New York runs two vital records systems, and a request sent to the wrong one is simply refused. The State Department of Health's birth certificate page says plainly that Vital Records has birth records since 1881 for all of New York State except New York City, and does not have records for the boroughs of Manhattan, Kings, Queens, Bronx and Richmond. The New York City Health Department issues certificates for everyone born in the five boroughs and issues nothing for Nassau, Suffolk or any other county in the state. Outside the city, records are also available from the local Registrar of Vital Statistics for the place where the birth happened, which is often the quickest counter to use.
Both departments carry the same warning about ordering online. Each has a single authorised vendor, and the city adds that unauthorised vendors charge customers high fees for help getting a birth certificate, directing anyone who has used one to the city consumer protection department or to the city information line. Anyone searching for a New York certificate online should check which site they are on before entering personal details. Local offices that issue vital records appear on the New York county pages.
- 1881 and outside the city: the state holds birth records from that year for everywhere except the five boroughs.
- Thirty or forty five dollars: the state charges thirty by post and forty five plus a vendor fee online or by telephone, the vendor fee being per transaction.
- Fifteen dollars in the city: each New York City certificate costs fifteen dollars, in short or long form, plus any processing fee.
- Name on the record for online: the city allows online ordering only where the applicant's own name appears on the certificate.
Written by SearchSystems.net from New York's own systems: the New York State Department of Health birth certificates page, the New York City Health Department birth certificates page, the city's fees and processing times page, the city's page on how to order birth and death records, each read on October 15, 2026 by the SearchSystems editorial team.
Who the state will sell a certificate to
Outside New York City the eligibility list is short. A copy goes to the person named on the birth certificate, to a parent of that person whose own name appears on the certificate, and to a spouse, child or anyone else only by order of a New York State court. There is no general category for siblings, grandparents or researchers, which makes the court order route more common in New York than in most states. The identification rules are equally specific: the application must enclose either one valid photo identification, meaning a driving licence, a state issued nondriver photo identification card, a passport or a United States military photo identification, or two documents showing the applicant's name and address, such as a utility or telephone bill or a letter from a government agency dated within the last six months.
Anyone applying from a foreign country that requires a passport for travel must also enclose a copy of their United States passport, and the department lists the two most common reasons for refusal as applications without proper identification and failures to include that passport copy.
What the state charges, and how to pay
A postal order costs thirty dollars. An online or telephone order costs forty five dollars plus the vendor's processing fee, and the department notes that the processing fee is charged per transaction rather than per copy, so ordering several copies at once spreads it. Postal applications go to the Vital Records Certification Unit in Albany. Online and telephone orders take card payments and electronic cheques; postal orders take a personal cheque, a postal money order or a certified cheque payable to the state department of health, and an order from a foreign country must be paid by a cheque drawn on a United States bank or by an international money order, with cash never accepted.
The department also warns on its own page that it is currently experiencing significant delays in order processing, which is a reason to use a local registrar where the birth was registered outside the city.
The city system, and its two forms
New York City issues its own certificates in two versions, a short form and a long form, each costing fifteen dollars plus any processing fee. Orders may be placed online, by post or in person, but never by email, and online ordering is available only where the applicant's name is on the record, which pushes parents ordering for an adult child or executors handling an estate towards post or the counter. The long form is the version needed for an apostille: the first step in getting a New York City certificate recognised abroad is obtaining the long form together with a letter of exemplification, which is the city's certification of the official who signed the record.
Naming a baby, and the cost of changing it later
The city sets two generous windows at the start of a child's life and closes them firmly afterwards. There is no fee to add a child's given name to a birth certificate where the application is submitted within sixty days of the birth. There is also no fee for changes made by the hospital where they are sent within twelve months of birth, which covers the missing or incorrect information parents often spot on the first copy. After that, as the department puts it, once the baby is named it is official, and changing the name may require going to court and paying the applicable fees.
Corrections, and what they cost in each system
The state publishes a set of forms for different corrections: an application for correction of a certificate of birth for parent or child name spellings, a parent's surname, the child's date of birth or the child's gender at birth; a supplemental report of given name for adding a child's given name; an affidavit for adding a father's name where the parents were married at the time of birth and the name was omitted, which can also change the child's surname; and affidavits for conforming name changes after a Family Court order or after a biological parent's later marriage with an acknowledgment of paternity.
Where the child is under twelve months old and the hospital made the mistake, the state's advice is to contact the hospital first. Separate guidance covers gender designation corrections and the amendments made possible by the Child Parent Security Act for surrogacy agreements, acknowledgments of parentage and orders of parentage. In the city, corrections cannot be ordered online and carry a nonrefundable forty dollar application processing fee for most applications plus fifteen dollars for each certificate, with the same single fee however many items are corrected in one request, and a rejected correction application may be resubmitted within one year without paying the forty dollars again.
Refunds, searches and the Not Found Statement
The city sets out its refund practice in detail, and it is worth reading before ordering. Processing fees are never refunded whatever happens. A manual refund can take anywhere from three to ninety days because it passes through the city finance department. Cancelling an order means all documents and payments come back and the order must be resubmitted from the beginning, taking as long as a new submission, with five to seven business days to process and search an accepted order.
Where the certificate cannot be found, the applicant receives a Not Found Statement, and there is no refund for it. One remedy softens that: returning the original Not Found Statement by post with the additional information requested, within three months of the cancelled order, buys another search on the new information at no extra cost, although searching multiple years costs three dollars for each extra year.
Questions about New York birth certificates
Related New York records
New York's other records guides on this site are the New York public records law guide for the Freedom of Information Law, the New York death records guide for the same two systems, the New York court records guide for the unified court system, and the New York county pages for every county office.