How Much Does a Building Permit Cost in Chicago? (2026 Fee Guide)
How Much Does a Building Permit Cost in Chicago? (2026 Fee Guide) Short answer: $602 is the floor for virtually every Chicago building permit, and most resident...
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Short answer: $602 is the floor for virtually every Chicago building permit, and most residential jobs pay exactly that. Chicago does not charge a percentage of construction value. It runs a formula — and for the great majority of work that formula produces a number below the minimum, so you pay the minimum.
This guide uses the City's own 2026 Amended Building Permit Fee Tables, effective January 6, 2026 under Ordinance SO2025-0021719, plus what 8,260 real Chicago permits show about what actually gets filed and how long it actually takes.
What a Chicago permit costs, by job
These are the minimum fees from Table 14A-12-1204.3(4) and 14A-12-1204.3(3). For most of these jobs the minimum is also the final number — see the worked examples below for why.
| Work | 2026 minimum fee |
|---|---|
| Tuckpointing / unit masonry repair | $350 |
| Siding repair or in-kind replacement | $350 |
| Interior demolition, nonstructural (prep for rehab) | $350 |
| Parapet rebuilding | $300 |
| Lintel repair | $300 |
| Porch, balcony, deck, exterior stair, occupiable rooftop | $250 per unit served |
| Level 1 alteration (no reconfiguration, no new equipment) | $600 |
| Level 2 / 3 alteration, single dwelling unit | $600 |
| Level 2 / 3 alteration, building with 1–3 dwelling units | $600 |
| Structural repair only, 1–3 unit residential | $600 |
| In-kind replacement of a single MEP system | $600 |
| Nonstructural repair | $600 |
| Concrete repair | $600 |
| Ordinary demolition | $600 |
| Detached garage or carport (on top of the main building fee) | $600 |
| Roof repair, recover, or replacement with structural repair | $900 |
| Addition to a 1–3 unit building | $900 |
| Level 2 / 3 alteration, 4+ dwelling units | $300 per unit |
| New residential, ≤4 stories and ≤3 dwelling units | $2,450 |
| Addition (commercial / 4+ units) | $2,450 |
| Complex demolition | $2,450 |
| Level 2 / 3 alteration, occupant load 300+ | $3,650 |
| New construction, most other occupancies | $3,650 |
| Change of occupancy with a hazard increase | $3,650 |
| Increase or decrease in dwelling-unit count | $1,800 |
| Caissons / slurry wall / grade beams only | $7,300 |
| Absolute minimum, any permit | $602 |
| Absolute minimum, temporary structures | $302 |
Every one of these is a floor. Chicago charges the greater of the formula result or the minimum.
The formula, and why it usually loses to the minimum
Chicago's plan-based permit fee is:
Fee = Area (sq ft) × Construction Factor × Scope-of-Review Factor
Construction factor comes from Table 14A-12-1204.3(1) — a dollars-per-square-foot rate set by your occupancy group and your building's construction type (I through V, most protected to least). A sample of the 2026 rates:
| Occupancy | Type I | Type II | Type III | Type IV | Type V |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Group A (assembly) | $0.97 | $0.90 | $0.86 | $0.83 | $0.74 |
| Group B (business) | $0.84 | $0.78 | $0.74 | $0.69 | $0.61 |
| Group E (educational) | $0.87 | $0.80 | $0.79 | $0.73 | $0.64 |
| Group I (institutional) | $1.06 | $0.98 | $0.97 | $0.86 | $0.78 |
| Group M (mercantile) | $0.61 | $0.56 | $0.52 | $0.50 | $0.42 |
| Group S (storage) | $0.53 | $0.41 | $0.39 | $0.35 | $0.28 |
| Group U (utility) | $0.35 | $0.30 | $0.29 | $0.27 | $0.23 |
Group R (residential) runs roughly $0.44 to $0.84 per square foot depending on the R subclassification and construction type — the low end covering the small-residential subclasses that most Chicago houses and two- and three-flats fall into. Check the PDF for your exact cell.
Scope-of-review factor is a multiplier from 0.05 to 1.25 set by how much review your work actually needs. Tuckpointing sits at 0.05. A Level 1 alteration is 0.25. A typical residential Level 2/3 alteration is 0.5. New construction runs 0.75 to 1. Anything involving regulated equipment is 1.25.
Now do the arithmetic. A residential alteration at, say, $0.44/sq ft and a 0.5 scope factor costs $0.22 per square foot. To exceed the $600 minimum you would need roughly 2,700 square feet of work area. That is the whole story: below about 2,700 sq ft of residential alteration, the formula is irrelevant and you pay the minimum.
This flips on larger commercial work, where both factors are higher. A 12,000 sq ft Level 2 alteration to a Type I office building runs 12,000 × $0.84 × 0.75 = $7,560, far past its $1,800 minimum.
Worked examples
Kitchen remodel, 180 sq ft, unit in a three-flat Level 2 alteration to a single dwelling unit. Formula: 180 × ~$0.44 × 0.5 ≈ $40. Minimum for that line: $600. You pay $600, plus separate electrical and plumbing permits. The $600 deposit you paid at submission is applied to it.
Full roof replacement with structural repair, 2,400 sq ft, two-flat Formula: 2,400 × ~$0.44 × 0.5 ≈ $528. Minimum for roof work with structural repair: $900. You pay $900. A straight reroof with no structural work is a different animal — it is eligible for the Express Permit Program and skips plan review entirely.
New single-family house, 2,800 sq ft, Type V wood frame New residential, ≤4 stories and ≤3 units, scope factor 0.75. Formula: 2,800 × ~$0.44 × 0.75 ≈ $924. Minimum: $2,450. You pay $2,450. Even new construction on a standard Chicago lot lands on the minimum.
12,000 sq ft office alteration, Type I construction Formula: 12,000 × $0.84 × 0.75 = $7,560, against an $1,800 minimum. Here the formula governs, and square footage is genuinely the cost driver.
The pattern: residential work pays minimums; large commercial work pays the formula. If you are bidding residential in Chicago, permit cost is close to a fixed line item, and you can quote it with confidence.
The two tracks, and what they actually cost you in time
This is where most cost guides stop and where the real money is. Chicago runs two very different paths, and which one your job falls into matters more to your schedule than the fee does.
The Express Permit Program is a fully web-based track covering most repair and replacement work plus some small improvements: reroofing, electrical work, plumbing work, HVAC, porch and deck repair, small-scale solar PV, nonstructural interior demolition, fire alarm systems, scaffolding, deconversion of unpermitted unit features, and administrative changes like swapping a contractor on an active permit.
Plan review is everything else — anything reconfiguring space, touching structure, changing occupancy, or adding units.
Here is what that difference looks like in practice. Across 8,260 Chicago permits PermitGrab tracked between May 2 and July 29, 2026:
| Permit type | Share of permits | Median days to issue | 90th percentile | Same-day |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Express Permit Program | 5,398 (65%) | 3 days | 19 days | 1,642 (30%) |
| Renovation / alteration | 1,351 (16%) | 60 days | 224 days | 9 |
| New construction | 432 (5%) | 36 days | 176 days | 25 |
| Signs | 505 (6%) | 35 days | 151 days | 0 |
| Wrecking / demolition | 179 (2%) | 64 days | 127 days | 19 |
| Elevator equipment | 280 (3%) | 0 days | 7 days | 204 |
Two thirds of all Chicago permits go through Express, and half of those clear in under three days. If your scope can be kept inside the Express Program's boundaries, you convert a two-month wait into a three-day one. That is worth designing a job around.
The corollary is the 224-day 90th percentile on renovation and alteration permits. One project in ten spends more than seven months in plan review. If you are writing a schedule against a renovation permit, the median is not the number to plan around.
What Chicago jobs are actually worth
Fee tables tell you what the City charges. They do not tell you what the work is worth. Across the same 8,260 permits, declared project values break down like this:
| Trade | Permits (90d) | Median declared value | 90th percentile |
|---|---|---|---|
| Electrical | 2,146 | $5,000 | $46,000 |
| General construction | 1,446 | $85,000 | $1,000,000 |
| Roofing | 667 | $27,480 | $147,351 |
| Structural | 597 | $16,000 | $117,572 |
| Landscaping & exterior | 591 | $6,000 | $25,885 |
| Solar | 424 | $20,550 | $35,611 |
| Interior renovation | 417 | $120,000 | $1,000,000 |
| New construction | 414 | $106,506 | $1,300,000 |
| Signage | 397 | $4,000 | $15,000 |
| Plumbing | 342 | $7,850 | $33,028 |
| Demolition | 269 | $25,000 | $482,500 |
| Windows & doors | 178 | $20,000 | $400,000 |
Citywide the median declared value is $17,250, with a quartile range of $5,000 to $53,312. Set against a $602 permit minimum, the permit is roughly 3.5% of a median job — and well under 1% once you get into renovation work.
Volume has been climbing through 2026: 1,547 permits in January, 2,608 in March, 2,901 in June, with 2,778 distinct contractors pulling permits over the last 90 days.
Four things that cost Chicago contractors money
The $600 deposit is now also a $600 penalty, twice. New for 2026: the initial non-refundable deposit rose to $600, and the Department of Buildings now charges a penalty equal to the deposit when it determines an application is substantially incomplete or deficient — and another $600 when it determines the application was filed under a review program it was not eligible for. Submitting a half-ready application, or guessing at Express eligibility, is now a $1,200 mistake rather than a delay.
Trade permits are separate, always. The building permit does not cover electrical, plumbing, or mechanical work. Electrical alone is the busiest permit category in Chicago — 2,146 of 8,260 permits in our 90-day window. Quote every permit the job needs, not just the building permit.
Pre-1985 buildings need an asbestos survey before issuance. This is not a City fee — it is paid to an environmental testing firm — but the permit will not issue without it, and in Chicago's housing stock it applies to most of what you will touch.
Deconversion now costs the same as conversion. The 2026 tables raised the minimum for decreasing dwelling-unit count to $1,800, matching the fee for increasing it. If you were budgeting a deconversion off an older number, it changed on January 6.
Where to calculate your exact fee
The City runs an official permit fee calculator that takes construction type, occupancy type, area, and scope and returns the fee. It has been updated for 2026. Use it before you quote — the four inputs are exactly the four variables in the formula above, and the output is what you will actually be billed.
Note that the stand-alone and Express permit fee schedule (Table 14A-12-1204.2) is not published in the same PDF as the plan-based tables. For those work types the calculator, or your project manager, is the authoritative source.
Track what's actually being filed in Chicago
PermitGrab tracks 17,402 Chicago permits and counting, updated daily — who pulled them, what the work is, what it's worth, and when it was issued.
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Fee figures are from the City of Chicago's 2026 Amended Building Permit Fee Tables (effective January 6, 2026, Ordinance SO2025-0021719) and the Department of Buildings' 2026 changes notice. Permit data is PermitGrab's own, covering 8,260 Chicago permits filed May 2 – July 29, 2026. Fees change; verify against the City's calculator before quoting.