How Much Does a Building Permit Cost in Miami? (2026 Fee Guide)

Short answer: $147 is the floor, 7% of declared cost is the residential rate, and $847.95 is the ceiling on a single-family alteration. Most Miami-Dade remodel permits hit that ceiling, which means the permit is effectively a flat fee for anything but the smallest jobs.

Miami-Dade also raised its fees for the first time in more than 17 years. The Board of County Commissioners adopted the revised schedule on June 30, 2025, and Implementing Order 4-63 supersedes the order that had run since October 2024. If your permit numbers came from an older cheat sheet, they are wrong.

First: which department are you filing with?

This trips up more Miami budgets than any fee table. The City of Miami and Miami-Dade County are separate building departments with separate fee schedules.

• Miami-Dade County — Regulatory and Economic Resources, Building and Neighborhood Compliance. Serves unincorporated Miami-Dade plus a number of municipalities. Fees are set by Implementing Order 4-63. Every dollar figure in this guide is from that order.
• City of Miami — its own building department, with fees set under Section 10-18 of the City Code. Different schedule, different numbers.

In our own permit data the split is real and large. Over the last 90 days we tracked 23,204 permits under Miami-Dade County jurisdiction and 7,746 under the City of Miami — and the two populations look nothing alike. County permits carry a median declared value of $20,000; City of Miami permits, $10,000. Same metro, very different job mix.

Confirm jurisdiction for your address before you budget anything below.

Miami-Dade County fees, 2026

All figures from Implementing Order 4-63, effective June 30, 2025.

The floors

Item	Fee
Minimum building permit — single family / duplex	$147.00
Minimum building permit — all other uses	$147.00
Minimum electrical permit (all groups)	$147.00
Prefabricated utility shed with slab, over 100 sq ft	$147.00
RER surcharge on all building permitting fees	+7.5%

The minimum does not apply to add-on permits issued as supplementary to an outstanding permit for the same job — a useful detail when you are staging work.

New construction and additions (per square foot)

Work	Rate
New detached single family or duplex	$0.96 / sq ft
New multi-unit single-family townhomes	$0.40 / sq ft
Single family / duplex additions	$0.96 / sq ft
Master model, not-for-permit (per model)	$0.58 / sq ft
Master model, for-permit	$0.82 / sq ft

A 2,400 sq ft new house: 2,400 × $0.96 = $2,304, plus 7.5% surcharge = $2,476.80, before trade permits.

Alterations and repairs — the one that surprises people

Single family / duplex alterations & repairs	$0.070 per $1.00 of estimated cost (7%)
Minimum	$25.88
Maximum	$847.95

Seven percent sounds punishing until you notice the cap. The maximum binds at roughly $12,113 of declared cost — above that, the permit fee stops growing.

And here is the finding that matters: the median Miami-Dade permit in our data declares $20,000, with the middle half of jobs running $5,800 to $66,480. That means a majority of Miami-Dade residential alteration permits are already at the $847.95 maximum — about $911.55 once the 7.5% surcharge is added.

For a contractor, that is genuinely good news and worth putting in your bid: on any meaningful remodel, the County building permit is a known, fixed number.

Roofing

Priced by roof coverage including overhangs, not by job value:

Roof type	Rate
Shingle and other types not listed	$0.11 / sq ft
Tile	$0.140 / sq ft

A 2,000 sq ft shingle roof: $220. The same roof in tile: $280. Add 7.5%.

This matters in Miami more than almost anywhere — roofing is the second-busiest permit category in the metro, 4,580 permits in 90 days, median declared value $23,500.

The up-front processing fee

When you submit, Miami-Dade collects a processing fee that is non-refundable but credited toward your final permit fee:

Application	Up-front fee
New single family / duplex	$0.60 / sq ft
Commercial	$0.42 / sq ft, or $0.85 per $100 of value where square footage doesn't apply

Non-refundable is the operative word. Abandon the application and the money is gone.

The lever most Miami contractors don't pull: Private Provider

Florida lets you hire a licensed Private Provider to perform plan review and inspections instead of the building department. Miami-Dade discounts its fees accordingly:

Route	Discount
Private Provider — inspections only	15% off
Private Provider — plan review and inspections	30% off

The discounts do not apply to the minimum fee, which stays put. But the per-square-foot and percentage-based lines all drop. Worked through:

• New 2,400 sq ft house: $0.96 → $0.67/sq ft on the full Private Provider route. $2,304 becomes $1,608 — a $696 saving before surcharge.
• Capped residential alteration: $847.95 → roughly $594 on the 30% route, saving about $254 per permit.
• 2,000 sq ft tile roof: $0.140 → $0.098/sq ft. $280 becomes $196.

If you pull volume in Miami-Dade, this is a real line-item margin, not a rounding error. Weigh it against what the Private Provider charges you.

What Miami jobs are actually worth

Fee schedules tell you what the County charges. Our data tells you what the work is worth. Across 30,950 Miami-area permits filed in the last 90 days, by trade:

Trade	Permits (90d)	Median declared value	90th percentile
Electrical	5,249	$20,000	$500,000
Roofing	4,580	$23,500	$79,200
General construction	3,689	$26,600	$389,860
Interior renovation	3,495	$15,000	$161,781
HVAC	3,391	$9,794	$300,000
Windows & doors	3,142	$13,050	$50,000
Plumbing	2,202	$30,000	$700,000
New construction	2,153	$15,000	$352,230
Landscaping & exterior	1,365	$6,885	$88,877
Demolition	570	$6,200	$45,000
Fire protection	427	$13,550	$436,150

That trade mix is distinctly Miami. Roofing and windows & doors together account for 7,722 permits in 90 days — a quarter of everything filed. That is the hurricane-hardening economy showing up in the permit record, and it is why the per-square-foot roofing rates above are the fee lines Miami contractors touch most.

Volume runs roughly 11,000 to 12,000 permits a month across the metro, with 4,104 distinct contractors pulling County permits and 2,834 pulling City of Miami permits over the last 90 days.

Three things to budget for beyond the permit fee

The 7.5% surcharge is on everything. It applies to all building permitting fees in the schedule. Quote gross, not net.

Trade permits are separate. Electrical, plumbing and mechanical each carry their own permit and their own $147 minimum. A whole-house remodel is a building permit plus three trade permits, not one line item.

Expired-permit cancellation costs $72, itself subject to the 7.5% surcharge. Closing out dead permits is cheaper than letting them expire.

Where to verify before you quote

• Miami-Dade County: Implementing Order 4-63 fee schedule (PDF) and the County's Building Fee Schedules page. Mechanical, electrical, and plumbing each have their own fee sheet to submit.
• City of Miami: fees are set under Section 10-18 of the City Code; check the City's Building Department for its current schedule, which is not the County's.

Track what's actually being filed in Miami

PermitGrab tracks 52,722 Miami permits and counting, updated daily — who pulled them, what the work is, what it's worth.

• Browse all Miami building permits →
• Miami-Dade County permits
• Roofing permits in Miami
• Electrical permits in Miami
• HVAC permits in Miami
• Plumbing permits in Miami
• Miami roofing contractors

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Fee figures are from Miami-Dade County Implementing Order 4-63 (ordered June 26, 2025; effective June 30, 2025), which supersedes the order effective October 1, 2024. City of Miami fees are set separately under City Code § 10-18 and are not quoted here. Permit data is PermitGrab's own, covering 30,950 permits filed in the Miami metro between May 2 and July 29, 2026. Fees change; verify against the County's current schedule before quoting.