Ohio
Cleveland, OH permit fees and requirements
Cleveland prices construction on one ordinance section read against one department page:
a four-row valuation ladder split by construction class and by a $1,000,000 seam, plan examination at $20 per 1,000 square feet, and a state surcharge that is *already inside* OBC rates but must be itemised at 1% on residential work. A residential alteration is $5 per $1,000 of cost (floor $30); a commercial one is $15 per $1,000 below $1,000,000 and $15,000 plus $11 per $1,000 above it.
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 Cleveland permit fee with our Building Permit Fee Calculator.
| Permit | Category | Last reviewed |
|---|---|---|
| Cleveland building permit cost | structural | 2026-09-25 |
| Cleveland electrical permit cost | electrical | 2026-09-25 |
| Cleveland plumbing permit cost | plumbing | 2026-09-25 |
Local context
What is specific to Cleveland
Two documents price Cleveland, and the City says so itself. The codified schedule — § 3105.25, last amended by Ordinance 708-10 in 2010 — carries the enactment. The department's Permit Fee Schedule page opens by calling itself "a user-friendly recreation" of that schedule and dated January 2, 2014, and it is where the fees the ordinance section never printed live: plan examination, zoning's fourth row, site development, SWPPP, the certificate of occupancy, the two late-fee tiers, and the charitable festival trio. Both are the City's own publications, so both are quoted; where they disagree, the ordinance governs and the disagreement stays on the page.
Three disagreements are worth knowing before you pay. The page prices a potable-water connection at $13 where the ordinance says $50 — apparently a copy from the piping rows above it. The page repeats "3% State of Ohio surcharge added to the permit fee" under every trade section while the ordinance says the opposite for OBC work ("the permit fees herein include the required surcharge"). And the page adds a residential zoning fee the ordinance's list omits. None of the three is reconciled by inventing a middle figure: the ordinance's rows are what the ladder charges, the page's rows are what the extras charge, and each conflict is recorded.
What could not be read is one statute. RC 3781.10 — the state law the ordinance's surcharge paragraphs are written around — answers to no fetch from this environment: codes.ohio.gov, the General Assembly's site, Justia, FindLaw and the Wayback Machine all failed on the day of this pass. The ordinance quotes the statute's operative rule twice, and that quotation is the reading modelled here; the statute's list of "miscellaneous items" sharing the residential 1% treatment is the one thing left open.
Valuation
How valuation is determined here
The ladder reads an estimated construction cost, and the ordinance defines it precisely — and unusually, by what to leave out.
What is in: "all structural, electrical, plumbing and HVAC, interior finish, normal site preparation including excavation and backfill, overhead and profit." What is out: "Architectural/Engineering fees, costs of land and off-site costs need not be included." The Department may determine the estimate under BOCA or the R.S. Means method "effective on the date application is made", so a stale cost table cannot price a new application.
What is not valuation at all. Demolition is priced on floor area — square feet above the basement, since the schedule excludes "basement floor or cellar floor areas". Plan examination is priced on floor area too, per 1,000 square feet of what is examined. Electrical's area row is square footage; its item rows are facts of the job (how many signs, whether it is a repair). Plumbing reads counts only — fixtures installed, linear feet of pipe — so a plumbing total never moves because the job got more expensive.
The state surcharge is not a percentage of everything: the ordinance names "permit and plan examination fees" as the residential base, which is why the 1% here is a percentage of exactly those two lines and not of zoning or late fees added beside them.
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 Cleveland's own permit, plan-examination and surcharge amounts for building, electrical and plumbing work. They are not a project cost, and they exclude:
- HVAC and elevator permits. § 3105.25(j) and (m) price heating, ventilation, air conditioning, refrigeration and elevators in full — no HVAC or elevator page is published in this jurisdiction set, so those rows are read, recorded and charged nowhere here.
- The count rows this engine has no unit for. Amusement rides at $30 each and the SWPPP inspection at $150/month of construction duration are published figures with no per-ride or per-month basis to charge them on; neither is faked as a flat fee.
- The RC 3781.10(E) miscellaneous-items list. The statute could not be fetched, so only the ordinance's explicit residential class is state-surcharged here; items the statute lists alongside dwellings may also owe the itemised 1% and are recorded as open.
- The post-issuance P.E. fee for revised plans. The page says revisions after permit issuance incur "an additional P.E. fee" and publishes no amount.
- Contractor registration, state licences and appeal fees. Registration runs through the State's Industry Licensing Board and the department's packet — licensing, not permitting, and not in any total.
- The permit portal's payment fees. Accela's convenience charges are the payment channel's, not the schedule's.
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
City of Cleveland — Department of Building & Housing (overview and contact list)
Read 2026-09-25 together with the department's contact-list page. The overview is where the state-licensing-before-city-registration sequence is stated ("To register as an electrical, plumbing, or HVAC contractor, you must first be licensed by the State of Ohio … Then complete and submit the contractor packet"), where the Accela permit portal is linked (coc-prod-publicportal.accela.com), and where the Board of Building Standards appeal path and its 30-day violation window live. The contact list supplies every phone number in this jurisdiction's department row.
- City websiteCityPrimary source
City of Cleveland — Permit Fee Schedule (Plan Examination and Permit Fee Schedule)
Read 2026-09-25. The page describes itself as "a user-friendly recreation of the City of Cleveland Department of Building and Housing Plan Examination and Permit Fee Schedule, effective January 2, 2014" — a later publication than the ordinance's 2010 date, and the source of every fee the codified section does not carry: the $20-per-1,000 plan examination with its $20 floor, site development review $200, SWPPP review $500 and its $150/month inspection, the certificate of occupancy at $60, the two late-fee tiers ($100 or $200 plus 25%), the $40/$100 special inspection fees, the charitable festival trio, and a fourth residential zoning row the ordinance's list omits. Two figures disagree with the ordinance — its $13 potable-connection copy against § 3105.25(k)(2)F's $50, and its boilerplate "3% OBC surcharge added to the permit fee" against the ordinance's "the permit fees herein include the required surcharge". The ordinance governs both; the disagreements are recorded in the research record and quoted on the pages.
- Municipal codeCityPrimary source
Cleveland Code of Ordinances § 3105.25 — Schedule of Permit Fees (Land Use Code, Ch. 3105)
Read 2026-09-25 in full through the codifier (which 403s plain fetchers): the valuation preamble, the NOTE that electrical, plumbing, HVAC, elevators and plan processing are separate, the two RC 3781.10(E) surcharge paragraphs, and divisions (a) through (m) with every rate and minimum — the four-row ladder with its $1,000,000 tier split, the misc and demolition rows, moving, signs, marquees, tents with the funeral/religious exemption, zoning fees, HVAC, plumbing, electrical and elevators. Ord. No. 708-10, passed 8-18-10, eff. 8-20-10. The referenced state statute (RC 3781.10) could not be fetched by any path tried — codes.ohio.gov, legislature.ohio.gov, Justia, FindLaw, public.law and the Wayback Machine all failed from this environment — so the surcharge reading rests on the ordinance's own words, which state it twice.