Maximum a plan may charge for copies of plan documents
25 cents
per page
29 CFR 2520.104b-30(b), the Department of Labor's cap on a reasonable charge under ERISA section 104(b)(4). Checked 2026-09-16.
How to request your complete claim file
You are entitled to a free copy of everything relevant to your claim, including material the plan chose not to rely on. Here is how to ask for it, what a plan may charge for the separate plan documents, and what to do if it does not respond.
Federal regulation entitles you to "reasonable access to, and copies of, all documents, records, and other information relevant to the claimant's claim for benefits," on request and free of charge. "Relevant" is defined broadly: it includes anything the plan relied on, anything it considered or generated while deciding your claim even if it was not relied on, and anything that "demonstrates compliance with the administrative processes and safeguards required pursuant to paragraph (b)(5) of this section," which is the regulation's own safeguard requirement rather than whatever process the plan wrote for itself. In practice this means the file can include internal reviewer notes, a vocational assessment the plan ordered but did not cite, or a peer-review report from a consultant, not only the material quoted in your denial letter.
How to ask
Send a written request (an email creates a record) asking for your complete claim file under ERISA's claims procedure regulation, and keep a copy of what you sent and when. Requesting your file is separate from filing your appeal: do it as early as possible so you have time to review it before your appeal deadline, not the week the deadline is due.
What if the plan does not respond, or drags its feet
Raise it inside the appeal itself, in writing, and keep the trail: a request the plan did not answer is part of the record of how your claim was handled, and the regulation treats a plan's failure to follow the claims procedures it requires as a serious matter in its own right. See what is deemed exhaustion.
You may also have read that a plan can be made to pay $110 a day for ignoring a document request. Be careful with that. The per-day penalty in ERISA section 502(c)(1) attaches to information the statute itself requires an administrator to furnish, which is a different and narrower category than the claim file described on this page, and this site has not sourced an answer to whether a claim-file delay falls inside it. Read the $110-a-day document penalty explained before relying on it for anything. Request the file because you need what is in it, and early enough that a slow response does not eat your appeal window.
What this can cost you
The claim file itself is free. Statutory plan documents are a separate request with a separate rule: the administrator may charge for copies, and the Department of Labor caps what counts as reasonable.
The same rule treats a charge as reasonable if it equals "the actual cost per page to the plan for the least expensive means of acceptable reproduction," and sets a hard ceiling on top of that test: "in no event may such charge exceed 25 cents per page." It also says that "no other charge for furnishing documents, such as handling or postage charges, will be deemed reasonable." You can also ask the administrator in advance what the charge would be, which the rule requires it to tell you. Note what the figure is not: a plan document set can run to a large number of pages, so a per-page cap is not a cap on the total, and the cap applies to the statutory documents, not to the claim file, which you get at no charge.
Sources
29 CFR 2560.503-1(h)(2)(iii) and (m)(8) for the free claim-file right. 29 U.S.C. 1024(b)(4) and 29 CFR 2520.104b-30 for the plan-document request and the 25-cents-a-page cap. All checked 2026-09-16.