Recreation.gov Fees Explained: Reservation, Cancellation and Change Fees
Published October 10, 2026
Book a campsite on Recreation.gov and you'll pay more than the nightly campsite fee. Here's what each fee is, what it costs, and where the money goes.
The fees
- Reservation fee: $8 when you book a campsite, group site, cabin, lookout or day-use reservation online, $9 through the call center, or $3 in person. It isn't refunded if you cancel.
- Cancellation fee: $10 is kept from your refund when you cancel.
- Change fee: $10 per site if your new dates are completely different from the original ones. Adding or removing nights, or switching to another site, doesn't carry an extra fee.
- Late cancellation: cancel an individual campsite the day before or the day of arrival and you pay the $10 fee and lose the first night's fee. Cancel a one-night reservation late and you lose the whole amount. Cabins and lookouts have the same penalty within 14 days of arrival.
- Lottery and timed-entry fees: permit lotteries, timed entry tickets and similar reservations carry their own non-refundable fees, which vary by location.
Fees vary by facility and change over time, so check the Fees tab on your campground's Recreation.gov page before you book. The nightly campsite fee is set by the park or forest that manages the campground.
Where the reservation fee goes
Recreation.gov is run for the federal agencies by a private contractor, Booz Allen Hamilton, which is paid mainly through these per-reservation fees. According to the Congressional Research Service, no portion of the processing fee is kept by the federal government. The campsite fee itself goes to the agency that manages the site. See who runs Recreation.gov for more on the contract.
Are the fees legal?
The fees have been challenged:
- In 2022, a federal court in Nevada ruled that a $2 processing fee for timed entry to Red Rock Canyon violated the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act (Kotab v. Bureau of Land Management).
- In 2023, a group of campers filed a proposed class action against Booz Allen in Virginia, calling the processing, lottery and cancellation fees "junk fees" (Wilson v. Booz Allen Hamilton). The case was later withdrawn.
Members of Congress have also raised the fees as a concern, and the RESERVE Act would have the National Academy of Sciences study them. See what Congress is doing about Recreation.gov.
How to avoid paying fees twice
The cheapest reservation is the one you only make once. If you book a backup site "just in case" and cancel it later, you pay the $8 reservation fee and the $10 cancellation fee, and you take a site someone else could have used. Instead, book the site you really want if it's open, and set a cancellation alert if it isn't. See the Recreation.gov cancellation policy for how cancelled sites come back.