Global Entry for Kids: How Minors Can Enroll (Free) Alongside a Parent

If you're a parent who's already enrolled in Global Entry, you've probably wondered whether your kids can get it too — and whether you have to pay full price for each of them. The short answer to both: yes, kids of any age can get Global Entry, and since a 2024 CBP rule change, they often don't have to pay at all. Here's what that rule actually covers, how the process works differently for a minor than for an adult, and what to expect once it's time to book an interview for the whole family.

Yes, Kids Can Get Global Entry — At Any Age

There's no minimum age to apply for Global Entry. Newborns, toddlers, and teenagers are all eligible, provided a parent or legal guardian handles the application on their behalf. The only real difference for a minor applicant is that they can't create or manage their own Trusted Traveler Programs (TTP) account or consent to the background check — a parent or guardian does that step for them, and needs to be involved through the interview as well.

That means the eligibility bar for a child is essentially the same as for an adult: CBP reviews the applicant (or, for a young child, the family's) background, and approval isn't guaranteed just because the applicant is a minor. In practice, most kids' applications are unremarkable from a background-check standpoint, but the application itself still asks for the same categories of information — citizenship/residency status, addresses, and travel history — filled in by the parent on the child's behalf.

The Rule That Changed the Math for Families

Here's the part that's genuinely new and worth knowing about: CBP's 2024 Trusted Traveler Programs fee rule didn't just raise the Global Entry fee to $120 — it also added a provision letting applicants under 18 apply at no charge, as long as a parent or legal guardian is already an active member of Global Entry, NEXUS, or SENTRI, or is applying for one of those programs at the same time as the child.

We cover the full context of that fee change — including why some "2026 fee increase" headlines are actually describing a 2024 rule that's simply still in effect — in Global Entry Fee Increase: What Changed, and Is $120 Still Worth It?. The short version relevant here: before this rule, every family member paid the full application fee regardless of age. A family of four — two parents and two kids — paid four separate fees. Now, as long as at least one parent is enrolled or applying alongside the kids, only the adults pay.

For a family of four at the current $120 adult fee , that's roughly a 50% reduction in total household cost compared to paying per person — without losing any of the benefits for the kids' memberships. If you're weighing whether to pay out of pocket at all, some travel rewards credit cards reimburse Global Entry fees as a cardholder perk; we go through which cards and how that reimbursement actually works in Best Credit Cards That Pay for Your Global Entry Application Fee — worth checking before you pay for the adults' applications, even with the kids now free.

Quick Reference: Does My Child's Application Qualify for the Fee Waiver?

How to Apply for Your Child, Step by Step

The mechanics are close to an adult application, with the parent or guardian doing the account and application work on the child's behalf:

1. Create (or use your own) TTP account, then start a new application for your child. Every applicant, including a minor, needs their own individual Trusted Traveler Programs record — you can't add a child as a dependent under your own membership. As the parent or guardian, you'll fill in the child's details.
2. Complete the application with the child's information. This includes citizenship or residency documentation, and travel history for the past several years, same as an adult application — for a younger child with a thin travel history, this section will simply be shorter.
3. Indicate the linked parent/guardian membership, if applicable. This is generally how the fee waiver gets applied — by connecting the child's application to a parent or guardian who's an active member or applying at the same time.
4. Submit and pay (or confirm the waiver), then wait for a decision. Once submitted, the application goes through the same CBP background review as any other applicant. Processing time isn't fixed and can vary considerably case by case — check your TTP account for status updates rather than guessing at a timeline.
5. Schedule the interview once conditionally approved. This is the step covered in more detail below — and it's where family logistics usually matter most.

What "Free" Doesn't Change

It's worth being precise about what the fee waiver does and doesn't cover, because it's easy to assume a free application means a lighter process overall. It doesn't:

• The application itself is the same. A parent still creates a TTP account for the child, fills out the same categories of personal and travel information, and submits it for CBP review.
• The background check still happens. CBP reviews every applicant, regardless of age or whether they paid a fee. There's no fast-tracked or reduced review for minors.
• The in-person interview is still required. This is the part that catches some parents off guard — a fee waiver doesn't mean skipping the interview. Every approved applicant, including a young child, needs to complete an interview at a Global Entry Enrollment Center (or via Enrollment on Arrival — more on that below) before their membership is active.
• The parent or guardian needs to be present. For younger children especially, a parent typically needs to accompany them to the interview, which means coordinating your own appointment logistics with your child's.

None of this makes it not worth doing — a free membership that still saves your family time at customs for the next five years is a good deal even with the extra steps. It just means the actual bottleneck for a family application looks a lot like the bottleneck for an individual one: not the fee, but getting everyone scheduled for an interview.

Scheduling Interviews for the Whole Family

This is where most of the friction in a family Global Entry application actually shows up. Each applicant — including each child — needs their own individual interview slot. The TTP scheduling system doesn't automatically bundle a family into back-to-back appointments; you're generally checking availability and booking each person's slot yourself.

At a busy Enrollment Center, that can mean watching for multiple open slots close enough together that you're not making separate trips, which gets harder the more family members you're trying to schedule. This is exactly the kind of situation where checking real, current availability — rather than assuming your nearest center is your only option — pays off. Our guide to Global Entry Interview Locations walks through why wait times vary so much by location and links to live, current data for several Enrollment Centers, including:

• Denver, CO
• Philadelphia, PA
• San Diego, CA
• Brooklyn, NY
• Memphis, TN

Each of those pages pulls current appointment availability directly from CBP's own scheduler, not a static estimate. The full list of tracked centers lives at /wait-times — worth comparing a few options side by side if your family isn't tied to one specific location, since a center a short drive or flight away can sometimes get your whole family interviewed weeks or months sooner than your closest one.

If nobody in your family already has conditional approval and an upcoming international trip, Enrollment on Arrival is also worth knowing about — it lets a conditionally-approved applicant complete their interview on return from an international flight instead of booking a separate appointment. Our complete Global Entry interview guide covers how that works in more detail, including what to bring and what to expect once you're in the interview room.

What to Bring to a Child's Global Entry Interview

Interview logistics for a minor look a lot like an adult's, with a couple of family-specific additions worth planning for:

• The child's own valid passport, plus a second form of ID if they have one (some younger kids won't, which is generally fine — check current requirements if you're unsure what counts for a young child specifically).
• A parent or guardian present for the interview, particularly for younger children. The officer may address questions to the parent as well as the child.
• Any additional documents CBP specifically requested in the conditional approval notice — this varies by applicant and shouldn't be assumed from a general list.
• A birth certificate or equivalent proof of relationship, if requested — some interviews may ask for documentation establishing the parent-child relationship, though this isn't universal.

Beyond documents, there's not much to specially prepare a child for — the interview itself (covered in general terms in our complete interview guide) is typically brief, and most of what the officer verifies is already on file from the application.

Single Parents and Shared Custody

One question that comes up often enough to flag directly: what if only one parent can bring the kids to the interview? Custody arrangements and consent requirements for a minor's application can vary by situation, and this isn't an area where it's safe to assume based on a general rule. If you're not the only parent with legal authority over your child's travel documents, check the current requirements — including whether the non-traveling parent needs to provide written consent — well before your scheduled interview date, so a documentation gap doesn't cost you the appointment.

Why Real-Time Availability Matters More for Families

For a solo applicant, watching for a single cancellation at one Enrollment Center is already a game of timing. For a family trying to get three or four people scheduled at slots close enough together to be practical, doing that manually — refreshing the CBP scheduler across multiple people and possibly multiple locations — gets tedious fast, and it's easy to miss an opening that would've worked.

This is the exact problem our alert service is built to solve. Rather than checking the scheduler yourself, you get notified the moment a slot opens at the centers you're watching, so you can grab it before someone else does. We explain the actual mechanism behind that — how it's different from just refreshing a page manually — in How Global Entry Appointment Alerts Work. For a family application, where you may be trying to line up several appointments at once, that head start on new openings matters more, not less.

The Bottom Line

There's no age requirement to apply for Global Entry, and since CBP's 2024 fee rule, kids under 18 can typically enroll for free as long as a parent is already a member or applying alongside them — a real cost reduction for traveling families that a lot of guides still don't mention. What the fee waiver doesn't change is the process itself: every child still needs a full application, a background check, and an in-person interview, and getting several family members scheduled at once is usually the actual bottleneck, not the fee. Checking live appointment availability across a few nearby Enrollment Centers — and catching openings as they appear — is the most direct way to get your whole family through the process faster.