Arizona
Phoenix, AZ permit fees and requirements
Phoenix prices a building permit from one valuation table.
Table A pairs a base amount with a dollar rate for each additional $1,000 of project valuation — $12 up to $10,000, then $10, $9 and $5 as the valuation rises — and rounds the valuation up to the next whole $1,000 before applying it. Plan review is added on top and is published as a percentage of that permit fee: 100% at or below $50,000 of valuation, 80% above it, with a $195 minimum. The City's fee schedule is a single 50-page document covering every department process, published under Ordinance G-7465 and effective 20 January 2026.
Permit costs we have worked out
Each page shows the fee components, the formula the jurisdiction uses, and a worked example you can follow by hand.
Estimate your potential Phoenix permit fee with our Building Permit Fee Calculator.
| Permit | Category | Last reviewed |
|---|---|---|
| Phoenix building permit cost | structural | 2026-09-24 |
| Phoenix electrical permit cost | electrical | 2026-09-24 |
| Phoenix plumbing permit cost | plumbing | 2026-09-24 |
Local context
What is specific to Phoenix
Three things about Phoenix are worth knowing before you read any number here.
The first is that the table is marginal and chained. Each row's base amount is exactly what the rows below it produce — $303 at $10,000 is $195 plus nine $12 increments — so the whole table is one continuous calculation rather than a set of independent brackets. That chaining is the opposite of Houston's schedule, whose published base charges deliberately do not chain, and it is why a Phoenix estimate can be followed by hand in one pass.
The second is the rounding. Every row charges its rate for each additional $1,000, or fraction thereof. A valuation one cent over a boundary pays a whole increment.
The third is that plan review moves in the opposite direction to the permit fee. Because plan review is 100% of the permit fee at or below $50,000 of valuation and only 80% above it, crossing $50,000 makes the total fall: a $50,000 project pays a $703 permit fee and $703 of plan review, while a $50,001 project pays $712 and $569.60. The project got more expensive and the permit got cheaper. That is the published schedule, and the City's own example arithmetic follows the same rules.
Valuation
How valuation is determined here
The schedule does not ask for a cost estimate. It defines valuation as building square footage multiplied by the standard rate for the occupancy, published in a separate Building Valuation Table, and adds that the valuation used is the higher of the department's calculated minimum and the applicant's figure. Building square footage is defined in the schedule as the total area of all floors under roof and inside the outer enclosing walls or columns, including roofed patios, bay windows, basements and mezzanines, and excluding eaves and overhangs of three feet or less, open courts and unroofed patios. Each separate building is calculated on its own.
The Building Valuation Table itself is published and was downloaded, but it could not be read: the file has no text layer and this environment has no OCR, so no square-footage rate from it is reproduced on this site. Where a figure is needed, you supply the valuation.
Who to contact
The office that issues the permit, with the details we have verified. Confirm current hours before travelling.
What these fees do not include
The list is not a disclaimer: on a new house the fees left out can outweigh the permit fee several times over. Every entry here is stated on the permit page as well.
Not included in our estimates
These figures are the City of Phoenix's building safety permit fee and plan review fee as published in Chapter 9, Appendix A.2 (Ordinance G-7465, effective 20 January 2026), computed by this site's engine. They are not a total project cost, and they do not include:
- The zoning, impact, fire permit and plan review, and water and sewer schedules, which the department's own fees page publishes separately from this one.
- Plan review services other than the basic one. The schedule prices plot plan review, single-family design review, engineering review of building components, fire life safety review, phased and deferred submittals, permits by appointment or inspection, expedited review, corrections after the second, self-certification, and every other hour-based service it lists at $195 an hour with its own minimum. None of them is charged here, and none of them is estimated.
- Every event fee: re-inspection $195, after-hours inspection $195 an hour with a $390 or $585 minimum, conditional utility clearance, temporary power inspection $195, temporary or partial certificate of occupancy $780, and elevator, refrigeration and annual facilities permits.
- Fees that replace the base charge rather than adding to it. Table A's first row prints a $98 minimum for residential water heaters and fences, and swimming pools carry a $234 minimum plus a $30 aquatics program surcharge under Ordinance G-3114. The schedule does not say whether those replace or floor the $195 base, so neither is modelled — charging both would double-count and charging either alone would be a guess.
- Solar energy permits. Residential solar photovoltaic systems have five flat over-the-counter options of their own ($780, $585, $488, $390 and $293), and a non-standard system is priced from Table A. Solar water heaters are directed to the department fee schedule. None of it is modelled here.
- Investigation fees for work done without a permit: $250 or the permit fee, whichever is greater, capped at $2,500 per day.
- Fees charged by any department other than Planning & Development, and anything for property outside the Phoenix city limits. Whether Maricopa County issues construction permits for unincorporated areas, and for which functions, has not been verified against the county's own site, so it is not described here.
Official sources for this jurisdiction
The documents these figures are transcribed from. Where a source contradicts itself we keep both readings and say so on the permit page.
- Fee schedule (PDF)CityPrimary source
Published, downloaded and hashed on 2026-09-24 (sha256 2949f758e5d318c758388a23d63f88a8d46c0641c5ed75d4afe4afbdac3519fe) but NOT read: it has no text layer — pdftotext returns nothing — and this environment has no OCR. It is the table behind the schedule's statement that valuation is 'building square footage times standard rate for occupancy', so the valuation basis is described on the pages without transcribing a rate from it.
- City websiteCityPrimary source
Fees, Valuations and Assurances
The department's own fee landing page. Used for four things: it publishes the fee schedule as the current one and dates it 20 January 2026; it names the other fee schedules that are NOT part of it (Zoning; Impact Fees; Fire Permit and Plan Review Fees; Water and Sewer Fees); it lists the counters that collect fees and their contact addresses; and it is the source for the Building Valuation Table being revised on the same date as the schedule.
- Fee schedule (PDF)CityPrimary source
PDD Fee Schedule (Chapter 9, Appendix A.2)
Approved 17 December 2025, effective 20 January 2026, adopted by Ordinance G-7465. Fifty pages, fetched live from phoenix.gov on 2026-09-24 (sha256 4193e742000369ae3b6814e56c7eb2563cf18075240aeb894f335d684ff9436d, 616,766 bytes) and read locally with pdftotext -layout and -raw. A later capture can be compared against that hash. Unlike Dallas, no archive copy was needed: the City's host answered from this environment.