The short answer
A Certificate of Naturalization goes to someone who became a U.S. citizen as an adult. A Certificate of Citizenship goes to someone who was already a citizen through a U.S.-citizen parent and asked USCIS to confirm it. Naturalization runs through Form N-400, an interview, the tests, and the Oath of Allegiance. Citizenship runs through Form N-600, or Form N-600K for a child under 18 living abroad. One is a status you earned. The other is a status you already had.
Everything else about them matches. Both are federal proof of citizenship. Neither one expires. Neither one is a travel document, so neither one substitutes for a U.S. passport at an airport. Both are replaced on the same form, Form N-565, for the same fee. And both are near the top of the list of documents that are painful to replace, which is the practical reason to know which one is in your drawer before somebody asks for it.
What is a Certificate of Citizenship, and what is a Certificate of Naturalization?
Look for the country field. A Certificate of Citizenship states your country of birth. A Certificate of Naturalization states your country of former nationality, because a naturalized citizen had one and gave it up. That single word, former, is the fastest tell on the page. The second tell is the dates: the citizenship certificate carries two, the naturalization certificate carries one.
The rest of the fields are the same on both, and the USCIS Policy Manual lists them: the A-number, the complete name, marital status, place of residence, a photograph, a signature, sex, date of birth, and height, along with the certificate number, a statement from the USCIS Director, a Department of Homeland Security seal, and the Director’s signature. The form number appears with the seal. Both are headed THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. On the sample Certificate of Naturalization USCIS publishes, the certificate number sits at the top right in red beside the word “No.”, the photograph at the lower left, and the printed warning beneath it. The Certificate of Citizenship carries the same fields, and the number is the one next to “No.” Sources: USCIS Policy Manual, Volume 12, Part K, Chapter 2 for the Certificate of Citizenship and Chapter 3 for the Certificate of Naturalization.
- 1Certificate number. On the sample Certificate of Naturalization USCIS publishes it sits at the top right in red, beside the word No. The Certificate of Citizenship carries the same field, and the number is the one next to No. It identifies that piece of paper, not you, and a replacement carries a new one.
- 2Registration number, the A-number. Labeled Registration No. and printed under the title. The A-number follows the person across every immigration record USCIS holds, and it stays the same on a replacement. Treat it like a Social Security number.
- 3Photograph, lower left. Both certificates carry a photograph of the holder, taken around the time it was issued. On a certificate from 1974 it will not look much like the person holding it today.
- 4Complete name. The full legal name at the time of issuance. If yours changed after that, the certificate did not change with it, and that mismatch is what stalls a passport or a REAL ID appointment.
- 5Country of birth, or country of former nationality. The fastest tell. A Certificate of Citizenship states your country of birth. A Certificate of Naturalization states your country of former nationality, because you had one and gave it up.
- 6Personal description. Sex, date of birth, height, marital status, and place of residence, as recorded when the certificate was issued. None of it is updated afterward.
- 7The Director's statement. A sentence from the USCIS Director stating that the person described is a citizen of the United States. It is the operative line on the document.
- 8The date, or dates. A Certificate of Citizenship shows two: the date you became a citizen, and the date the certificate was issued. They are often years apart. A Certificate of Naturalization shows one issuance date, and that date is the date you became a citizen.
- 9Seal, signature, and the form number. A Department of Homeland Security seal and the Director's signature, plus the form number: N-560 or N-561 for citizenship, N-550 or N-570 for naturalization.
- 10The printed warning, bottom left. The warning printed in red on the certificate says that copying, printing, or photographing it without lawful authority is punishable by U.S. law. Those last four words are the hinge, and they are why USCIS can also ask you to send a photocopy.
Naturalization certificate number vs. A-number vs. receipt number
People trip over this constantly, because all three look like an identifier and only one of them identifies the paper.
- The certificate numberis the one next to the word “No.” It belongs to the document. Replace the certificate and the new one carries a new certificate number.
- The A-number, printed as the USCIS registration number, belongs to the person. It runs across every immigration record USCIS holds for you, and it does not change when a certificate is replaced.
- The receipt number is on your USCIS notices, not on the certificate. It belongs to the case that produced the certificate: your N-400, N-600, or N-565.
One more field-level note that catches families out. Neither certificate is issued until the Permanent Resident Card is surrendered, if the holder has one, though USCIS can waive that when the card is genuinely lost. People who acquired citizenship at birth abroad never held a green card at all. For everyone else, the green card is gone by design, and the certificate is now the only paper you have.
Side by side
The differences are narrow, and the sameness is the point. Fees below come from the USCIS fee schedule, Form G-1055, edition 05/29/26.
| Certificate of Citizenship | Certificate of Naturalization | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | On Form N-600, USCIS confirmation of citizenship you already held, acquired at birth abroad or derived through a parent. On Form N-600K, under INA 322, the child becomes a citizen on the oath, so that path confers citizenship rather than confirming it | USCIS proof that you became a citizen as an adult, at the end of the naturalization process |
| Who gets it | Children and adults who acquired or derived citizenship from a U.S.-citizen parent | Lawful permanent residents who applied, qualified, and took the Oath of Allegiance |
| The application behind it | Form N-600, or Form N-600K for a child under 18 living abroad under INA 322 | Form N-400, followed by the interview, the tests, and the Oath |
| Form number printed on it | N-560, or N-561 if it is a replacement | N-550, or N-570 if it is a replacement |
| The field that tells them apart | Country of birth | Country of former nationality, because you had one |
| Dates shown | Two: the date you became a citizen, and the date the certificate was issued | One issuance date, which is also the date you became a citizen |
| Filing fee to obtain it | $1,385 paper, $1,335 online for N-600 and N-600K. $0 for current and former members of the U.S. armed forces filing for themselves, and for children who are the subject of a final adoption under INA 101(b)(1)(E), (F), or (G), per 8 CFR 106.2 | $760 paper, $710 online for N-400, reduced to $380 at or under 400% of the federal poverty guidelines, and $0 for qualifying military applicants |
| Fee to replace it | $555 paper, $505 online on Form N-565, and $0 when USCIS made the error | Identical: N-565, $555 paper, $505 online, $0 for a USCIS error |
| Does it expire | No | No |
| Does it replace a passport | No. It is proof of status, never a travel document | No |
| Form I-9 status | List C, item 7. Needs a List B identity document alongside it | List C, item 7. Same pairing rule |
How you get each one
Two different applications, and only one of them involves a test. The route decides which certificate you end up holding, so it is worth reading even if the paper is already in your drawer.
Certificate of Citizenship: Form N-600 or N-600K
Form N-600 is the application for a Certificate of Citizenship, and it can be filed before or after the applicant turns 18. Derived citizenship for a child living in the United States rests on INA 320, the section rewritten by the Child Citizenship Act of 2000. Form N-600K is the separate path under INA 322, for a child under 18 who resides abroad with a U.S.-citizen parent. That distinction matters legally: N-600 confirms citizenship the person already holds, while under INA 322 the child becomes a citizen on taking the oath, so N-600K confers citizenship rather than confirming it.
Certificate of Naturalization: Form N-400 and the Oath
The Policy Manual puts it simply: the Certificate of Naturalization is issued after Form N-400 and the Oath of Allegiance. The interview and the English and civics tests sit between the two. The certificate follows the Oath, not the approval.
What both paths have in common
- The green card goes back first. USCIS does not issue either certificate until the Permanent Resident Card is surrendered, if the applicant holds one. It can waive that when the card is genuinely lost.
- Fees, from the G-1055 schedule. N-600 and N-600K are $1,385 on paper and $1,335 online, with no fee for current and former members of the U.S. armed forces filing for themselves, and none for children who are the subject of a final adoption under INA 101(b)(1)(E), (F), or (G), per 8 CFR 106.2. N-400 is $760 on paper and $710 online, reduced to $380 at or under 400% of the federal poverty guidelines, and $0 for qualifying military applicants under INA 328 and 329.
- Timing. USCIS publishes current estimates in its processing-times tool. That is the number to use, and it moves.
One more form number belongs in this family, and it trips people up when they meet it: N-578, the Certificate of Repatriation. It is neither of the two documents on this page, and it is not a replacement for either.
Born abroad to a U.S. parent? You may already hold the proof
A Consular Report of Birth Abroad is citizenship evidence in its own right.The State Department’s rule at 22 CFR 51.43 accepts a Certificate of Naturalization, a Certificate of Citizenship, or a Consular Report of Birth Abroad (CRBA), the FS-240, as evidence for a person born outside the United States, the Consular Report of Birth Abroad (CRBA). If your parents registered your birth at a consulate, you have the document already.
The USCIS Policy Manual makes the underlying point for N-600 cases, meaning citizenship acquired at birth abroad or derived under INA 320: citizenship attaches automatically by law, and the Certificate of Citizenship confirms it rather than granting it. You were a citizen before the certificate existed, and you would still be one if it never did. Form N-600K under INA 322 is the one path that confers citizenship rather than confirming it, because there the child becomes a citizen on the oath.
Which leads to a judgment call that no rule decides for you. Filing an N-600 when you already hold an FS-240 costs $1,385 on paper or $1,335 online and buys you no additional legal status. Our read, and we will label it as inference rather than a rule: the reason to do it anyway is durability. The CRBA is a single vital record held by one agency, a certificate is a second independent proof, and derived-citizenship cases get harder to document as the parents age and their records scatter. People whose proof rests on one piece of paper and a set of facts about a parent tend to find the second document worth the money. People with a passport already in hand generally do not.
Is a birth certificate proof of citizenship?
For someone born in the United States, generally yes. The State Department’s rule at 22 CFR 51.42wants a birth certificate that carries the applicant’s name, the place and date of birth, the parents’ names, the signature of the custodian of records, and a seal, and that was filed within one year of birth. A birth certificate that misses those is why passport applications come back. For someone born abroad, a birth certificate is not enough on its own, because it records where you were born and says nothing about your citizenship. The evidence there is one of the three documents named in 22 CFR 51.43.
Who asks for it, and what they accept
Every agency has its own rule, and the rules genuinely conflict. One will take a photocopy. The next rejects photocopies in writing. A third wants the original mailed to it. So here is the table, agency by agency.
| Who is asking | What they take | What to know |
|---|---|---|
| U.S. passport application | The original certificate, plus a plain photocopy | For a person born abroad, 22 CFR 51.43 accepts a Certificate of Naturalization, a Certificate of Citizenship, or a Consular Report of Birth Abroad. State will generally return the evidence under 22 CFR 51.46, and may keep it while investigating fraud. Expect weeks without the original. |
| Social Security Administration | Originals, or copies certified by the agency that issued them | SSA lists a U.S. passport, N-550 or N-570, N-560 or N-561, a DS-1350, and an FS-240 as proof of citizenship, and states plainly that it cannot accept photocopies or notarized copies. |
| A new employer, Form I-9 | The certificate as a List C, item 7 document, with a List B photo ID | A U.S. passport is List A and stands alone. A Puerto Rico birth certificate is accepted only if it was issued on or after July 1, 2010. |
| State DMV, REAL ID | Varies by state | The federal minimum is full legal name, date of birth, Social Security number, two proofs of address, and lawful status. Both certificates prove lawful status. States may add requirements, so read your own DMV's document list before you drive there. |
| Federal benefits, schools, licensing boards | Varies | Some take a clear copy, some want the original in hand, some accept a passport instead and never touch the certificate. Ask what they need before you mail anything irreplaceable. |
The passport row is the one that bites. It is the only routine situation where you hand the original certificate to another agency and wait, and it is exactly the window in which somebody else asks you to prove citizenship. Sources for the rows above: SSA’s evidence list, which is also the rule you meet when you replace a Social Security card, the I-9 acceptable documents list, revised November 19, 2025, and the DHS REAL ID FAQ.
Photocopying it is legal for the right reasons
A scan for your own records and a copy for U.S. government business are what USCIS itself expects. What the law punishes is copying without lawful authority. Three things sit in tension here, and every thin article on this topic quotes one of them and ignores the other two.
First, the warning printed in red on the certificate says that copying, printing, or photographing it without lawful authority is punishable by U.S. law. Second, 18 U.S.C. 1426(h)makes it a crime when someone “without lawful authority, prints, photographs, makes or executes any print or impression in the likeness of” a certificate of naturalization or citizenship, or any part of one. Those four words, without lawful authority, are the whole hinge, and the statute is aimed at counterfeiting.
Third, USCIS wrote the practical answer down. On a page now held in its archive, dated September 29, 2022, the agency said: “You may use a normal photocopy of your certificate for legitimate U.S. government business. For example, when you apply for a U.S. passport, you must submit the original Certificate of Naturalization, and you should also submit a normal photocopy that has not been authenticated.” It is an archived page, so treat it as guidance rather than current policy, and note that USCIS behaves consistently with it: the N-565 filing checklist asks you to submit a copy of the original document when replacing a lost or stolen one. You cannot supply that copy if you never made it.
There is a formal version too. A Certified True Copy is made in person at a USCIS field office, where you bring the original, your own photocopy, and photo identification. USCIS states that it does not authenticate or certify copies through the mail or electronically. That service exists mainly for foreign governments, which want an authenticated copy rather than a plain one.
Our position, stated plainly because this is also the part where we have a product to sell: make a clear scan of both sides the day you read this, keep it somewhere you can actually find it, and keep the original in the safest place you have. This is what Granite is for. Every document is encrypted at rest, the certificate number and the A-number are treated as sensitive fields, and the copy is one search away when a clerk asks for it. The copy will not satisfy SSA, which says so outright. It will satisfy your passport application alongside the original, it will tell you your certificate number when you are filing an N-565 because the original is gone, and it will let a family member prove something after you cannot.
Naturalization certificate replacement (and citizenship): how Form N-565 works
One form covers both certificates. Form N-565, Application for Replacement Naturalization/Citizenship Document, replaces an N-550, N-570, N-560, or N-561. The grounds USCIS lists are: lost, stolen, or destroyed; mutilated; a USCIS typing or clerical error; a legal name change; a date-of-birth change; a change of sex; a change in marital status; and a special certificate for recognition by a foreign government. Expiration is not on that list, because these certificates do not expire.
- Evidence for a lost or stolen certificate. USCIS asks for a police report or a sworn statement explaining what happened, plus a copy of the original document if you have one.
- Fees. $555 by paper, $505 online, per the G-1055 fee schedule. It is $0 when the reason is a USCIS error. A fee waiver on Form I-912 is possible if you qualify.
- Online filing does not mean paperless. This is the step people miss. If you file N-565 online, USCIS still requires you to mail the original certificate to the Nebraska Service Center. Paper filings go to the Phoenix Lockbox.
- Processing time. USCIS publishes the current estimate in its processing-times tool, and that is the number to trust. Independent trackers such as CitizenPath have reported 8 to 10 months for recent filings. Budget in months, not weeks.
A name change is a real and common basis for filing. If you married and changed your name, your certificate still carries the old one, and the mismatch turns up later at a passport counter or a DMV. Our name change after marriage checklist covers the order to do things in, which matters more than people expect.
Does a Certificate of Naturalization expire? No, but it can still become useless
The failure modes are not about time. A certificate from 1968 is as valid today as it was then. What actually goes wrong is physical and administrative.
- Lamination. Passport agencies and apostille offices routinely reject laminated certificates, because the raised seal cannot be verified through plastic. This one is practitioner-reported rather than written into a published rule, and it comes up often enough to take seriously. Do not laminate it. If a well-meaning relative already did, expect friction and plan for an N-565.
- Name mismatch. The certificate is a snapshot of the name, the residence, and the marital status on the day it was issued. Life moves and the paper does not.
- The original in transit. Send it with a passport application and you are without it for weeks. If anything else needs proof of citizenship in that window, a copy in your vault is the difference between an inconvenience and a stopped process.
- A parent’s certificate nobody scanned.Derived-citizenship cases lean on the parent’s document. When the parent dies and the certificate is in a box in a garage, a straightforward N-600 becomes an investigation.
The physical side of this is a solved problem, and our guide to storing important documents at homecovers it: flat, dry, out of a fire’s way, and never in a stack of paper you might one day throw out.
When the holder dies
Nothing is returned to USCIS, and nobody tells the family that. We looked for a rule requiring survivors to surrender a certificate when the holder dies, across 8 CFR part 343a and the neighboring parts, and there is none. Surrender is demanded only when a certificate is administratively cancelled, for example after fraud, under 8 CFR 342.3. So the certificate stays with the estate. Keep it.
A Certificate of Naturalization stays useful to the family after the holder dies, for two reasons:
- A child’s own case.An N-600 filed by a son or daughter who derived citizenship rests on proof of the parent’s citizenship. The parent’s certificate is the cleanest version of that proof.
- Estate and benefit claims. Survivor benefits and estate work run on identity documents, and SSA in particular does not accept photocopies of citizenship evidence.
If the original survives, family members can request a Certified True Copy in person at a USCIS field office with proof of relationship to the deceased. If the original is gone, N-565 does not help, because that form is written for the certificate holder. The route then is the USCIS Genealogy Program, which holds historical records of deceased immigrants. A C-File is the file copy of records for every U.S. naturalization, and for Certificates of Citizenship in derivative cases. You file Form G-1041 for an index search and Form G-1041A for the record itself. Each is $80, with a $50 discount for filing online. USCIS sets the eligibility window for the program, so check the program page before you assume a recently deceased relative’s file is available.
This is the single strongest argument for scanning a parent’s documents while the parent is alive. Our what to do when someone dies checklist and the in case of death binder both put citizenship documents in the gather-now column for exactly this reason.
Context in numbers
Naturalizations are counted. Certificates of Citizenship largely are not. The DHS Office of Homeland Security Statistics reported 818,570 naturalizations in fiscal year 2024, down from 878,460 in 2023 (Table 1), with N-400 filings up about 20 percent to 994,130. The top countries of birth were Mexico with 107,670, India with 49,700, the Philippines with 41,200, the Dominican Republic with 39,880, and Vietnam with 34,240. Read the FY2024 naturalizations flow report, published March 2025 for the tables.
The endnote matters as much as the headline: that count excludes children who acquire citizenship through a parent. Which means the population holding Certificates of Citizenship sits outside the number almost everyone quotes, and there is no equally clean public figure for it.
Two dated notes for anyone reading this later. The civics test changed: applicants filing Form N-400 on or after October 20, 2025 take a 20-question test drawn from a 128-question bank and must answer 12 correctly, per the Federal Register notice. Separately, and as background only, Executive Order 14160 on birthright citizenship was held unconstitutional in Trump v. Barbara on June 30, 2026, in a 6 to 3 decision, summarized in a Congressional Research Service report. Neither change touches a certificate already in your hand.
How Granite handles these two documents
Of the 110 document types Granite reads as of September 2, 2026, 4 of the 7 identity documents never expire, and the Certificate of Citizenship is one of them. The other three are the birth certificate, the Social Security card, and the adoption certificate. Passports, driver’s licenses, and national ID cards carry an expiration field; the four permanent ones do not, so no renewal reminder ever fires for them. That is a design decision, not an omission. Across the whole library, only 15 of 110 schemas track an expiration at all.
Our certificate of citizenship schemaextracts the holder’s name, the certificate number, the A-number, the date of birth, the country of birth, sex, marital status, the date you became a citizen, the issue date, and the form number. The certificate number and the A-number are marked sensitive. Note the two dates: the schema models them separately because the Policy Manual does, and the difference between them is the difference between when you became a citizen and when USCIS printed the page.
Two gaps we would rather state than let you discover:
- There is no naturalization certificate schema today.The library knows the N-550 only as a negative rule inside the citizenship schema, a way of saying “this document is not that one.” A Certificate of Naturalization uploads, stores encrypted, and is full-text searchable, and Granite is not lifting structured fields off it yet. It is on the list.
- The Certificate of Citizenship is not one of the five person essentialsin the profile completeness meter. That meter counts a Social Security card, a driver’s license, a passport, a birth certificate, and an immunization record. So Granite will not prompt you for a citizenship certificate the way it prompts for the other five.
What Granite does well here is narrow and real. It reads the certificate on upload, links it to the person it belongs to, keeps the bytes encrypted, and answers a plain-English question later with a citation to the page it came from. Its continuity features, an emergency contact and an opt-in inactivity heartbeat, exist so that the scan outlives the person named on it. And the retention rule for both certificates is the simplest one there is: keep them forever.
We are a document vault. Granite cannot file an N-565, tell you whether you derived citizenship, or advise you on an immigration case. What it can do is make sure that when someone asks for a certificate you have not thought about in eleven years, you know exactly what it says and exactly where it is.