H-1B Approval Rate: Lottery Odds, RFEs, and Employer Trends

USCIS approved 97.9% of the H-1B petitions it decided in fiscal year 2025, greenlighting 406,349 of 415,275 adjudicated cases.¹ That figure is the H-1B approval rate you’ll see quoted most often, and it’s accurate, but it only describes petitions that reached an adjudicator. Most people who want an H-1B never get that far, because the annual lottery selects only about a third of registrants. Once you clear that hurdle, whether your case is approved depends on the type of petition, the employer, the position, and whether USCIS asks for more evidence along the way.

The Lottery Is the Real Bottleneck

Congress caps new H-1B visas at 65,000 per year, plus 20,000 additional slots reserved for workers holding a U.S. master’s degree or higher.² Demand runs several times higher. For the FY 2026 cap, 358,737 registrations were submitted, 343,981 were deemed eligible, and 120,141 were selected. That works out to roughly a 35% chance of being picked. USCIS deliberately selects more than 85,000 to account for petitions that get filed late, withdrawn, or denied.

Starting with the FY 2025 cycle, the agency switched to a beneficiary-centric lottery. Each worker now counts once regardless of how many employers register them, which closed a workaround that had let candidates with multiple sponsors stack the odds. Registration for the FY 2027 cap costs $215 per beneficiary.³

Not every H-1B petition goes through the lottery. Universities, nonprofit research organizations affiliated with universities, and government research entities are cap-exempt and can file year-round. Workers who spend at least half their working time at a cap-exempt institution can also bypass the lottery even if the direct employer isn’t itself exempt.² For anyone struggling with the lottery odds, that’s often the most realistic alternate path.

New Petitions vs. Extensions

The overall approval rate hides a small but consistent gap between first filings and renewals. In FY 2025, new employment petitions were approved at 97% (113,460 out of 116,730 decisions), while continuing employment petitions came in at 98% (118,194 out of 120,158).¹

The gap is narrow now, but it widens sharply when policy tightens. In FY 2018, denial rates for initial employment reached roughly 24%, and 21% in FY 2019. A 2020 legal settlement reversed the underlying interpretations, and denial rates for new filings fell below 4% by FY 2021. Extensions tend to fare better because the worker’s qualifications and the employer’s legitimacy were already vetted the first time around. A new petition has to build the case from scratch.

What Happens When USCIS Asks for More Evidence

A Request for Evidence is the single biggest signal that a petition is in trouble. In FY 2024, USCIS issued 33,393 RFEs across H-1B adjudications, covering about 8% of completed petitions.⁴ That’s a fraction of the RFE volume seen during the late-2010s enforcement wave.

Once an RFE arrives, the odds drop. Petitions that received an RFE in FY 2024 were approved at roughly 72% overall. Initial employment cases held up better after an RFE at about 87%, while continuing employment cases fell to around 67%.⁴ That counterintuitive result likely reflects that when USCIS questions an established case, the officer has usually spotted something substantive.

Most RFEs cluster around three issues:

Specialty occupation. The employer didn’t show the position requires a degree in a specific field rather than a generic four-year degree.
Employer-employee relationship. The petition didn’t establish that the sponsor, and not a third-party client, controls the worker’s day-to-day assignments.
Third-party worksite availability. For workers placed at client sites, the employer didn’t provide evidence of real, ongoing assignments as opposed to speculative future contracts.

Employers respond on a strict deadline with documentation like work orders, organizational charts, and expert opinion letters. A thin or unresponsive answer almost always ends in denial.

Approval Rates Vary a Lot by Employer

The 97.9% national number averages together companies at 99% and others below 90%. Professional, scientific, and technical services firms post the highest approval rates, and computer systems design firms and software publishers account for the largest volume of approved petitions. Anyone can look up a specific company’s history through the USCIS Employer Data Hub.¹

Large employers with dedicated immigration teams and well-documented in-house positions consistently outperform smaller firms. IT staffing and consulting companies that place workers at third-party sites face the highest denial rates, because the employer-employee relationship is harder to prove when the worker sits in a client’s office and reports to a client manager. If you’re picking between offers, the sponsor’s track record matters as much as the raw national statistic.

What USCIS Is Actually Evaluating

Specialty Occupation

The central legal test is whether the position qualifies as a specialty occupation. Federal regulations require the job to demand at least a bachelor’s degree in a specific field as the minimum for entry. Employer preference isn’t enough — the role itself has to require specialized knowledge tied so closely to a particular discipline that someone without that background couldn’t perform it.⁵ Officers look at whether the degree requirement is standard across the industry, not just at this one company.

Workers without a traditional four-year degree can still qualify through the three-for-one rule: three years of progressively responsible work experience in the specialty counts as one year of university education. The experience doesn’t have to have been at a professional level throughout, but it must have built toward one. Experienced software developers and engineers who entered the field through non-traditional routes commonly qualify this way.

Prevailing Wage

Before the H-1B petition goes to USCIS, the employer files a Labor Condition Application with the Department of Labor certifying that the worker will be paid at least the prevailing wage for that occupation in that geographic area.⁶ The wage is set by the job’s complexity, classified across four levels, and by the local labor market. A certified LCA has to be in hand before the petition can be filed, and any misstatement in it can undermine an otherwise solid case.

Employer-Employee Relationship

USCIS looks for real control by the sponsor over the worker. If the worker is placed at a client site, the sponsor has to show it retains the right to direct assignments, evaluate performance, and end the relationship, rather than just collecting a fee while the client manages the work. This is where consulting and staffing petitions most often unravel.

Recent Policy Changes That Could Shift the Odds

Wage-Weighted Lottery Proposal

DHS published a proposed rule in September 2025 that would weight lottery selection by wage level. A Level IV wage (the highest tier) would receive four entries in the pool; a Level I wage would receive one.⁷ As of late 2025 the rule remained a proposal and hadn’t taken effect. If finalized, it would move selection toward higher-paid senior professionals and away from entry-level hires.

$100,000 Surcharge for Workers Abroad

A September 2025 presidential proclamation requires employers to pay $100,000 per petition for H-1B workers who are outside the United States at the time of filing. The payment is on top of standard filing fees. The restriction took effect September 21, 2025, and is set to expire 12 months later unless extended.⁸

The surcharge does not apply to workers already in the United States. Extensions, amendments, and transfers for workers maintaining H-1B status domestically are unaffected. The Secretary of Homeland Security can grant exceptions for individual workers, companies, or industries when hiring is deemed in the national interest. The proclamation also directed Labor to revise prevailing wage levels and instructed DHS to prioritize higher-paid workers through rulemaking. For anyone weighing an H-1B offer from abroad, this fee changes the math entirely at lower and mid-level positions.

If a Petition Is Denied

A denial doesn’t have to be the end, but the deadlines are short. The employer has 30 calendar days from the date USCIS mails the denial notice (33 days if service was by mail) to file an appeal or motion on Form I-290B.⁹ A motion to reopen introduces new facts; a motion to reconsider argues the officer misapplied the law to the existing record. Appeals go to the Administrative Appeals Office.

For the worker, a denial creates a status problem. Federal regulations allow a 60-day grace period after employment ends for someone in H-1B status to find a new sponsor, change to another visa category, or prepare to leave. The worker cannot be employed during this window, and DHS keeps the discretion to shorten it.¹⁰ Waiting until the last few days to file a transfer is risky: USCIS may approve the new petition but deny the status extension, forcing the worker to depart and re-enter on a new visa stamp before starting.

Most denied petitions don’t get appealed. Employers more often refile with stronger documentation, particularly when the denial hinged on specialty occupation or the employer-employee relationship. For workers who lose the lottery outright, the options narrow to next year’s cycle, a different visa classification if one fits, or cap-exempt employment with a qualifying university or research institution.

1
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. H-1B Employer Data Hub
2
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. H-1B Cap Season
3
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. H-1B Electronic Registration Process
4
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Characteristics of H-1B Specialty Occupation Workers Fiscal Year 2024
5
eCFR. 8 CFR 214.2 – Special Requirements for Admission, Extension, and Maintenance of Status
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eCFR. 20 CFR 655.731 – What Is the First LCA Requirement, Regarding Wages
7
Federal Register. Weighted Selection Process for Registrants and Petitioners Seeking to File Cap-Subject H-1B
8
The White House. Restriction on Entry of Certain Nonimmigrant Workers
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U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Notice of Appeal or Motion
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eCFR. 8 CFR 214.1 – Requirements for Admission, Extension, and Maintenance of Status