How to Check Your H-1B Lottery Status in Your USCIS Online Account

Your H-1B lottery result never gets posted publicly. Here is exactly where to find it in your USCIS online account and what each status means.

You registered for the H-1B lottery months ago, your employer's attorney handled the filing, and now you're refreshing a browser tab hoping to see a result somewhere. There isn't a public leaderboard or a press release with your name on it. Your result lives in exactly one place: the USCIS online account tied to the registration, and knowing how to get into it — and read what it says — is the whole game.

Here's the short version. USCIS does not publish H-1B registration outcomes anywhere public. It notifies registrants through the same USCIS online account used to file the registration. If that account is yours, you log in and look under your cases. If it belongs to your employer's attorney, you're dependent on them relaying the result unless they've given you visibility. This guide walks through exactly how to check, what each status label means, and what to do next depending on what you see.

Why there's no public results page

Every other year, someone asks why USCIS doesn't just publish a list of selected registration numbers the way some state lottery boards post winning tickets. It doesn't, for the same reason your tax return isn't posted online: registrations contain identifying information tied to a specific beneficiary and employer, and USCIS treats the outcome as case-specific data delivered through the account of record.

That account of record is whoever created the registration in the USCIS online system — usually the sponsoring employer or the employer's immigration attorney, working from an organizational account. In some cases, especially in recent cap seasons, beneficiaries have been able to create their own individual USCIS online account and have their registration linked to it, giving them independent visibility. Which situation you're in determines how you check.

How to check your H-1B registration status step by step

1. Figure out who filed the registration. Ask your employer or the attorney handling the petition whether the registration was submitted under an account you have access to, or purely through their organizational account.
2. If you have your own USCIS online account, go to the USCIS online account portal and sign in with your existing credentials, or create an account if your attorney indicated your beneficiary information was linked to one.
3. Open the My Cases or My Registrations section of the dashboard. This is where registration outcomes appear — not in a search box, not through a receipt-number lookup tool.
4. Locate the specific registration for the fiscal year and employer in question. If you registered through multiple employers in the same season, each registration is tracked separately, and yes, you could see different outcomes for each.
5. Read the status label exactly as written. Don't assume — the difference between Selected, Not Selected, Denied, and Invalidated matters, and each triggers a different next step (see the table below).
6. If you don't have independent access, contact your employer's HR or immigration attorney directly and ask them to confirm the status shown in their account. Do this promptly, since a Selected status opens a filing window that starts running regardless of whether you've personally checked.
7. Screenshot or save confirmation of the status once you see it, particularly if it's Selected, since your employer's attorney will need this to move forward with petition preparation.

What each status label means

A Selected status is the one that matters most, and it's also the one most misread. It means your registration cleared the draw — nothing more. It does not mean your visa is approved, and it does not mean the petition itself is a formality.

Selection reflects the draw, not the petition

Since 2026-02-27, H-1B registrations haven't gone through a flat random draw. DHS now runs a wage-weighted selection: each registration gets entered into the pool a number of times based on the OEWS wage level tied to the offered position, with Level IV roles carrying more entries than Level I. If you were Selected, that outcome reflects how your registration performed in that weighted pool, not a judgment on your qualifications or your employer's petition-writing ability. For a full breakdown of how the entries are counted, see our explainer on the wage-weighted lottery mechanism, and for context on what selection odds looked like for FY2027 specifically, see FY2027 H-1B lottery registration odds.

Selection opens a door — it doesn't guarantee what's behind it

This is the part worth sitting with. A Selected status opens a petition-filing window; it does not guarantee the petition gets approved. Once selected, your employer's attorney still has to prepare and file a complete H-1B petition, and that petition goes through the same standard USCIS adjudication process as any other H-1B case — which means it can be approved, denied outright, or come back with a Request for Evidence asking for more documentation. Selection is a pass into the process, not the outcome of it. If you want a realistic sense of where petitions run into trouble after selection, our piece on H-1B approval and denial rate trends walks through where risk actually clusters at the petition stage.

Does getting selected mean you now owe the $100,000 fee

If you've heard about a $100,000 H-1B fee and are wondering whether a Selected status means your employer suddenly owes it, the short answer is no, and the longer answer matters. That fee came from a September 2025 proclamation aimed at new H-1B petitions. It was vacated by the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts on 2026-06-08 for exceeding executive authority, and the First Circuit denied the government's request to reinstate it on 2026-07-24. As of this writing, it is not being collected, though the appeal is still pending and the underlying proclamation's 12-month restriction is set to sunset on 2026-09-20 unless extended. Selection itself never triggered that fee even when the rule was active — the fee, when it existed, attached to certain new petitions, not to registration outcomes. Confirm the current status with your employer's immigration counsel rather than relying on anything you read online, including this.

Key FY2027 dates for context

If you're checking status well after these dates and still see Submitted with no update, that's worth flagging directly with whoever filed your registration — it may mean an account access issue rather than a delayed result, since USCIS's stated practice is to notify through the account by the announcement date.

If you weren't selected

A Not Selected status for the initial round doesn't always end the story for that fiscal year. USCIS has, in some seasons, run supplemental selection rounds later in the year if the initial round didn't produce enough petitions to reach the numerical caps. Whether a second round happens, and when, is entirely USCIS's call and isn't something you can request. See our explainer on how a second H-1B lottery round works for the mechanics. In the meantime, talk to your DSO about your OPT or STEM OPT timeline if you're an F-1 student, since your work authorization clock doesn't pause for the lottery, and talk to your employer about whether next year's registration cycle or an alternate visa category makes sense for your situation.

If your registration was filed on paper or you're not sure it's linked correctly

Occasionally a petition connected to your case was filed on paper, or your online account isn't properly linked to the case record USCIS has on file, which can make it look like nothing is there when in fact your case exists — it's just not connected to the account you're checking. If that sounds like your situation, our guide on linking a paper-filed case to a USCIS online account covers the access-code step people most often miss, and it applies just as much to a linked H-1B petition as to other case types.

Common mistakes

• Assuming a public list exists. There isn't one. Third-party trackers and social media threads are not official sources, and USCIS does not confirm individual outcomes over the phone or by email.
• Checking the wrong account. If your employer's attorney filed the registration under their organizational account, your personal USCIS online account — even if you have one — may show nothing related to that registration.
• Sitting on a Selected status. The petition-filing window is time-bound. Don't assume your employer already knows; confirm and follow up promptly so petition preparation isn't delayed.
• Reading Denied and Not Selected as the same thing. They're not. Denied means the registration itself had a defect; Not Selected means it competed in the draw and wasn't picked. The fix for one has nothing to do with the other.
• Treating Selected as a finished process. The petition still has to be filed and adjudicated. Don't make irreversible decisions, like resigning from a current job, based on selection alone.
• Assuming selection changes your F-1 or OPT timeline automatically. It doesn't. Talk to your DSO about how selection interacts with your specific status and work authorization dates.

Frequently asked questions

Where do I actually check my H-1B lottery results? There is no separate public list. USCIS posts your H-1B registration status in the same online account that was used to file the registration in the first place. If you or your immigration attorney filed it under your own USCIS online account, log in and check the My Cases section. If your employer's attorney filed on your behalf, you will need to ask them directly unless they gave you separate visibility into your registration.

What does a Selected status in myUSCIS actually mean? A Selected status means your registration was chosen in DHS's wage-weighted draw and it opens a window during which your employer can file the full H-1B petition on your behalf. It is not an approval. The petition still has to be prepared, filed, and adjudicated by USCIS like any other H-1B case, and it can still be denied or receive a Request for Evidence.

What is the difference between H-1B registration status and case status? Registration status tells you the outcome of the electronic lottery, meaning Submitted, Selected, or Not Selected, and it only appears in the USCIS online account tied to that registration. Case status refers to an actual filed petition, which has its own receipt number and can often be tracked separately once the petition is filed and receipted.

Can I check my H-1B lottery status without a USCIS online account? No. USCIS registration outcomes are not searchable through the general Case Status Online lookup tool the way many petition types are, because a registration is not a petition and does not always have a receipt number you can plug in independently. You need access to the online account used to submit the registration, either your own or one your employer or attorney shares with you.

Does H-1B selection mean I now owe the $100,000 fee people are talking about? No. That fee came from a 2025 proclamation that was vacated by a federal court on June 8, 2026, and the First Circuit declined to restore it on July 24, 2026, so it is not being collected as of this writing. Being selected in the lottery does not by itself trigger any such payment, and you should confirm the current legal status with your employer's immigration counsel before assuming otherwise.

Trying to make sense of what your registration status means for your next move, whether that's petition timing, backup planning, or your OPT clock? F1Jobs works with candidates through exactly this stretch of the H-1B calendar.