Apostille Requirement Lookup (US state x destination country)

An independent tool. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or operated by any US state government, the Hague Conference on Private International Law (HCCH), or any state Secretary of State. State fees and processing times are each read from that state's own official page; Apostille Convention membership is read from HCCH's own public status table, the treaty's depositary.

A periodically refreshed bundle, not a live fetch per run. A state changes its apostille fee once a year at most; joining data/states.json against data/countries.json happens live, on every run, against each country's real entry-into-force date — so a country's accession that takes effect between refreshes still flips this Actor's answer correctly the day it happens, with no republish required. See witnesses.py for how drift in either bundle is actually caught.

---

Why this exists

A person or company preparing a US document for use abroad faces one binary question with real financial consequences if answered wrong: does the destination country accept a simple apostille (fast, cheap, one office), or does it require full consular legalization (the apostille step, then US federal authentication, then that country's own embassy or consulate — often weeks longer and hundreds of dollars more)? No free aggregator answers this for a specific (state, country) pair today — see DOSSIER.md, "WHY IT IS RELEVANT". This Actor answers it, and adds the issuing state's own current fee and processing time for the apostille step itself.

What you get per row

Field	Meaning
state, state_name	The 2-letter code and full name of the state you asked about
country_requested, country_matched	What you typed, and the canonical HCCH name it resolved to (null if no match)
found	Whether this pair resolved to real bundled data at all
authentication_path	apostille_only or legalization_required
hague_member, hague_member_since	Whether the destination is currently inside the 1961 Apostille Convention, and since when
hague_pending_future_entry	Set when the country has a FUTURE accession date that has not taken effect yet (e.g. Viet Nam, Thailand — see below)
federal_dos_authentication_required, consulate_legalization_required	The two extra steps a non-Hague destination requires beyond the state's own apostille
state_issuing_agency	The state office that issues the apostille
state_fee_usd	That office's current fee per document
state_mailin_days_min/max, state_walkin_available, state_walkin_days_min/max, state_walkin_requires_appointment	That state's own published processing time and submission options
state_source_url, country_source_url	Direct links to verify both halves yourself
charged / not_charged_reason	Whether this row cost you anything, and why not if it did not

Coverage — read this before you rely on it

v1 covers 10 states: CA, TX, FL, NY, PA, IL, GA, OH, NC, MI — the ten most populous, together the large majority of US apostille demand. A state outside this list resolves to found: false, delivered free, never invented. document_type is not modeled in v1 — a small number of states waive or reduce the fee for specific document categories (e.g. Texas for adoption paperwork); this Actor reports the general per-document fee only. Country coverage is the full 130-member Hague Apostille Convention, computed live against each member's real entry-into-force date, so it self-corrects as new accessions take effect without a republish.

What this Actor does NOT do: for a legalization_required destination, it tells you that federal authentication and consulate legalization are both required, but it does not carry a specific consulate's own fee or processing time — those vary by embassy and are not yet bundled.

---

Input

{
  "lookups": [
    {"state": "CA", "country": "France"},
    {"state": "TX", "country": "United Arab Emirates"}
  ]
}

Up to 20 pairs per run. Malformed entries (missing state or country) are dropped silently rather than guessed at.

Output

{
  "state": "CA",
  "state_name": "California",
  "country_requested": "France",
  "country_matched": "France",
  "found": true,
  "state_issuing_agency": "California Secretary of State",
  "state_fee_usd": 20.0,
  "state_mailin_days_min": 21,
  "state_mailin_days_max": 42,
  "state_walkin_available": true,
  "state_walkin_days_min": 1,
  "state_walkin_days_max": 2,
  "state_walkin_requires_appointment": false,
  "state_source_url": "https://www.sos.ca.gov/notary/request-apostille",
  "state_data_as_of": "2026-08-29",
  "hague_member": true,
  "hague_member_since": "1965-01-24",
  "hague_pending_future_entry": null,
  "country_source_url": "https://www.hcch.net/en/instruments/conventions/status-table/?cid=41",
  "country_data_as_of": "2026-08-29",
  "authentication_path": "apostille_only",
  "federal_dos_authentication_required": false,
  "consulate_legalization_required": false,
  "charged": true,
  "not_charged_reason": ""
}

A SUMMARY.json lands in the key-value store with how many pairs were requested, found, charged and free.