Fees

Our membership fees for organisations who will be registering published research outputs are tiered depending on the publishing revenue or expenses of your organisation, whichever is higher. Please select your tier from the table below, and use the higher number of either:

1. Total annual publishing revenue from all the divisions of your organisation (the member is considered to be the largest legal entity) for all types of activities (advertising, sales, subscriptions, databases, article charges, membership dues, etc). Or, if no publishing revenue then:
2. Total annual publishing operations expenses including (but not limited to) staff costs, hosting, outsourcing, consulting, typesetting, etc.

Since 2019, funders are able to register DOIs for the research grants they have awarded. Their annual membership fees are lower than for all other members, but their grant registration fees are higher. Funder fees are tiered depending on your annual award value.

Content Registration (metadata deposit) fees are one-time fees for the initial registration of DOI metadata records with us, and they are usually billed quarterly in arrears. If you are a member through a sponsor, your sponsor will pay registration fees on your behalf (but they may also charge you for their services - more here). If you are eligible for the GEM program, you will not pay registration fees - more here.

There are different fees for different record types, and some record types have discounts for older content - newer items are charged at the “current record” price, and older items are charged at the “back-year record” price. Some record types also have volume discounts available.

After the initial registration fee, there are no further fees for updating the metadata associated with existing records.

Content registration fees by record type

*Note: “Current record” prices are for content that was published (or awarded, in the case of grants) in the current calendar year + the previous two calendar years, and “Back-year record” prices are for content that is older than that. So for records registered with Crossref in 2025, current records are anything registered with publication/award dates of 2025, 2024, and 2023. Back-year is anything registered with publication/award dates of 2022 or before.

Pricing for peer reviews

If you register more than one peer review for the same article, then you pay a cheaper price than the first peer review. The prices are also different depending on whether you are the publisher of the article being reviewed or not.

Registered by the title publisher

Registered by an organisation who is not the publisher of the title being reviewed

Please note: Peer review prices will be changing from January 2026. See our blog for more information.

Volume discounts: preprints and other posted content

Please note: Volume discounts will be removed from January 2026. See our blog for more information.

Volume discounts: book chapters and reference entries for a single title

If you’re depositing a lot of chapters or reference works for the same title in the same quarter year, the following discounts apply:

The higher tiers are for encyclopaedias, in case you’re wondering how a single title could possibly have 100,000 chapters!

Please note: Volume discounts will be removed from January 2026. See our blog for more information.

Volume discounts: datasets and components

If you’re registering a lot of components or datasets for a single title in the same quarter year, the following discounts apply. There is no difference in price between current and back-year records for datasets and components.

Please note: Volume discounts will be removed from January 2026. See our blog for more information.

Members of Crossref can participate in Similarity Check. The service fee is 20% of your annual membership fee and is included in your annual membership fee invoice.

Each document run through Similarity Check is charged at a per-document-checking fee, and there are volume discounts. There is a separate invoice for Similarity Check document checking fees. This invoice is sent annually in January for the previous years’ usage.

If you want to get and use our metadata, you don’t need to be a member and you don’t have to pay a fee. We have a free public REST API that you can use without contacting us.

However, if you want a more predictable service level than we can support with the free API, then our optional paid-for service Metadata Plus could work for you. The service has a dedicated pool of servers and comes with monthly snapshot data dumps of XML or JSON for you to do more flexible and customised analyses. There is an annual subscription fee which pro-rated in your first year, and then renews each January. This annual fee is tiered, based on whichever is the higher between the subscriber organisation’s:

• total annual revenue (including earned and fundraised, e.g. grants); or
• annual operating expenses (including staff and non-staff, e.g. occupancy, equipment, licenses etc.).

The subscriber is always considered to be the largest legal entity, unless:

• you are a university, then the subscriber is considered to be the university department(s), school(s), or faculty(ies) that is using the service e.g. Department of Earth Sciences, School of Law, or Faculty of Medicine.
• you are a government body, then the subscriber is considered to be the agency(ies), department(s), or ministry(ies) that is using the service, e.g. Agence de l’Innovation Industrielle, Department of Energy, or Ministry of Consumer Affairs.

Some organizations work with us as a Sponsor to facilitate Crossref membership for groups of smaller organisations.

Sponsors provide administrative, technical and—if applicable—language support to the communities they work with. Sponsors pay one membership fee to Crossref for all the members that they work with, and sponsors also pay the content registration fees for any content registered by their members. Many sponsors then pass on these fees to members and/or charge the members for their services.

Sponsors may only work with member organizations whose annual publishing revenue or expenses (whichever is higher) is under 1 million USD.

Sponsor annual membership fees

The annual membership fee you pay as a Sponsor is based on the total combined annual publication revenue or expenses (whichever is higher) of all the members you sponsor.

We’ll ask you to re-categorise your annual membership fee at the end of every year, as the number of members that you support grows, and the combined publishing revenue or expenses of these members also grows.

If you sponsor grant-awarding funders, there are a different set of membership fees.

Sponsor content registration fees

At the end of each quarter you’ll be sent an invoice for any content items that have been registered by the members that you sponsor during that quarter. The charges are listed by each member’s prefix on the invoice. There are different fees for different record types and the fees are also different depending on the publication date of the content.

Similarity Check fees

If you decide to offer the optional Similarity Check service to the members you sponsor, you will pay an annual Similarity Check service fee on behalf of the members that you sponsor (which is 20% of your annual membership fee), and you will also pay the per document checking fees for your members who make use of the service. This will be itemised by member iThenticate account number on your invoice.