Costco Stopped Taking Passport Photos in February 2021
Costco closed the photo department at every location on 14 February 2021, and passport photos went with it. Where to go instead, and why the old $4.99 price still turns up in search results.
Costco does not take passport photos. The photo department at every location closed on 14 February 2021, and passport photos were discontinued with it.
That has been true for over five years. Verified again on 2026-09-09: the Costco Photo Center’s own hostnames, photocenter.costco.com and photo.costco.com, no longer resolve at all. They are not redirected somewhere else. They are gone.
Why this page used to say otherwise
Until this rewrite, the title of this page read “Does Costco Take Passport Photos? Yes, $6.99.” The answer was no, the price was invented, and the location count attached to it was meaningless. It had been wrong since 2021.
The reason the mistake survives across the internet is that Costco was genuinely the cheapest option while it lasted, at roughly $4.99 for two photos, against $16.99 at the drugstore chains. Everybody wrote about it. Almost nobody went back and updated. If you have seen a Costco passport photo price recently, that is what you were looking at, including here.
Costco’s stated reason for closing was that photo printing had declined since camera phones and social media, even as the number of photos taken kept rising.
Where to go instead
If you want somebody to take it for you, the drugstore counters still do: Walgreens is $16.99 for two prints with a digital copy emailed, and Staples is $19.99. If you are applying rather than renewing by mail, the Post Office can accept the application itself, with the photo as a $15 add-on you can skip.
If you would rather do it yourself, One Dollar Passport Photo costs $1. Upload a picture, the background is replaced and the frame is cropped to the 2x2 inch specification, and the finished result is visible watermarked before you pay. It produces a sheet of six photos to print at a drugstore counter for around 39 cents, plus the digital file for online renewal. The US passport photo page has the current specification.
That is the whole answer. Costco is not an option for this, and no amount of extra paragraphs will change it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why do search results still show a Costco passport photo price?
Because it was the cheapest in the country and people remember it. Around $4.99 for two photos undercut every drugstore by a wide margin, so it was written about heavily, and those pages have outlived the service by five years. This page was one of them until September 2026, which is not a comfortable thing to admit but is the reason it now says what it says.
Costco still has a photo section on its website. Can I use that?
For prints, cards and photo gifts by mail, yes. Not for a passport photo. The 2021 closure was of the in-store photo counter, which is where passport photos were taken by a member of staff. Ordering a print by post does not produce a compliant passport photo, because the compliance is in how the picture is taken and cropped, not in the paper it lands on.
Make the photo yourself instead
Six compliant 2x2 photos on one sheet plus the digital file, ready for any drugstore print counter.
Create Your PhotoSee your processed photo before paying anything