Rebekah Brooks and her co-defendants in the phone-hacking trial are looking to recoup between £20m and £25m in legal fees from the taxpayer following their acquittal on all charges.

Their claims will be submitted in the autumn, with at least £5m in fees relating to Brooks’s defence, the Guardian has learned.

The trial, which involved 22 barristers, about 40 solicitors from six law firms, three full-time court staff and more than 60 witnesses, was labelled by the presiding judge, Mr Justice Saunders, as “probably the most expensive case in the country”.

Brooks, who was cleared of all charges, paid for her own defence, but Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp was contractually obliged to pay for the defence of four remaining defendants.

Defence fees were to be paid for the former News of the World editor Andy Coulson, who was convicted, as well for her former secretary Cheryl Carter, the firm’s security head, Mark Hanna, and the former NoW managing editor Stuart Kuttner, all of whom were cleared.

Her husband, Charlie Brooks, also a defendant in the case, had no contract with News Corp and paid for his own defence. He is also expected to make an application for costs, which could be more than £1m.

Brooks funded her legal battle out of a £16.1m severance deal she secured when she resigned as News International’s chief executive in July 2011. She was cleared of four charges by the jury in relation to phone hacking, corrupt payments to public officials and an allegation that she conspired to pervert the course of justice.

If she had been convicted she would have had to repay all her costs to the parent company, News Corp, and would also have been hit for costs sought by the Crown Prosecution Service, which put the total legal outlay for the trial at £1.7m.

The CPS is battling to get £750,000 of costs back from Coulson, who was found guilty and jailed last month for his part in a conspiracy to hack phones while editor of the News of the World.

In a judgment last week, Saunders said the prosecution’s application for costs would be delayed because of outstanding matters, including the question of whether Coulson’s severance deal with News International included an indemnity for costs arising out of the trial. Coulson resigned from the NoW in 2007 and went on to become David Cameron’s director of communications.

The judge is also waiting for an affidavit from Coulson relating to his assets.

“It does seem to me, however, that inquiries as to what has happened to the severance payment that was made to Mr Coulson and the capital sum realised by downsizing his home, are legitimate questions and Mr Coulson has agreed to answer them,” Saunders said.

Brooks can claim for costs associated with the hacking and perversion of the course of justice charges, but not the two counts related to paying public officials as these were made after legal aid changes clawed back the amount privately defended clients could demand from the crown.

Her lead counsel, Jonathan Laidlaw QC, and his team were understood to be paid about £30,000 a week, amounting to more than £1m in fees for court time alone over the 33-week trial.

The £25m is lower than the earlier £60m estimate for News Corp’s bill for the trial, but it is not thought to include ancillary services, such as a noting barrister transcribing the trial on a daily basis, two individuals reporting daily back to the company’s HQs in New York and London, and the presence of a corporate lawyer virtually every day during the trial.

News Corp has spent £100m on legal costs in the last year arising out of the closure of the News of the World, which would have included fees spent on criminal and civil proceedings, and will have included some of the defendants’ costs.