors & Omissions insurance: optional, not required by Texas, priced separately by the limit you choose.
  • Credit check: none. Texas notary bonds are issued without underwriting.

$50 for the full four-year term is the standard market rate for this bond, not a discount. When we checked in August 2026, SuretyBonds.com, the National Notary Association and BondExchange were all charging it — their prices are theirs to change, so check for yourself rather than take our word for it. We match the market and we do not claim to beat it — the notary bond is a commodity, since the coverage amount is fixed by statute and the bond you file is legally identical whoever sells it to you. Anyone advertising a dramatically lower number is excluding the $21 state fee from the comparison.

Texas Notary Bond vs. Errors & Omissions Insurance

This is the question that trips up almost every newly commissioned Texas notary, and getting it wrong is expensive. In one line: the notary bond protects the public, and errors and omissions insurance protects you, the notary. They are not two versions of the same product and one does not substitute for the other.

The bond is a financial guarantee to the public, required by the Texas Secretary of State before it will issue your commission. If your notarial error costs somebody money, here is what actually happens. The claimant files against your bond, not against you directly. The surety investigates and, if the claim is valid, pays the claimant up to $10,000. The surety then has the right to seek reimbursement of that money from you personally. A surety bond is a guarantee, not insurance — you remain financially responsible for what the surety paid out on your behalf.

Errors and omissions insurance is the separate, optional product that responds to your own liability. It covers your legal defense costs and settlements for unintentional mistakes, up to your policy limit, with no reimbursement demanded from you afterwards. Texas does not require it, does not ask about it, and you are fully and validly commissioned without it.

So being bonded does not mean being covered. If you take one thing from this page, take that.

Who actually needs E&O

  • Notary signing agents handling loan closings and real estate documents: yes. A single error touches a six-figure transaction, so look at limits of $100,000 or more rather than the minimum.
  • Mobile notaries running their own business: yes. No employer is standing behind you.
  • High-volume notaries: probably. Exposure scales with the number of signatures you witness.
  • Occasional notaries working for an employer: check first. Many employers carry coverage extending to notarizations performed in the course of your job, and buying your own may duplicate it. Ask before you spend.

If you decide it fits you, there is nothing extra to arrange: the E&O option appears inside the same RLI checkout as the bond, and among our own buyers it typically adds about $35–$40 for the full four-year term — under $9 a year. About 1 in 3 takes it. The bond alone fully satisfies the Secretary of State either way.

Read the full Texas notary E&O insurance guide.

What Texas Notaries Actually Pay — Our Own Order Book

Rather than quote a price and leave it there, here is the real spread across the last 73 Texas notary bonds in Quantum Surety's book, taken from the carrier's own bookkeeping, May through August 2026. Add the state's $21 filing fee to every figure below — it is paid at filing, goes to Texas, and no provider can waive it.

50 of the 73 bought the bond alone, paying $50 to $80 at checkout (median $67) depending on the options chosen with it. They are fully and validly commissioned Texas notaries, with an identical bond and identical legal standing to everyone else on this list. The bond by itself is a complete answer, and if that is all you want, that is all you need to buy.

The other 23 — about 1 in 3 — chose to add E&O coverage, taking their orders to $85–$167 (median $103). That is optional cover, bought by people who decided the bond alone did not protect them enough — which, as the section above explains, it does not. That choice is the main reason any order here runs past $80.

  • Lowest order: $50 — the bond, nothing added.
  • Median across the whole book: $72.
  • Highest order: $167 — higher E&O limits chosen.

Do not read the top of the range as the price. The price is $50 plus the $21 state fee. Orders run higher only where buyers added optional cover, and the top of the range reaches $167 because a handful of signing agents bought high limits. This is our whole recent book rather than a survey, so treat it as what we see, not as a statewide statistic. We have not found another Texas bond provider that publishes this at all.

How to Get a Texas Notary Bond — Full Order of Operations

  1. Confirm you are eligible: 18 or older, a Texas resident, no felony conviction or crime of moral turpitude.
  2. Complete the SB693 two-hour education course from the Texas Secretary of State and pass the assessment. The $20 is the assessment fee and you may retake it up to three times within three months. Applies to applications for appointment or reappointment submitted on or after January 1, 2026.
  3. Buy your $10,000 notary bond. No credit check, no underwriting questions, checkout open around the clock. Your executed bond PDF is emailed to you. The same checkout offers optional E&O coverage — the part that protects you rather than the public; about 1 in 3 of our notaries adds it, typically $35–$40 for the four years.
  4. File the bond with your application through the Texas SOS Portal Notary System and pay the $21 state filing fee there. Written instructions come with every bond, and you can call (214) 666-8718 if the portal rejects something.
  5. Receive your commission from the Secretary of State and take the oath of office on the form it arrives with — any current notary can administer it. Then order your seal, after you have the commission, so the expiry date on it is right.
  6. Record your expiry date somewhere you will see it in four years. A lapsed commission cannot be renewed; you start the application over.

Starting from zero rather than mid-application? The complete guide to becoming a Texas notary walks every step — eligibility, the state course and assessment, filing, seal, record-keeping, renewal — with every cost itemized and who each dollar goes to.

SB693: What Changed for Texas Notaries in 2026

Senate Bill 693 passed in the 2025 session and took effect on September 1, 2025, but its requirements apply to applications for appointment or reappointment submitted on or after January 1, 2026. From that date, applicants must complete a two-hour education course delivered by the Texas Secretary of State and pass an assessment. The $20 is the assessment fee, not a course fee, and the assessment may be retaken up to three times within three months. If you were commissioned before September 1, 2025 you did not have to take it to get your current commission, but you will have to complete it when you reapply — the requirement attaches to the application, and reappointment counts. The law also extended record retention to 10 years from the date of notarization and created criminal penalties for improper notarizations.

SB693 did not change your commission term and did not change your bond. It is still a $10,000 bond, still the 4-year term, still $50. If a provider is charging you more and citing SB693 as the reason, that is not what the bill did. Full SB693 breakdown.

Free Tools for Texas Notaries

Both are free, need no account, and exist because SB 693 created two obligations nothing else on the market helps with.

  • Texas notary exam practice test — 20 questions in the same format as the state assessment, 70% to pass, every answer sourced to the statute. The real assessment costs $20 per attempt, so it is worth knowing where you stand first.
  • Texas notary record book — every field Gov't Code § 406.014 requires, with CSV export for the ten-year retention SB 693 now demands. Entries stay on your own device; we never see them.

Look Up Any Texas Notary Free

Quantum Surety runs a public bond verification portal covering more than 570,000 Texas notary records sourced from the Secretary of State. No account, no payment, and no obligation to buy anything. Use it to confirm your own commission status and expiry date, or to check a notary before relying on their seal. You can also ask us to email you a free reminder 60 days before your commission expires, which is the single most common way Texas notaries lose the ability to notarize.

Search the Texas notary lookup.

Get Your Texas Notary Bond

$10,000 bond, $50 for the full 4-year term, no credit check. Plus the Texas Secretary of State's $21 filing fee, paid to the state at the portal — $71 commissioned.

Get My Texas Notary Bond, or call (214) 666-8718. Quantum Surety Bonds, Texas Department of Insurance licensed agency #3480229.

Texas Notary Bond by City

The bond, the price and the requirements are identical statewide. These pages carry local commission counts and county filing detail.