In short: HM Land Registry charges £7 per document online: £7 for the title register, £7 for the title plan, £7 for each filed deed. Ordering by post costs £11. If you have paid £30, £40 or more, you did not buy a better document. You bought the same PDF from a company that placed an advert above the government's own service.
HM Land Registry has said this itself. In a post titled "Are you paying too much for HM Land Registry services?", Andrew Robertson, its Head of Customer Policy, warned that private companies "re-purpose our information and repackage it into bundles", and that people frequently reach those sites believing they are dealing with the registry itself.
This guide sets out what the documents actually cost, why so many people pay several times that, and how to tell the difference in about ten seconds.
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How much does HM Land Registry charge for a title register?
Why do some websites charge £30 or £40 for the same document?
How can I tell if a site is the official Land Registry?
Can I get a refund if I have overpaid for title deeds?
Is BuyLand affiliated with HM Land Registry?
What HM Land Registry actually charges
These are the statutory fees, set by the Land Registration Fee Order and last changed on 9 December 2024.
| Document | Online | By post |
|---|---|---|
| Title register | £7 | £11 |
| Title plan | £7 | £11 |
| Filed deed (each) | £7 | £11 |
| Land Charges search (K15 or K16), per name | £6 | £7 |
| Local Land Charges search | £15 | — |
Two things follow from that table. A register and plan together cost £14, not £40. And there is no premium tier: the £7 document is the same court-admissible official copy a solicitor orders, because there is only one version of it.
The fees went up sharply in December 2024. Before then a register cost £3 online, which is why older articles, forum posts and even some professional guidance still quote the wrong number. If a site tells you the registry charges £3, its information predates the current fee order.
Why people end up paying £40
None of this is hidden. It is simply that the official service is rarely the first thing you see.
Search for "title deeds" or "who owns this property" and the top of the results page is usually advertisements, marked "Sponsored". Those slots are bought by resellers, and they are bought precisely because the search is commercially valuable: someone looking for their property's deeds is ready to spend money right now. Search engine advertising is expensive, and the £30 to £40 price tags exist to cover it.
The presentation does the rest. Official-looking crests, phrases like "official documents" and "Land Registry search", and reassuring blue-and-white design all suggest a government service. HM Land Registry's post notes that third parties cannot legally use "Land Registry" in a domain name, though some try variations that get close.
Earlier this month we checked ten of these sites ourselves and found the same £7 title register selling for between £20 and £40, sometimes with the word "official" used four or five times on a single page. The full findings are in our audit: The £7 document people keep paying £30 for.
How to tell in ten seconds
HM Land Registry's own advice is the right starting point, and it is short:
- Start on GOV.UK. The official service is "Search for land and property information" on gov.uk. If you are already there, you cannot be overcharged.
- Look for the "Sponsored" label. Anything marked Sponsored at the top of a search results page is an advert, not the government.
- Check the domain. Only government bodies may use a gov.uk address. Anything else, however official it looks, is a private company.
- Read the small print. Legitimate resellers say plainly, usually in the footer, that they are not affiliated with HM Land Registry. If you have to hunt for that statement, treat the price with suspicion.
One more test of our own: does the price move with the number of documents? Official copies cost £7 each. A site charging one flat fee for "your deeds" without saying how many documents that includes is not pricing at cost, and may well deliver less than you expect.
What to do if you have already overpaid
You are not without options, though none is guaranteed.
Ask for a refund first. If the documents have not been sent yet, or the site implied it was the registry, a polite email asking for a refund on those grounds is often successful. Reputable resellers would rather refund than argue.
Then consider your card provider. Purchases made by credit card between £100 and £30,000 carry protection under section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act, which will not usually apply to a £40 document, but both credit and debit cards allow a chargeback claim to your bank where a service was misrepresented. Time limits apply, typically 120 days.
And you can report it. Misleading commercial practices can be reported to Trading Standards through the Citizens Advice consumer helpline. That will not get your money back directly, but it is how patterns get noticed.
Realistically, for £30 the effort may exceed the recovery. The more valuable outcome is knowing the fee before the next order: yours, or a friend's.
Where we sit, plainly
We are a third-party site too, and you should judge us by the same test we just described.
Our prices are the statutory fee plus 50p per document card processing: £7.50 for a title register, £15 for a register and plan, £7.50 for each filed deed. The 50p covers the card fee and nothing else. We are not affiliated with HM Land Registry, we say so on every service page, and we say on those pages that you can order directly from gov.uk if you would rather. Plenty of people do, and that is fine: our business is due diligence reports on land, not marking up government documents.
If you are not sure which document you need in the first place, that is worth ten minutes before you spend anything: our guide explains each one, what it shows, and when you actually need it.
The short version
The register is £7. The plan is £7. Each filed deed is £7. Everything above that is somebody's advertising budget.