The publisher decides what you pay

What will this journal cost you — and can you legitimately pay less or nothing? Verified APC prices, waiver conditions and free-to-publish routes, with a date on every number.

1,552verified prices

82journal comparisons

9fields

109waiver countries

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Cost calculatorYour country → what you actually pay Verified pricesSearch 1,552 journals Journal fee pages59 journals checked one by one Nature journalsNature $12,850 and 85 more Compare journalsFees & waivers side by side Publish freeNo-fee journals by field By fieldMedicine, physics, economics… Waiver scorecardWhich publisher is most generous

What you get

A verified price with a date

Every figure is read from the publisher's own fee page, with the day we read it. If we haven't verified a price, the field is blank — an honest blank beats a confident guess.

Waiver conditions, not just checkmarks

At Wiley and Sage only the corresponding author's country counts; at Elsevier every author must qualify; at PLOS the fee depends on the Research4Life group of your institution's country. We record the rule, not the flag.

The free routes other tools miss

Diamond journals that charge nothing, the SCOAP3 route that makes particle physics free, and a tracker of journals that used to be free and no longer are.

Where the gap is widest

Full waiver at Wiley, 50% at Taylor & Francis. On a USD 2,500 charge that is USD 1,250 a paper.

Angola100% / 50%Benin100% / 50%Bhutan100% / 50%Cambodia100% / 50%Cameroon100% / 50%Comoros100% / 50%Congo100% / 50%Côte d'Ivoire100% / 50%Djibouti100% / 50%Eswatini100% / 50%Ethiopia100% / 50%Ghana100% / 50%

See all 35 countries

How we compare

Other tools tell you whether a journal is open access, whether you may self-archive, or whether your grant complies. We tell you the cost — and how to pay less. See where we sit next to DOAJ, Sherpa, the Journal Checker Tool, ESAC and OpenAPC →

What we found

The waiver follows the corresponding author, not the paper

If a co-author abroad is listed as corresponding, the reduction is lost — even when the research and every other author sit in an eligible country. At Elsevier it goes further: all authors must be in the same group, and a mix of Group A and Group B authors brings a full waiver down to 50%.

Hybrid journals are excluded almost everywhere

Of the eight publishers checked, only IOP Publishing extends waivers to hybrid titles. Elsewhere the reduction applies to fully open access journals only. In a hybrid journal you can still publish at no cost under the subscription route — the article simply will not be open access.

Two publishers make you ask

Wiley, Sage, Elsevier and PLOS apply the reduction automatically. Taylor & Francis and Springer Nature require a request at submission. An author who waits for the system to notice pays in full.