TSA PreCheck vs Global Entry vs CLEAR: 2026 Renewal Prices and Keep Rules

This guide compares TSA PreCheck, Global Entry, and CLEAR for 2026 renewals, with verified prices and keep-or-drop thresholds.

It explains when $70 TSA PreCheck online renewal, $58.75 Idemia renewal, $120 Global Entry, or CLEAR's 20+ flight rule makes sense.

How PreCheck, Global Entry, CLEAR Work

TSA PreCheck is a TSA-run expedited screening program. A membership lasts five years, and TSA allows you to start a renewal up to six months before your expiration date (tsa.gov, chase.com). The practical check: find your Known Traveler Number and expiration date now, then set a calendar reminder for six months before that date. If you fly domestic only, this is the program that changes your security line. TSA sets the rules, but it does not process every application itself; it works through enrollment providers.

Global Entry is a CBP trusted-traveler program. It bundles PreCheck-style screening with expedited customs processing on international arrivals. The PreCheck benefit is included, not separate. That means a Global Entry member can use the TSA PreCheck lane on domestic flights and also use the Global Entry kiosks or lanes when returning to the United States. The check: look at your last two years of travel. If you never clear customs on international arrivals, you are paying for a customs benefit you do not use. If you do clear customs, Global Entry adds a second, separate layer of speed.

CLEAR is a private biometric identity company. It sells its own lane access at participating airports, and it also acts as a third-party renewal channel for TSA PreCheck. TSA also contracts with enrollment providers such as Idemia and Telos to process applications and renewals. The check: before you submit personal data, confirm you are on the official TSA portal or a provider you intentionally chose. CLEAR is not a government program, and its biometric lane is not the same as TSA PreCheck screening.

The three programs overlap but do not replace each other. TSA PreCheck gives you access to TSA's expedited screening lane. Global Entry includes TSA PreCheck, so you use the same TSA lane when flying domestic. CLEAR gives you a separate biometric identity check at the front of the line, but you still go through standard or PreCheck screening after that. The rule: if you have CLEAR but not TSA PreCheck, you get identity verification speed, not expedited screening. If you have both, you can use CLEAR for the identity step and PreCheck for the screening step.

Renewal timing matters. For TSA PreCheck, start the renewal up to six months before expiration to avoid a lapse in your Known Traveler Number. For Global Entry, renew through CBP's Trusted Traveler Programs portal. The final check: match each program to a trip you actually take. If your travel is domestic-only, a customs benefit will not change your arrival. If you clear customs on international arrivals, PreCheck alone will not speed that part of the trip. If you want a biometric identity lane, confirm your home airport has CLEAR before you buy it.

The Evidence: What Renewals Actually Cost

TSA's own PreCheck page advertises the membership as a "$79 value" (tsa.gov), but that figure is not a listed fee and is not what most renewing travelers pay. The actual online renewal price dropped to $70 as of October 1, down from the previous $85, and the lower rate applies only when you renew through the online portal — in-person renewals and first-time enrollments remain at the higher price (afar.com).

The "$79 value" line is a marketing reference, not a chargeable amount. The real transaction price is set by whichever enrollment provider processes your application at checkout, which is why the same five-year renewal can surface at three different price points depending on the vendor (tsa.gov, nerdwallet.com).

The cheapest verified renewal channel is Idemia, which charges $58.75 for an online renewal. Telos charges $70 for the same online renewal, and CLEAR charges $69.95 — a spread of $11.25 between the lowest and highest vendor option, all for the identical five-year PreCheck membership (nerdwallet.com). The only variable is which provider handles the application, not the program itself.

Capital One reports that PreCheck costs "up to $85" for a five-year membership and notes that the price "can vary based on how you apply" (capitalone.com). The $85 ceiling most likely reflects in-person or first-time application channels, confirming that cost differences are driven by vendor and channel rather than by the underlying program.

The practical check: before submitting a renewal, confirm which provider your application routes through. If your renewal lands on Idemia's portal, you pay $58.75; if it routes to Telos or CLEAR, you pay $70 or $69.95 respectively. The $70 TSA-direct figure remains the baseline most online renewals encounter, but the $58.75 Idemia option is the verified lowest price when available.

Options Compared: Which to Keep in 2026

Head-to-head, the winner depends on one question: do you clear a U.S. customs line when you come home? If the answer is no — you fly domestic only — the head-to-head winner is TSA PreCheck renewed online through the official TSA portal, or through Idemia where that enrollment path is offered, because it delivers the same five years of expedited security coverage at the lowest verified renewal cost. There is no scenario in 2026 where a domestic-only flyer gets more value from a pricier program.

If you do return from international trips, the winner flips to Global Entry. At $120 for five years, it bundles everything PreCheck provides — expedited security screening — with the CBP customs lanes that matter on arrival. That makes renewing PreCheck separately redundant: you would be paying for a subset of what Global Entry already includes. The check is simple. Count your international returns over the past two years. If you clear customs two or more times per year, Global Entry wins; if you have not left the country since your last membership began, it does not.

Program	Best for	What it covers	Keep or drop in 2026
TSA PreCheck	Domestic-only flyers	Expedited security screening	Keep — renew online at the lowest verified price
Global Entry	International travelers	PreCheck benefits plus CBP customs lanes	Keep if you clear customs 2+ times per year; otherwise drop
CLEAR	Very frequent flyers at CLEAR-equipped hubs	Biometric lane-skipping before security	Drop unless you fly often enough to justify the fee

CLEAR is the odd one out because it does not replace either program — it sits in front of them. It only earns its keep if two conditions hold at once: your home or connecting airports actually have CLEAR lanes, and you fly often enough that the per-trip convenience amortizes the annual fee. If you fly a handful of times a year, or your airports lack CLEAR, drop it and rely on your PreCheck or Global Entry benefits alone.

One caution on the comparison: NerdWallet notes some travel credit cards will offset renewal costs, so before you pay any of these fees out of pocket, check whether a card you already hold covers the program you are keeping. That check can change the math without changing the winner — it just changes who pays.

The decision rule, stated once: domestic only, renew PreCheck online; international two or more times a year, hold Global Entry and let PreCheck lapse into it; everyone else, let CLEAR go unless your flight count and airport coverage both say otherwise.

Costs and Numbers That Matter

For a 2026 renewal, the only fair way to compare these programs is to normalize every fee to a five-year membership period. Here is that frame. PreCheck renewal through Idemia online is $58.75. Through the official TSA online portal, it is $70. Through Telos, it is $70. Through CLEAR, it is $69.95 (nerdwallet.com, afar.com). Those four numbers are your entire domestic-only cost range for five years. No annual fee sits underneath them.

Global Entry is the single outlier at $120 for five years. That one price bundles two benefits: expedited screening and customs clearance. It is the only figure in this cost set that covers two programs at once. Subtract the $70 PreCheck renewal, and the customs portion effectively costs $50 over five years. Subtract the $58.75 Idemia renewal, and that same customs portion costs $61.25. Those differences are your premium for the customs benefit, not a reason by themselves to choose Global Entry.

The renewal window is identical for both programs: you can start the process up to six months before your expiration date (chase.com, govplus.com). Put a calendar reminder six months out. If you miss that window and let the membership lapse, you lose the benefit and may have to start over. The six-month mark is also when the five-year math becomes actionable. If you fly domestic only, the $58.75–$70 PreCheck renewal is your cheapest verified path. If you clear customs at least twice a year, the $120 Global Entry renewal is the one to price against your actual international arrivals.

CLEAR’s $69.95 five-year renewal is a separate line item. It does not replace PreCheck or Global Entry, and the cost frame makes that clear: you would pay nearly the same as a TSA or Telos PreCheck renewal for a benefit that only pays off with very high flight frequency. The normalized five-year baseline is simple: PreCheck costs $58.75–$70, Global Entry costs $120, and CLEAR costs $69.95. Use those three numbers before you click renew.

What the Evidence Does NOT Establish

Three pieces of this decision rest on figures no source reviewed here confirms. Treat them as checks, not assumptions: what CLEAR charges for an annual membership in 2026, whether a credit card statement credit still offsets any of these fees this year, and how much time any program actually saves you at your airport. The renewal prices and program fees verified elsewhere in this guide are solid; these three are not, and each one can move the keep-or-drop call.

Start with CLEAR. The covered pricing evidence verifies government-side fees and renewal costs, not what the company charges for membership in 2026. That price is set commercially, sold in annual terms, and sometimes bundled or discounted through other channels, which makes a secondhand summary weak evidence. The reliable move is to open clear.com, pull the current annual price for the enrollment type you would actually buy, and note the date you checked. Do this before building any comparison that includes CLEAR. A missing price is not a zero — plugging in zero flips the arithmetic in CLEAR's favor without any support.

The same caution applies to statement credits. NerdWallet notes that some travel credit cards help offset the cost of a renewal, but no grounded source here confirms which cards still carry that benefit in 2026, at what amount, or under what cap or category restriction. Issuer terms shift between card generations. Verify by logging into the issuer, opening the card's current benefits guide or terms page, and searching the specific program name. If the page is ambiguous, call the number on the back and ask for the benefit in writing. A card review published before your latest terms changed is not verification.

Unverified item	Why it matters	Where to check
CLEAR annual price for 2026	Any comparison including it is incomplete without a live figure	clear.com, recorded with the date
Statement credit status	A lapsed credit changes your real out-of-pocket cost	Issuer benefits guide or the number on the card
Minutes saved per program	Generic averages may not describe your airport or departure hour	Your own timestamps at your home airport

No grounded data establishes average time savings for any of these programs. Any "minutes saved" figure you read describes someone else's airport, terminal, and departure hour. Measure your own. Pick your most common departure airport, then log the timestamp when you join the queue and when you clear the checkpoint, across several trips, for the lane you currently qualify for. Repeat where you can for the expedited lane. Compare like with like — same airport, similar day of week, similar hour — because a weekday 6 a.m. checkpoint and a Saturday afternoon checkpoint are not the same measurement.

Hold the rest of the comparison to the figures you can verify, and treat these three as open until you close them yourself. If a credit no longer applies, or a CLEAR price comes back higher than expected, re-run the math with your own numbers before dropping or keeping anything.

Renewing PreCheck for $70

Start with the calendar, not the fee. If your PreCheck membership expires in four months, you are already inside the renewal window — TSA lets you begin up to six months before expiration (tsa.gov, chase.com). Log into tsa.gov/precheck, pull up your Known Traveler Number, and confirm two things on the same screen: the exact expiration date and whether your record is flagged eligible for online renewal. If the portal offers you the online path, take it; if it doesn't, you'll need an in-person appointment, and the online pricing below won't apply to you.

Now run the traveler's own math. Six domestic round-trips a year is 12 screened departures, no international arrivals, so Global Entry's customs benefit never gets used and CLEAR's lane-jumping value never gets tested at scale. That profile points one direction: renew PreCheck, skip the upsells. The only real decision left is which renewal channel is cheapest for you.

At the renewal screen, compare three quotes before you pay. Idemia lists online renewal at $58.75, the TSA portal (Telos) charges $70, and CLEAR's online renewal runs $69.95 (nerdwallet.com). The TSA portal's "$79 value" banner is marketing, not a checkout price — the actual online renewal fee dropped to $70 as of October 1, down from $85, and that lower price applies only to online renewals, not in-person ones (afar.com). Pick Idemia if your record is offered there; otherwise pay the $70 through the official portal. Do not pay $69.95 to CLEAR for a PreCheck renewal you can get cheaper elsewhere.

Renewal channel	Price	Use it when
Idemia (online)	$58.75	Offered for your record — cheapest verified path
TSA portal / Telos (online)	$70	Idemia isn't offered; you want the official .gov route
CLEAR (online)	$69.95	Only if you separately value CLEAR — not for savings

One checkpoint before you close the tab: check whether a travel credit card on your shelf reimburses the renewal charge (nerdwallet.com). If it does, the $70 portal fee may net to zero, which flips the comparison — a reimbursed $70 beats an unreimbursed $58.75. Confirm the credit posts and the statement credit lands before you count it.

Then set the next reminder. This renewal buys five years (tsa.gov), so the traveler above won't think about PreCheck again until roughly 2031 — at which point the same three-way price check applies. Revisit Global Entry only if international arrivals start showing up in the itinerary twice a year or more; until then, the $70 online renewal is the whole job.

Decision Rules: Keep, Switch, or Drop

Run your own trip count before you run any renewal. The rule is simple: if every flight you take this year starts and ends inside the United States, renew TSA PreCheck online and stop there. Do not add Global Entry, and do not add CLEAR. The online renewal runs $70 through the official TSA portal, and NerdWallet reports it drops to $58.75 when completed online with Idemia, so the Idemia route is the cheaper of the two where it is offered. Both are five-year renewals, and TSA lets you start the process up to six months before your expiration date, so there is no reason to pay a rush premium or renew in person at a higher rate.

If you clear international customs two or more times per year, the math flips. Keep Global Entry at $120 and let it carry your PreCheck benefits rather than paying for PreCheck renewal separately. Two international arrivals a year is the break-even threshold: below that, you are paying for a lane you rarely stand in; at or above it, Global Entry is the better long-term keep because it covers both the customs side and the domestic security side in one membership. Count actual international arrivals, not trips — a round trip that clears customs once counts once.

CLEAR is the one to scrutinize hardest. Keep it only if you fly 20 or more times per year through a CLEAR-equipped hub and you actually value skipping the document-check lane. Below that frequency, the per-use cost rarely justifies a separate membership stacked on top of PreCheck. If you do hit the threshold, verify the current 2026 price at clear.com before you renew, because CLEAR's pricing and bundle structure change more often than the government programs do, and a stale figure from an old article will mislead you.

Use this order of operations: count domestic-only flights, count international customs clears, count annual departures through CLEAR hubs. Then apply the rules below.

Your travel pattern	Action	Cost basis
Domestic flights only	Renew PreCheck online; skip Global Entry and CLEAR	$70 via TSA portal, or $58.75 via Idemia
2+ international customs clears per year	Keep Global Entry; it replaces PreCheck renewal	$120
20+ flights per year through a CLEAR hub	Keep CLEAR, but confirm the 2026 price at clear.com first	Verify current rate before renewing

One caution on the cheap route: the $58.75 Idemia renewal is only available where that online path is offered, so confirm it applies to you before assuming the lower number. If it does not, the $70 TSA portal renewal is the verified fallback, and it is still the cheapest confirmed path for a domestic-only traveler. Whichever you choose, start the renewal inside the six-month window and complete it online — the lower online pricing does not extend to in-person renewal.

Also worth reading United MileagePlus 2026 devaluation · 2025-2026 TSA PreCheck $78 vs CLEAR · TSA PreCheck vs CLEAR 7 Key

What to do next

Step	Action	Why it matters
1	Count your international arrivals from the past 12 months. If you cleared customs 2+ times per year, plan to keep Global Entry; if zero, skip to step 3.	The keep threshold for Global Entry is 2+ customs clearances per year — it's only worth it if you actually use international arrivals.
2	If keeping Global Entry, note that renewal runs at the standard membership price and covers a 5-year term, same as the PreCheck membership length.	Global Entry includes TSA PreCheck benefits, so one renewal covers both domestic and international lanes.
3	If you fly domestic only, renew TSA PreCheck online through the official TSA portal at the standard online price.	The $70 online renewal price applies only online — in-person paths cost more.
4	Before paying the standard rate, check whether Idemia offers online renewal in your state — it's the cheapest verified path for a 2026 renewal.	Idemia's online renewal price undercuts the official TSA portal, saving you the difference on the same 5-year membership.
5	Count your flights per year and check whether CLEAR operates at your home hub. If you fly fewer than 20+ times per year through a CLEAR-equipped hub, drop it and don't renew.	CLEAR only clears the keep threshold at 20+ flights per year through a participating hub — below that, it's redundant with PreCheck.
6	Calendar your renewal date so the new 5-year term starts before your current membership lapses.	Renewing before expiry keeps your Known Traveler Number active and avoids re-enrollment at higher cost.

Frequently Asked Questions

How early can I start my TSA PreCheck renewal before my membership expires?

TSA allows you to start a renewal up to six months before your expiration date.

Does Global Entry include TSA PreCheck, or do I have to pay for both separately?

The PreCheck benefit is included, not separate, so a Global Entry member can use the TSA PreCheck lane on domestic flights and also use the Global Entry kiosks or lanes when returning to the United States.

How long does a TSA PreCheck membership last?

A membership lasts five years.

If I only fly domestically, which program actually changes my security line?

If you fly domestic only, TSA PreCheck is the program that changes your security line.

What should I do right now to avoid missing my renewal window?

Find your Known Traveler Number and expiration date now, then set a calendar reminder for six months before that date.

How do I know if Global Entry is worth it for me?

Look at your last two years of travel: if you never clear customs on international arrivals, you are paying for a customs benefit you do not use.

Quick answers

How long does a TSA PreCheck membership last?	A membership lasts five years, and TSA allows you to start a renewal up to six months before your expiration date.
What does Global Entry bundle with PreCheck-style screening?	Global Entry bundles PreCheck-style screening with expedited customs processing on international arrivals.
What is the practical check for deciding on TSA PreCheck?	Find your Known Traveler Number and expiration date now, then set a calendar reminder for six months before that date.
What is the check for deciding whether Global Entry is worth it?	Look at your last two years of travel; if you never clear customs on international arrivals, you are paying for a customs benefit you do not use.
Does TSA process every PreCheck application itself?	TSA sets the rules, but it does not process every application itself; it works through enrollment providers.