How Much Are HSA Fees? Types, Tax Impact, and How to Reduce Them

HSA fees typically fall into four buckets — monthly maintenance, investment, transactional, and transfer or closure charges — and total annual costs range from $0 at providers like Fidelity to over $100 a year at higher-cost custodians. Those charges matter more than they look on a statement, because every dollar pulled out in fees is a dollar that stops growing tax-free against the 2026 contribution limits of $4,400 for self-only coverage, $8,750 for family coverage, and an extra $1,000 catch-up if you’re 55 or older.¹

Monthly Maintenance Fees

Most custodians charge a flat monthly fee to cover the administrative work of keeping your account’s tax-exempt status intact, including IRS filings like Forms 1099-SA and 5498-SA. It hits your statement whether you touch the account that month or not. HSA Bank charges $1.75 a month, or $21 a year. Bank of America charges $2.50 a month, $30 a year. Fidelity charges nothing.²

You can often waive the fee by keeping a minimum daily balance, commonly $2,500 to $3,000. HSA Bank waives its monthly charge when your cash balance stays at or above $3,000. If your HSA came through an employer, the company frequently absorbs the maintenance fee as a benefit. That subsidy usually ends when you leave the job: the account converts to an individual structure and you start paying the fee yourself unless your balance clears the waiver threshold.

Investment Fees

Using your HSA as a long-term investing account brings a second set of costs. Most custodians require a minimum cash balance before you can invest at all. Optum Bank sets that at $2,000, Bank of America at $1,000, and Fidelity at nothing.³²

Above that cash threshold, some providers add an investment platform fee, either flat or as a percentage of invested assets. Lively offers two options for its Schwab brokerage account: a $24 annual access fee, or keep at least $3,000 in cash and skip the fee. HealthEquity charges roughly 0.32% of invested assets a year, which comes to about $64 on a $20,000 investment balance.⁴

The funds themselves also carry internal costs called expense ratios, baked into the fund’s performance rather than shown as a line item on your statement. Passive index funds can run as low as 0.03% a year; actively managed funds sometimes exceed 1.00%. The real damage happens when a provider platform fee stacks on top of expensive funds. At Fidelity and Bank of America, the provider charges no trading commissions or investment account fees, so your only investing cost is the underlying fund expense ratio.⁵

Advisory and Robo-Advisor Fees

Some HSAs offer automated portfolio management, sometimes marketed as a guided portfolio or robo-advisor. These typically charge 0.25% to 0.50% of invested assets a year on top of fund expense ratios. Lively’s HSA Guided Portfolio costs 0.50% annually and includes automated rebalancing.⁴

How Investment Fees Add Up

The spread between providers is wide. At Fidelity, you can invest an entire HSA balance in a low-cost index fund and pay only the fund’s expense ratio, perhaps 0.03% a year. At a high-fee provider, a monthly maintenance fee plus a platform fee plus an advisory fee plus fund expenses can easily push total annual costs past 1.00%. On a $50,000 balance held for 20 years, that gap runs into the thousands.

Transactional and Service Fees

Providers also charge for specific account actions. Most people never trigger these, but they’re worth knowing before you do.

Replacement debit card: usually $10 to $25 for shipping and processing.
Paper statements: $1.50 to $3.00 per cycle if you don’t opt into electronic delivery.
ATM withdrawals: $2.00 to $5.00 from your provider on top of the ATM operator’s charge. Cash pulled out for anything other than qualified medical expenses is also subject to income tax and, if you’re under 65, a 20% penalty.
Returned transactions: $25 to $35 when a payment or check bounces, similar to a standard overdraft charge.
Records research: flat or hourly charges for historical transaction records or unusual administrative requests, varying by provider.

Transfer and Closure Fees

Moving or closing an HSA usually costs money on the way out. Outbound transfer fees run $20 to $75 depending on the custodian. Optum Bank charges $20 for an outbound transfer to another HSA custodian.⁶ HSA Bank charges a $25 account closure fee. Some providers waive incoming transfer fees to attract new customers, and Fidelity charges nothing to transfer in or out.⁷

These fees come out of your remaining balance before the money moves. On a small account, $25 to $75 can be a meaningful chunk. That friction is intentional at some custodians.

One boundary matters when you’re switching providers to escape fees: ask for a trustee-to-trustee transfer, not a rollover. A transfer moves the money directly between custodians without limit on how many you can do per year. A rollover pays the funds to you personally, and you have 60 days to redeposit, with only one allowed in any 12-month period. Miss either rule and the IRS treats the money as a taxable distribution, plus a 20% penalty if you’re under 65.⁸ A $25 transfer fee is a small price against that risk.

How Fees Interact with the Tax Advantage

Fees your trustee pulls directly from the HSA for account maintenance are not reported as distributions on your tax forms. The IRS treats them as an administrative cost of maintaining the account.⁸

That sounds neutral, but it works against you. Because the fee isn’t a distribution, you can’t deduct it or treat it as a medical expense. It just leaves your tax-advantaged balance. Paying the fee from an outside checking account, if your provider allows it, keeps the HSA balance whole and preserves the full compounding benefit inside the account.⁹

Reducing Your HSA Fees

The single biggest lever is picking a low-fee provider. Fidelity charges no maintenance fees, no investment fees, and no transfer fees. Others stack $50 to $100 or more in annual charges before you even account for fund expense ratios.²

If your employer picked the HSA custodian and the fees are high, you aren’t stuck. You can open a second HSA at a low-cost provider and periodically move funds over with a trustee-to-trustee transfer. Keep enough in the employer-linked account to receive any employer contributions, and move the rest. Most people never realize this is allowed and leave money on the table for years.

A few smaller moves help once you’ve picked the right provider:

If your provider waives fees above a cash threshold, prioritize hitting that number before investing.
Switch to electronic statements to skip the paper statement charge.
When investing, pick funds with expense ratios under 0.10% rather than actively managed options at 0.50% or more.
Pay maintenance and investment fees from an outside checking account if your provider allows it, so your HSA balance keeps compounding.
Use your HSA debit card at the point of sale for medical purchases instead of pulling cash from an ATM.

1
Internal Revenue Service. Rev. Proc. 2025-19
2
Fidelity Investments. Health Savings Account – HSA Investment Options
3
Optum Bank. Investing Your HSA: Grow Your Health Savings
4
Lively. Pricing
5
Fidelity Investments. Trading Commissions and Margin Rates
6
Optum Bank. Schedule of Fees – Health Savings Account
7
Fidelity Investments. Transfer Your HSA
8
Internal Revenue Service. Publication 969 (2025), Health Savings Accounts and Other Tax-Favored Health Plans
9
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 U.S. Code 223 – Health Savings Accounts