There’s been a number of changes to the billing processes at Crossref this year. To help explain these in more detail, I’m sharing the message below from my colleague Ryan McFall, our Director of Finance. Here are the key changes:
We will no longer charge USD 35 for international wire payments. Up until January 2026, we required an additional USD 35 wire fee for those making a payment via international wire. This additional payment is no longer required. But please note - you may still incur fees from your bank or intermediate bank to send wires or exchange in USD. (For the lowest fees, we recommend payment through our payment portal using a credit or debit card that can make payments in USD. The main billing contact on your account should already have access to our payment portal - they can update their password using the “forgot password” link).
We are no longer writing off invoices under USD 15. Due to the end of the USD 35 international wire fee, we decided to end another process most members were not aware of. Crossref had been writing off content registration invoices that were under USD 15, primarily because we did not wish to ask for an additional USD 35 for international wire payments on invoices with such a small amount. However, we continued to send our invoices under USD 15 for Similarity Check usage, which was inconsistent. With the end of the extra international wire fee in January 2026, we also stopped writing off invoices under USD15.
We’re no longer able to accept short payments by members. Sometimes, not all the money that a member sends to Crossref actually arrives with us. So a member may ask their bank to pay us their USD 275 membership fee, but only USD 255 arrives with our bank. This short payment is usually caused by the member’s bank (or an intermediary bank) removing fees from the payment.
In the past, we have been able to accept these short payments and write off the difference. These short payments were offset by the USD 35 international wire fee we had previously required. With the end of requiring this additional wire fee, we will no longer write off short payments. We’ll ask members to pay the entire amount owed. As you can imagine, with over 24.5k members, these short payments can add up to a significant amount of money.
We added a new USD 200 Fee Tier. At the start of 2026, we introduced a new Membership Fee tier for members with less than USD 1,000 in annual publishing revenue or expenses. Please see our Fees page for more information about pricing and our blog explaining these changes.
We’ve ended our Query Affiliates service. 2025 was the final year Crossref offered the Query Affiliates program. The program had been winding down for the last few years, but it officially came to an end at the end of 2025. All our metadata is available free of charge through our open APIs. If you do need extra service levels and support, take a look at our Metadata Plus service.
We ended Volume Discounts for content registration. 2025 was the final year for volume discounts on content registration for book chapters, components, datasets, and posted content. Please see our Fees page for more information about pricing and our blog explaining these changes.
We’ve reduced our fees for grant records, including waiving some fees for two years. Starting in 2026, current year grant records registered with us will cost USD 1 (down from USD 2 per record), and there will be no charge for back-year grant records registered with us between January 1st, 2026, and December 31st, 2027. Please see our Fees page for more information about pricing.
We’ve changed our fees for Peer Reviews. Starting in 2026, peer review fees will be consistent for everyone. There will only be fees for the first peer review registered, and additional reviews of the same work can be registered without a fee. Please see our Fees page for more information about pricing and our blog explaining these changes.