California
Sacramento, CA permit fees and requirements
Sacramento prices a building permit from estimated project valuation — a hundred $1,000 brackets up to $99,999
and three printed formulas above $100,000 — and adds four City charges, two of which are a rate on the valuation and one of which is charged only when a licensed contractor holds the permit. Electrical and plumbing permits are flat named scopes at $105, $107 and $75 rather than rates on a fixture, circuit or outlet.
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 Sacramento permit fee with our Building Permit Fee Calculator.
| Permit | Category | Last reviewed |
|---|---|---|
| Sacramento building permit cost | structural | 2026-09-24 |
| Sacramento electrical permit cost | electrical | 2026-09-24 |
| Sacramento plumbing permit cost | plumbing | 2026-09-24 |
Local context
What is specific to Sacramento
Two City documents carry the schedule, and they answer different questions. Tables A and B.1 is the Building Division's fee sheet: Table A is the valuation schedule a building permit is priced from, and Table B.1 is the flat-fee list a reader whose job is a bathroom remodel, a minor electrical permit, a water heater or a patio cover should look at instead. The City's searchable fee listing is where the charges around a permit live — the General Plan Maintenance Fee, the Construction Excise Tax, the City Business Operations Tax and the Residential Construction Tax — none of which appears in Table A.
The most important thing about Table A is where it stops. It prints brackets to $99,999 and then prints formulas: "$1078 + $0.006787 each $1 > $100,000", "$20,761 + $0.005133 each $1 >$3 mil", "$56,692 + $0.004620 each $1 >$10 mil". Those are continuous with the ladder where they meet it — $1,078 at $100,000, $20,761 at $3,000,000, $56,692 at $10,000,000 — which is how a reader can tell that the formula is the same schedule continued rather than a different charge. Since a new house in Sacramento is almost never valued under $100,000, the formula is the part most permits are actually priced by.
Table A also prints two columns, Commercial and Residential, and they are identical except on two rows: at $33,999 of valuation the Residential column prints $577 where the Commercial column prints $557, and at $36,999 it prints $586 where the Commercial column prints $585. This site carries both values as the document prints them. It is a small difference and it is deliberate: a homeowner looking at this page should see the number the City printed on the row that applies to them.
Valuation
How valuation is determined here
Two of the four add-on charges are a rate on the valuation and the permit fee itself is a bracket of it: the General Plan Maintenance Fee at $2.60 per $1,000 and the City Business Operations Tax at $0.40 per $1,000 (both with a published ceiling). The Construction Excise Tax is stated as a share of the valuation — ".008 x of the 2002 ICBO Valuation" — so the same figure drives it too. The electrical and plumbing permits are priced on nothing at all: they are flat amounts for named scopes.
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 pages price Table A's valuation schedule, Table B.1's flat scopes and the four City charges the fee listing states. They exclude:
- The plan review fee. The fee sheet prints a Plan Review Fee column beside every flat scope and its own record describes plan review as "calculated in two possible ways" — from a separate valuation table, or hourly at the staff rate. This site does not transcribe that table, so plan review is named rather than computed.
- The Technology Surcharge. It is "10% of the Plan Review Fee (if applicable) and Building Permit Fee (if applicable)", so it cannot be stated correctly while the plan review fee is not modelled. The page says what the surcharge is and why the site leaves it out.
- The separate permits the City issues for solar. Photovoltaic and solar water heater systems go to the City's streamlined permit for solar, and a commercial solar water heater is routed by the sheet to "a standard commercial remodel permit".
- Mechanical work, which no page of this site prices in any jurisdiction, and the City's separate $175 HVAC cut-in or change-out permit, which is a mechanical permit.
- Re-roof and wrecking permits, priced at $175 each in Table B.1, and the sign permit fee itself, which the listing prices "based on the valuation of the sign".
- The City's hourly and cost-recovery charges: the $216 staff hourly rate, expedited plan review at 50% of the plan review fee, permit renewals, extensions, re-inspections and the work-without-permit penalty, which is three times the permit fee where that is under $250 and $500 where it is over.
- Every other agency's charge collected with the permit — the utilities' water, sewer and drainage development fees and meter charges, Sacramento Regional County Sanitation District, the school district's impact fees, SAFCA flood control, the Sacramento Transportation Authority's fee, the fire department's plan review and inspection fees, and the City's own impact fees, park and housing charges.
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
Read 2026-09-24. The document is the attachment the City's fee record for "Building Permit Fee" (fee 28 in its searchable listing) publishes: "Building-Permit-Fee-Tables-A-and-B.1_2025-0719.pdf", 1,341,269 bytes, sha256 beginning e1de2a29ae12011e. Table A carries the header "TABLE A — Effective July 20, 2020*" with a footer "Revised July 19, 2025", and Table B.1 is headed "Effective July 19, 2025"; the schedule is therefore recorded as effective 2025-07-19. Extracted in three `pdftotext` modes, because the first pass through Table A mis-paired the Commercial and Residential columns by one row for part of the page and produced a ladder in which the residential column ran ahead of the commercial one — the row-by-row mode is the one whose every bracket reproduces the document's own arithmetic, and it is the one modelled.
- City websiteCityPrimary source
City of Sacramento “Fees and Charges” searchable fee listing
Read 2026-09-24. The City's own searchable listing of every fee it charges, published both as a web application and as the "Fees and Charges" dataset on data.cityofsacramento.org. It is the source for the four charges that are not in the fee sheet: "General Plan Maintenance Fee — $2.60 per $1,000 of building valuation, not-to-exceed $38,200 on permits with a valuation over $14.85 million"; "Technology Surcharge Fee (Building) — 10% of the Plan Review Fee (if applicable) and Building Permit Fee (if applicable)"; "Construction Excise Tax — .008 x of the 2002 ICBO Valuation"; "City Business Operations Tax — $0.40 per $1,000 of project valuation (Maximum limit of $5,000.00 per calendar year per contractor)"; and "Residential Construction Tax (Building) — Mobile home lot constructed or one bedroom unit $250; Two bedroom units $315; 3+ bedroom units $385". No effective date is recorded because the listing prints none per row; each row is dated by the attachment or ordinance it cites, which is why the construction excise tax carries an explicit caveat on the page.