Dallas, TX
Dallas electrical permit cost
Dallas publishes no electrical permit fee.
Not a rate per outlet, not a rate per circuit, not a percentage of the job: across all ten pages of the City's permit fee schedule, the word "electrical" does not appear. What Dallas prices instead is the inspection of a trade, through the Minimum Inspection Fee Schedule, and its amount is a function of how many trades the job involves — $125 for one trade, $250 for two, rising to $1,125 at nine or more. That trade-count fee is the number an electrical permit actually moves.
How this fee is calculated
These are the components the schedule defines for this permit, as they applied on 2026-09-28. A component only applies to your project if its conditions match — read that column before assuming a figure. Want a figure for your own project? Estimate this fee with the permit fee calculator.
| Component | Formula | Applies when | Range |
|---|---|---|---|
| Minimum inspection feeInspection fee | $125.00 per trade | Each trade on the permit | max $1,125.00 |
| Technology permit feeTechnology fee | $15.00 flat fee | Every permit of this type | — |
A real permit fee is these components added together. The department’s final calculation is the one that applies — this is the schedule it will be based on.
A worked example
Follow the arithmetic by hand. Every line is produced by the engine from the rules above, so the total cannot drift away from the schedule behind it.
Worked example
The smallest case the schedule prices: a permit covering a single trade. The amount is the minimum inspection fee for one trade plus the technology fee the City charges for the document submitted.
| Input | Value |
|---|---|
| Occupancy class | Residential |
| Type of work | New construction |
| Number of trades | 1 |
Example total
$140.00
An estimate, not an official fee. It is calculated from the published fee schedule as it applied on 2026-09-28. The permit office’s own calculation is the one that applies, and your project may fall under rules this schedule does not describe.
Fee schedule as of 2026-09-28Rules applied 2Rules considered 3
| Component | How it is calculated | Amount |
|---|---|---|
Technology permit feeTechnology feeS1 line item, restated unchanged by S3 Sec. 303.5.29 — $15 for each application, permit, plan or other construction document submitted through the land management system.Show the working
| $15.00 flat fee | $15.00 |
Minimum inspection feeInspection feeS1 Minimum Inspection Fee Schedule — $125 per trade for one to eight trades, $1,125 for nine or more. Charged on the permit alongside the table fee, as S2's worksheets show it.Show the working
| $125.00 per trade | $125.00 |
| Total | $140.00 |
Fees that do not apply here
Listed so you can see what was considered and left out, rather than wondering whether something is missing. A rule can also be left out because it is not published for this permit at all, and that is stated where it matters.
- Plan review fee — Rule status is "draft".
Assumptions
- Calculated from 2 fee rules in effect on 2026-09-28.
- Amounts are rounded to the nearest cent, once, at the end of each component.
The $125 is the City's Minimum Inspection Fee Schedule for a one-trade permit — it is not a separately published electrical permit fee, because Dallas publishes none. Whether a permit filed for electrical work alone attracts this minimum, rather than the job's construction permit carrying it once, is not stated in either official document; this page is marked for review until that is confirmed.
What is different in Dallas
The practical consequence is that there is no figure to quote for "a Dallas electrical permit", and any site quoting one is quoting something the City does not publish. What changes the fee is the number of trades on the job: a service change on an existing house is one trade; so is a service change with a panel swap and new circuits in the same permit, because the count is of trades rather than of items. Adding plumbing, mechanical or fire sprinkler work to the same job is what moves the number, because it adds a trade.
Two line items in the schedule attach directly to trade inspections. The additional inspection service fee is $125 per trade inspection, charged when an inspection beyond those included is needed. The after-hours inspection fee is $125 an hour with a $300 minimum. A failed inspection that has to be repeated is $75.
What this figure does not include
Impact fees, utility connections and other departments’ permits are the usual omissions, and in some jurisdictions they are larger than the permit fee itself.
Not included in these figures
There is no electrical permit fee to include, because Dallas does not publish one. What is calculated here is the inspection fee the schedule attaches to a permit's number of trades, plus the technology fee, which the City charges per document submitted.
Not included, and not estimable from the documents read:
- Whether a permit filed for electrical work alone carries the trade-count minimum, or whether that minimum is charged once on the construction permit covering the job. Neither the fee schedule nor the City's estimate worksheet states it, so it is recorded as an open question and this page is marked for review.
- Per-item charges of any kind. Dallas publishes no outlet, circuit, panel, fixture or appliance rate, unlike cities that price electrical permits per item.
- Reinspection ($75), additional inspection service ($125 per trade inspection), after-hours inspection ($125 an hour, $300 minimum) and same-day inspection ($250), which attach to events rather than to permits.
- Work without a permit investigation ($100 an hour per trade) and unauthorized concealment ($200 per trade).
- Fire alarm, fire sprinkler and fire protection review fees, which are separate line items in the schedule and, unlike the building trades, are priced.
What you need before applying
- Number of trades on the jobRequired
The electrical work is what a Dallas permit describes; the number that sets the inspection fee is how many trades are inspected on the job. Adding plumbing or mechanical work to the same job changes the inspection fee; adding outlets or circuits to the electrical work does not, because the schedule publishes no per-outlet or per-circuit rate for Dallas.
Common questions
Does Dallas charge a separate fee for an electrical permit?
The City's published permit fee schedule contains no electrical permit fee, and the words electrical, plumbing and mechanical do not appear anywhere in its ten pages. Trade work is priced through the Minimum Inspection Fee Schedule instead. If a contractor quotes you a Dallas electrical permit fee, the number is coming from somewhere other than the City's published schedule.
How many trades will my job have?
The schedule prices a count of trades but does not list which work counts as one, so the answer comes from the scope of the job and, in practice, from the permit office. What is published — and what is calculated here — is that one trade is $125, two are $250, and nine or more is $1,125.
Is there any per-outlet or per-circuit price in Dallas?
No. A search of all ten pages of the schedule returns zero matches for electrical, and there are no outlet, circuit, panel or fixture rows. That is a real difference from Houston, where the same work is priced per item — and the reason a Dallas electrical question has to be answered with a mechanism rather than a rate.
What do I pay if the inspector has to come back?
A reinspection is $75. If an inspection is needed outside the included service, the additional inspection service fee is $125 per trade inspection, and after-hours inspections are $125 an hour with a $300 minimum.
Source and verification
The documents behind every figure on this page, with the dates that make them checkable.
- OrdinanceCityPrimary source
Ordinance 25-0638, amending Chapter 52 Section 303
Effective 15 April 2025. Amends Table B-I (alterations or repairs), the technology permit fee (restated unchanged at $15), the Q-Team review caps, the mover's licence and non-premise sign fees, and REMOVES the postage and handling fee and the inspection scheduling fee that the May 2024 schedule still prints. Read from the scanned document's text layer; the table itself is legible enough to confirm that the row the schedule misprints as "$500,000,001 - 10,000,000" is "$5,000,001 - 10,000,000".
- Official calculatorCityPrimary source
PDV Fee Estimate Worksheet Examples
The department's own estimator, with five worked examples (new single-family dwelling, residential remodel, new commercial office building, commercial tenant finish-out, multi-family complex). Its arithmetic is what resolves the commercial table's upper brackets, which the printed schedule omits, and it is the source of the plan-review discrepancy: it computes $0.046 per sq ft where the schedule prints $0.46. Earliest capture 2025-10-16. Used arithmetically, never copied: the estimate on every page is computed by this site's engine from the published rates.
- Fee schedule (PDF)CityPrimary source
Ten pages, effective 1 May 2024, adopted by Ordinance 32676. Carries the City's own disclaimer: "the fees listed in this schedule are for informational purposes only and are subject to change. Final permit fees will be calculated at the time of submittal". Retrieved from the Internet Archive raw snapshot of 2025-11-29 (sha256 90cb9d4a7087803fd5034146611a968caa28dd8ce71d9e4fa7bcda99a492b117) because dallascityhall.com did not respond from this environment; text extracted with pdftotext -layout and -raw. A later capture can be compared against that hash.
Verification
Last verified against the official source in Sep 2026.