Illinois
Chicago, IL permit fees and requirements
Chicago prices a building permit from area and two published factor tables
not from a valuation: `CF × RF × A`, where CF is a dollar rate per square foot read from Table 14A-12-1204.3(1) by occupancy class and construction type, RF a scope-of-review factor read from Table (3) for new construction or Table (4) for rehabilitation, and A the gross floor area in square feet. Every scope row prints a Minimum Fee beside its factor and footnote c puts a city-wide $602 minimum under all of it. Demolition is taken out of the formula by footnote d and priced flat at $600.00 ordinary or $2,450.00 complex. The trade permits are a different mechanism entirely: Table 14A-12-1204.2 lists stand-alone fees that stack when a permit covers more than one listed scope.
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 Chicago permit fee with our Building Permit Fee Calculator.
| Permit | Category | Last reviewed |
|---|---|---|
| Chicago building permit cost | structural | 2026-09-25 |
| Chicago electrical permit cost | electrical | 2026-09-25 |
| Chicago plumbing permit cost | plumbing | 2026-09-25 |
Local context
What is specific to Chicago
Chicago is a city of two Departments' worth of process under one fee table. The Department of Buildings publishes the fee tables every year and runs the Express Permit Program for the trades — a guided route launched in 2023 that replaced the older Easy Permit and Short Form processes — while plan review for a full building permit goes through the standard intake. The fee does not depend on which route a permit takes, which is why this page can price both from the same two documents.
The formula is the first thing to understand, because it is unusual: §14A-4-412.2.2.1 prices a building permit as `CF × RF × A`, and no valuation appears anywhere in it. The Department's own calculator asks for construction type, occupancy type, floor area and project scope, and for nothing else. A reader coming from a valuation-priced city has been trained to enter a contract value; on this schedule there is no field for one.
The second is the fee's arithmetic shape. The construction factor alone runs from $0.23 to $1.06 per square foot across fourteen occupancy classifications and five construction types, and the scope factor from 0.25 to 1.25 — so the same square footage prices three or four times apart depending on the classification and on what is being done to the building. The schedule therefore prints a Minimum Fee beside every scope row, and the 2026 ordinance raised the city-wide floor that sits under all of them from $302 to $602. On small jobs the floor is what is collected far more often than the product is.
The trade permits are not a smaller version of the building permit; they are a different mechanism. §14A-4-412.1 sends a permit that covers only scopes listed in Table 14A-12-1204.2 to that table's flat fees, and says that a permit covering more than one listed scope pays each applicable fee. That is why a service upgrade and a bank of new circuits are added rather than compared, and why the electrical page here prices them separately.
Valuation
How valuation is determined here
Chicago does not use a valuation for a building permit at all. §14A-4-412.2.2.1 prices it as `CF × RF × A`: a construction factor in dollars per square foot from Table 14A-12-1204.3(1), a scope-of-review factor from Table (3) or (4), and the gross floor area of all construction work in square feet. The construction factor is published as a matrix — Group A at $0.97 per square foot for a Type I building down to Group U at $0.23 for a Type V — and the scope factor as a table of descriptions of work, from 0.25 for a repair to 1.25 for work including regulated equipment, each with its own minimum.
Two consequences follow that a reader should expect. The first is that the area entered is the area of all the work, not the footprint of a building or the area of a single room: A is defined as the gross floor area of all construction, demolition or rehabilitation work, including basements excluded from building area. The second is that where more than one scope factor applies, footnote b applies the highest applicable multiplier to all areas rather than blending them.
The trade permits are priced from a table rather than a formula: Table 14A-12-1204.2 is a list of named scopes with a fixed amount each, and §14A-4-412.1 stacks the ones a permit covers. Nothing in either route uses a project's value.
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 building formula and its row minimums, the flat demolition fees, and every stand-alone electrical and plumbing fee in the table that can be computed from a count the applicant gives. They exclude:
- Exterior wall rehabilitation (Table 14A-12-1204.3(5)), which cannot be computed at all: §14A-4-412.2.2.2 sends its construction factor to Table 14A-12-1204.3(2), and both the 2022 excerpts and the 2026 tables print that table as `[Reserved]`. The scope factors exist — 0.05 for tuckpointing at $350, 0.1 for siding or window wall at $350 to $600, 0.5 for a lintel at $300, 1 for concrete repair, parapet or cornice at $300 to $600 — and there is no construction factor to multiply them by. The page names all seven amounts rather than inventing a rate.
- Phased permitting (Table 14A-12-1204.3(6)): its first row prints no factor at all, and its 0.75 row's minimum is defined by reference to another table ("per Table 14A-12-1204.3(4)"). Both are facts about the document, not about this calculator, so the rows are named with their amounts — $7,300, $350, $3,650, $1,200, $3,650 — and not priced.
- Mixed-occupancy weighting. Table (1) footnote a weights a mixed occupancy by the gross floor area of each class, which needs every class's area. Footnote a also states the rule a reader can use: where one class is 85% or more of the area, the whole fee uses that classification. The calculator therefore asks for one occupancy group, and the page says to enter the predominant one.
- Revision permits (§14A-4-412.2.2.4), priced page-proportionally as the original fee times the ratio of pages, at the building official's discretion, and the penalty under §14A-4-412.2.2.3, up to the deposit. Both are determinations rather than schedules.
- The process fees of Table 14A-12-1204.1: the permit fee deposit — $600 for ordinary work, $300 for a temporary structure — which is a prepayment credited against the permit fee rather than an extra charge, the $25.00 stand-alone permit review fee, $150.00 for the first hour and $100.00 for each further hour of accessibility pre-review, $30.00 for a pre-permit debt check, and 25% of the original fee per 180-day period for an extension of time or reinstatement.
- Electrical outdoor illumination, priced at $75 per 1,000 square feet of parking lot or landscape area — a second area figure this calculator does not ask for — and solar arrays of 13.44 kW or more, priced at $250 per array with a $1,000 minimum, which needs an array count. Both amounts are named here.
- Repair or alteration of devices on existing circuits, $75 per service, and monthly maintenance permits that can cover more than one building, which are priced per service or per building rather than per project; the flat single-service and single-building amounts are what the pages charge when those scopes are selected.
- Inspection and enforcement fees (§14A-5-503), including re-inspection charges, stop-work-order penalties, and the zoning fee, sprinkler and standpipe review fees, fire fees and regulated-equipment fees that belong to other departments or other articles of the code.
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
2026 Amended Building Permit Fee Tables (effective January 6, 2026)
Read 2026-09-25, sha256 beginning `2e5f2a52b5ccfd48`. Issued under §14A-12-1204.3.1 and updated for Ordinance SO2025-0021719. Carries Tables 14A-12-1204.3(1), (3), (4), (5) and (6) — the construction factor, the two scope-of-review factors, exterior wall rehabilitation and phased permitting — with the Minimum Fee column and footnotes a to d. Extracted with `pdftotext -table`; `-layout` mis-pairs the amount column in the stand-alone tables and was not used for rates.
- Official calculatorCityPrimary source
City of Chicago — Calculate the Cost of a Building Permit
Read 2026-09-25, HTTP 200. The Department's fee index. Its inputs are construction type, occupancy type, floor area and project scope — no valuation — which is the clearest statement anywhere that Chicago's building permit is priced from area. It names the 2026 tables as the schedule for permits issued from 2026-01-01 and lists the superseded tables beside them.
- City websiteCityPrimary source
City of Chicago — Express Permit Program
Read 2026-09-25, HTTP 200. Launched 2023-11-06, replacing the Easy Permit and Short Form processes, and expanded 2024-09-16. Confirms that electrical and plumbing permits are issued as stand-alone (express) permits — the route §14A-4-412.1 prices from Table 14A-12-1204.2 — including monthly electrical and plumbing maintenance worktypes.
- Municipal codeCityPrimary source
Read 2026-09-25, sha256 beginning `2512a02138641748`. Carries §14A-4-412 in full — the formula `CF × RF × A`, the stand-alone-fee route of §14A-4-412.1, the process fees of Table 14A-12-1204.1 and the stand-alone fees of Table 14A-12-1204.2 — plus footnote d taking demolition out of the formula. The stand-alone table lives in the code rather than in the annual PDFs, so this document plus the 2026 ordinance is the current version of the trade fees; Table 14A-12-1204.2 gets its first automatic CPI adjustment on 2027-01-01 under the §14A-12-1204.2.1 the ordinance inserts.
- OrdinanceCityPrimary source
Substitute Ordinance SO2025-0021719 (2026 Municipal Code Revenue Ordinance)
Passed 2025-12-19, sha256 beginning `37df4b6046141705`. Retrieved through the City Clerk's Legislation API (`api.chicityclerkelms.chicago.gov`) because amlegal's Code Library answers 403 from this environment. Its Article XXVI §3 sets the effective date: the new amounts apply no earlier than ten days after passage or 2026-01-01, whichever is later — which the Department published as 2026-01-06. §7 and §8 print exactly which process fees and which Table 14A-12-1204.2 rows changed.