Permit Fee Calculator

How cities turn a project value into a permit fee

Nearly every American jurisdiction prices a building permit the same way: look up the value of the work, then charge a base amount plus a rate for each $1,000 of that value. Nashville's 2025 schedule for one and two family homes is the plainest version of the idea. It charges $5.00 per $1,000 of total valuation, so a $40,000 addition is 40 units of $1,000 at $5.00 each, or a $200 permit (Nashville Codes 2025 fee schedule).

The value used is the cost of the work, not the value of your house. It covers labor and materials for the permitted project: the deck, the addition, the finished basement. Boulder's ordinance says it outright: the fee is set by the higher of the city's own valuation table or the estimate the applicant declares at application (City of Boulder 2025 fee schedule). Declaring an honest number matters, because a lowball estimate gets replaced by the city's figure and the fee is computed on that.

The calculator above runs three schedules: Nashville's flat $5.00 per $1,000, East Point's tiered table, and a custom pair of numbers for your own city once you find its schedule. Every city publishes one, usually as a PDF labeled building permit fee schedule.

Worked example: a $40,000 deck in two cities

Take one project, a $40,000 deck and patio cover, and price it in both preset cities. In Nashville, the residential rate of $5.00 per $1,000 gives a $200 permit fee. The schedule adds a codes tech fee of 10 percent of the valuation fee, $20, and a plan examination fee of one half of the permit fee, $100. The total comes to $320, which is 0.8 percent of the project value.

East Point, Georgia prices single family permits at a $75 base plus a tiered valuation fee. A $40,000 project falls in the $25,001 to $50,000 tier: $391.75 for the first $25,000, plus $10.10 for each additional $1,000, which is 15 units at $10.10, or $151.50. The valuation fee is $543.25, the $75 base brings it to $618.25, and plan review at half the permit fee adds $309.13. The total is $927.38, or 2.3 percent of the project value.

Same project, same construction drawings, and the second city costs about three times as much. The calculator exists because the spread is that wide and nobody posts it side by side.

Plan review, tech fees and the rest of the stack

The permit fee is the headline number, but the invoice rarely stops there. Plan review is the biggest add on: a reviewer reads the drawings for code compliance before anything is approved. Boulder charges 25 percent of the building permit fee for single family plan check and 65 percent for multifamily and nonresidential work (City of Boulder, 2025). Weld County, Colorado charges 65 percent for major plan review and a $50 flat fee for minor review of small residential alterations (Weld County 2025 fee schedule). Daly City, California sits at the top of the range at 79 percent of the building permit (Daly City FY 2025 Master Fee Schedule).

Nashville also makes a point worth knowing before you apply: the plan examination fee is due at application and is not refunded even if no building permit is ever issued. If your project might die in design, that is a real cost of trying.

Reading a tier table without getting lost

East Point's schedule is a standard tiered table, and the tiers read like this: each row names a range of project values, a fee for the first chunk, and a rate for each additional $1,000 after that. The $25,001 to $50,000 row charges $391.75 for the first $25,000 and $10.10 for each additional $1,000 or fraction thereof. That last phrase is the part people miss. A project valued at $25,700 uses 1 additional unit, not 0.7 of one, so the valuation fee is $401.85 and not $398.82.

The rate per $1,000 falls as projects get bigger, which is why permit fees are regressive: a $10,000 shed pays a higher share of its value than a $400,000 addition. East Point also adds a $75 single family base on top of the table, so check whether your city's table stands alone or sits on a base fee.

Flat fees, small jobs and trade permits

Small jobs are priced flat instead of by value. Weld County charges $52 per hour for inspections outside normal business hours and for any inspection with no specifically listed fee, and the same $52 an hour for a reinspection after a failed visit (Weld County, 2025). A minor plan review of a residential alteration under 1,000 square feet is a $50 flat fee regardless of what the work costs.

Trade permits run alongside the building permit. Electrical, plumbing and mechanical work each carry their own permit, often flat for residential work and value based for commercial jobs. Boulder charges $19.60 per $1,000 of electrical valuation for nonresidential work at $3,001 and up (City of Boulder, 2025). If your contractor pulls separate trade permits, those fees will not appear in the calculator's total, so ask for the full permit package in writing before demolition starts.

One more trap: the investigation fee. Weld County adds an investigation fee of 50 percent of the permit fee when work started before the permit was obtained. In other words, building first and permitting later can cost half again as much, on top of any stop work order and exposed framing the inspector demands to see.

What the permit fee does not include

The permit bill is the small line on a project budget. Impact fees, which fund roads, schools and parks, are charged per new dwelling unit or per square foot of new commercial space and often run into the thousands of dollars. Water and sewer tap fees are separate bills from the utility. Zoning review, fire review and engineering review each have their own line in most master fee schedules; Daly City lists planning division review at 20 percent and engineering review at 39 percent of the building permit fee, on top of the 79 percent plan review (Daly City, FY 2025).

Sales and use tax on materials is its own system. Boulder collects construction use tax when the permit is bought, and the buyer is then exempt from city and county sales tax on the project's materials at vendors across Colorado; the combined rate listed is 9.045 percent (City of Boulder, 2025). On a $40,000 deck, materials of $20,000 carry roughly $1,800 of tax, many times the permit fee itself. Whether your city works this way changes the answer more than any permit rate does.

The calculator above therefore states its scope plainly: it prices the permit, the plan review, the admin fee and any flat extras you enter. It does not price impact fees, taps or taxes, and no calculator can, because those are set project by project.

Getting the number down without cutting corners

Three levers move a permit bill, and none of them involve skipping the permit. First, value the work accurately and completely, because the city uses the higher of your estimate and its own table, and an inflated estimate inflates every percentage based fee on the invoice. Second, bundle the work: one permit covering a deck and its electrical is priced once, while two permits each carry their own base, review and admin fees. Third, get the drawings right the first time, because revised plans trigger additional review, billed hourly in Weld County at $52 and resubmittal fees in Daly City at $173 to $306 per hour (Daly City, FY 2025).

Permits also protect value you already have. Unpermitted work surfaces at sale time, knocks down appraisals and can force teardown of finished work. Set against a permit bill of 1 to 3 percent of project value, the fee is cheap insurance with a receipt. When you are pricing the whole job, our ADU cost calculator and deck refinishing cost calculator cover the construction side, so the two views together give the full project number.