Estimate what your Bay Area building department is likely to charge for permit and plan check on a residential project. Planning figures only, drawn from typical published fee schedules.
Every result is a planning estimate, not a quote or an engineering determination. Real numbers depend on site conditions, existing structure, engineering requirements, and your jurisdiction’s current fee schedule. For structural and engineering work we coordinate with a licensed engineer — we do not perform or stamp engineering ourselves. Get a project-specific estimate before committing to a budget.
Residential permit fees in the Bay Area are built from a stack of separate charges, not one number. The building permit fee is the base, usually derived from a valuation table rather than from your contractor bid. Plan check is billed as a percentage of that base, commonly somewhere between half and three quarters of it. On top sit technology and records surcharges, energy review, and, for anything that changes the building envelope or the site, a planning or zoning review.
The city multiplier in this tool reflects real differences in published schedules. Smaller peninsula and hillside jurisdictions with heavy design review tend to sit above San Jose, while several East Bay and south county cities sit below it. That spread is genuine, but it is also the part of this estimate that ages fastest, because schedules are revised annually and adopted by ordinance.
School district fees are deliberately excluded here. They are levied per square foot of new conditioned area by the school district, not the city, and rates vary widely across district boundaries that do not follow city lines. For an addition or ADU of any size they can be a meaningful line item, so confirm the current rate with the district before you finalise a budget.
The most common jump is valuation. If your stated valuation is well below the city table for that use and square footage, the department will typically apply its own figure, and every percentage-based fee moves with it. Writing an unrealistically low valuation does not save money, it just delays the intake.
The second is unpermitted work. Most Bay Area jurisdictions apply an investigation fee when work was built without a permit, frequently equal to the permit fee itself, which is why legalization commonly runs at one and a half to two times a normal permit. Some cities simply double the fee outright. That charge is for the department time spent investigating, and it is generally not waived because the work was done by a previous owner. The paperwork route back to compliance is covered on our code violation and red tag removal page.
The third is resubmittal. Plan check fees usually cover a set number of review cycles. Sets that come back repeatedly incomplete can trigger additional review charges, which is a reason to submit a properly assembled permit set rather than the minimum the counter will accept. We prepare drawings and compliance documents, we do not collect or control city fees, and no drafter can promise a plan check outcome.
Not necessarily. Most Bay Area cities calculate permit fees from their own valuation table, based on occupancy type and square footage, and will substitute that figure if your stated valuation looks low. Use a realistic construction cost when estimating. Understating it does not reduce the fee and usually just slows down intake.
Because they are set by school districts, not cities, and they are charged per square foot of new conditioned area. District boundaries do not match city boundaries, and rates change on their own schedule. Including a guess would make the total look more precise than it is. Contact the district that serves your address for the current rate.
Most jurisdictions add an investigation fee when work was built without a permit, often equal to the permit fee itself, and some double the fee outright. The charge covers department time spent investigating what was built. It usually applies regardless of who did the work, including a previous owner, so it is worth confirming the current policy with your city before budgeting.
It is a planning range, not a quote. It uses typical Bay Area percentage bands and a per-city adjustment, but every city publishes its own annually updated fee schedule and many bill from a valuation table with its own brackets. Treat the output as a budgeting starting point and confirm the real number at your building department counter.
Tell us what you're building and we'll get back to you with next steps — usually within one business day.
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Yuna Drafting