California
San Diego, CA permit fees and requirements
San Diego prices a building permit as plan check plus inspection — a base rate that covers a stated number of square feet and an increment per square foot above it — and prices electrical and plumbing permits per unit of work, with a First Unit and an Each Additional Unit amount on nearly every row. Two State of California fees are charged with every building permit, and the City adds four flat charges of its own.
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 San Diego permit fee with our Building Permit Fee Calculator.
| Permit | Category | Last reviewed |
|---|---|---|
| San Diego building permit cost | structural | 2026-09-24 |
| San Diego electrical permit cost | electrical | 2026-09-24 |
| San Diego plumbing permit cost | plumbing | 2026-09-24 |
Local context
What is specific to San Diego
Two documents carry the whole schedule, and both are Development Services Department information bulletins the City publishes as web pages. IB-501 is the construction permit fee schedule: its Table 501A prints the plan-check and inspection pair project type by project type, and its Section III prints the state's State/Seismic and Building Standards fees beside the City's own Mapping, Lead Hazard, General Plan Maintenance and fee-collection charges. IB-103 is the MEP fee schedule, whose Table 2 is electrical and Tables 3A and 3B are plumbing.
The City is candid about what a permit is not. IB-103 states that "Separate building and MEP permits are required for all non-residential and Multi-Dwelling Unit (MDU) construction. Each building must have its own MEP permit" — so a commercial or apartment project pays the building permit and then each trade permit, and the pages here are written as separate applications for that reason. It also marks each MEP row with whether it qualifies for a "Simple Permit", which is a permit that needs no plan review; the fee on the row is the same either way, and what changes is the route the application takes.
A valuation is used for exactly two of the charges. The State/Seismic fee and the Building Standards fee are both assessed on it, and the City publishes a separate Building Valuation Schedule (IB-101) as the document a number would be checked against — this site takes the applicant's own figure rather than computing one from it, and says so on the page. Everything else is priced from the project's area or from a count of units, devices or outlets.
Valuation
How valuation is determined here
For the building permit, area decides the fee and valuation does not. The plan-check and inspection pair is built from the project's square footage: a base rate covering the first 3,000 or 5,000 or 20,000 square feet, depending on the project type, plus an increment for every square foot above it. A valuation is used for exactly two things — the state's State/Seismic fee at 13¢ or 28¢ per $1,000 and its Building Standards fee at $4 per $100,000 — and the electrical and plumbing permits are priced per dwelling unit, per device or per five-fixture group rather than on any value at all.
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 the fee rows of one bulletin each, the two State of California fees, and the City's flat charges of its own. They exclude:
- The mechanical permit. IB-103 Tables 1A and 1B price mechanical work per building use and per item, and no page of this site prices a mechanical permit in any jurisdiction.
- The electrical circuit bands. Table 2 prices 15–45 A circuits as a group with a stepped ladder ("First 5 Circuits $176.57 … 6-10 Circuits $52.39 … each additional 50 circuits over 50 $141.28"), and the 50–200 A and 225–400 A rows as $353.13 per 3 circuits. Each prices a group rather than one circuit, so they are named rather than modelled.
- The five-fixture plumbing groups — non-residential restrooms and kitchens, hotels and laboratories — and the per-lineal-foot private water and sewer utilities row.
- Table 501B partial permits and Table 501C miscellaneous items: foundations, frames, shells, partial high-rise work, and antennas, awnings, carports, decks, fences, pools, retaining walls, signs and skylights.
- The enhanced and hourly services: the Development Project Manager at $176.84 per hour, Express Plan Check at $793.95 plus 1.5 times the regular fee, plan changes, overtime inspections, and the address fee of $529.71.
- Every other agency's charge collected with the permit: water and sewer capacity and installation fees, San Diego County Water Authority meter capacity fees, the school district's fees, Lead-Safe and Healthy Homes charges beyond the modelled $58.00, and the Development Impact Fees and Housing Trust Fund fees the City Planning Department collects.
- Photovoltaic, electric-vehicle charging and some residential remodel work, which the bulletins route to their own publications (IB-301, IB-187, IB-203).
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.
- City websiteCity
Information Bulletin 101, “Building Valuation Schedule”
Cited, not modelled. IB-501 names it for "valuation determination", which is what the two state fees are assessed on: the State/Seismic fee at 13¢ or 28¢ per $1,000 and the Building Standards fee at $4 per $100,000. This site does not compute a valuation from a schedule — it takes the applicant's own figure — so the bulletin is recorded because it is the document a reader would need to reproduce the City's number, and the pages say the valuation is theirs to supply.
- City websiteCityPrimary source
Information Bulletin 103, “Fee Schedule for Mechanical, Electrical, Plumbing/Gas Permits”
Read 2026-09-24. Header: "INFORMATION BULLETIN 103 May 2026", previous version last effective 2026-05-03, so effective from 2026-05-04. Its Table 1A and 1B price mechanical work per building use and per item, Table 2 the electrical work, and Tables 3A and 3B the plumbing work — each printing a First Unit and an Each Add'l Unit amount. This site models Table 2 and Tables 3A/3B and does not model mechanical work anywhere. One thing the bulletin states plainly and this site repeats: "Separate building and MEP permits are required for all non-residential and Multi-Dwelling Unit (MDU) construction. Each building must have its own MEP permit."
- City websiteCityPrimary source
Information Bulletin 501, “Fee Schedule for Construction Permits-Structures”
Read 2026-09-24. The bulletin is a web page, and its own PDF (`/sites/default/files/2026-08/dsdib501.pdf`, 3,717,650 bytes, sha256 beginning 356a4dbda0bbe683) carries no text layer — `pdftotext` returns nothing because it is a rendered image — so the page's text is the source and this row is recorded as a website rather than a PDF. The header reads "INFORMATION BULLETIN 501 August 2026", and its Previous Versions list ends on 2026-08-06, which is why the schedule is effective from 2026-08-07. Table 501A prints the plan-check and inspection base rates and per-square-foot increments; Tables 501B, 501C and 501D the partial permits, miscellaneous items and water/sewer plan check.