Austin Permit Estimator

The Austin Permit Review Process, Step by Step

Fees verified November 2026. Fee figures on this page come from the City of Austin FY2025-26 fee schedules, Ordinance No. 20250813-004, effective October 1, 2025.

Most people meet the Austin permit process at the worst possible moment: they have a contractor lined up, a loan clock running, or a lease starting, and then they discover that the permit is not a single form. It is a sequence, with money due at two different points and a review process in the middle that runs on its own schedule. This guide walks through that sequence in plain English, so you know what happens, when you pay, and why the bill for a small addition can land surprisingly close to the bill for a whole new house.

Start with the portal: Austin Build + Connect

Almost everything in Austin permitting runs through one online front door: Austin Build + Connect, the city's portal at abc.austintexas.gov. You use it to submit your application, upload plans, pay fees, track review status, and schedule inspections. The portal handles applications around the clock, which matters because the clock on your project often starts with a complete submittal, not with a trip downtown.

One feature deserves special mention because first time applicants miss it: the portal's public permit search works without an account. Before you ever register, you can look up the permit history and status of an Austin address. That is useful if you are buying a house and want to know whether the garage conversion was permitted, if you are a neighbor wondering about the project next door, or if you simply want to see what a normal application looks like before filing your own.

If you prefer a counter and a human being, the Permitting and Development Center is at 6310 Wilhelmina Delco Drive, Austin, TX 78752, with in person hours Monday to Friday, 7:30am to 3:30pm. The Development Services Department main line is 512-978-4000, appointments are 512-978-4504, and payments are 512-974-7045.

The process, step by step

1. Figure out your permit type. Match your project to the city's categories: new residential, residential addition or remodel, new commercial, commercial remodel, or a standalone trade permit. Each category has its own submittal requirements and its own fee tables.
2. Gather your documents. Construction plans are required. Depending on the project, you may also need a site plan, a survey, energy code compliance forms, and, for some areas, a tree survey.
3. Apply online and pay the first bill. Through Austin Build + Connect, you pay the application processing fee and the plan review fee up front, then upload your plans. The application processing fee is $106.72 for residential projects and $176.76 for commercial projects.
4. Wait for plan review. Development Services reviewers check your plans against the applicable codes. Published industry timelines put standard review at roughly 15 to 25 business days per cycle. If reviewers send comments, you correct the plans and resubmit, which starts another cycle.
5. Pay the second bill at issuance. Once plans are approved, you pay the per trade permit fees and the permit is issued. Austin has five trades: Building, Electrical, Mechanical, Plumbing, and Energy.
6. Schedule inspections as work progresses. Inspections happen at key milestones, such as foundation, framing, rough ins, and final. You schedule them through the portal or by phone, and the permit stays open until the final inspection passes.

Why Austin charges twice

New applicants often ask why Austin cannot just take one payment. The honest answer is that the city is selling you two different services at two different times, and it prices them separately. The plan review fee, paid at application, covers the cost of reviewers reading your plans, checking them against the building, electrical, mechanical, plumbing, and energy codes, and writing comments when something does not comply. That work happens whether or not your project is ever built, which is why the plan review fee is non-refundable. Paying it up front also means the city is not reviewing plans for projects that were never serious.

The per trade permit fees, paid at issuance, cover a different service: the inspection program that follows your project through construction. Each trade fee supports the inspectors who verify that the work in the field matches the approved plans. Because those fees are tied to construction that has not happened yet, Austin collects them only when the permit is actually issued and the work is about to start. Our calculator shows both layers separately, plus the application processing fee, so the estimate you see is the estimate you can budget against.

What a review cycle looks like

A review cycle is one full pass of your plans through the review team. You submit, the application is screened for completeness, reviewers from the relevant disciplines examine the plans, and the cycle ends in one of two ways: approval, or a set of comments that need a response. The 15 to 25 business day range quoted in published industry timelines is per cycle, not for the whole process, and that distinction is where most timeline surprises come from. A project approved on the first pass can move to issuance in roughly one cycle. A project that needs two correction rounds can spend three cycles in review before a single permit is issued.

This is also why the quality of the first submittal matters more than almost anything else you control. A complete plan set, with the site plan, survey, and energy forms the project actually requires, gives reviewers something they can approve. A partial set guarantees comments, and every comment round costs you another cycle of calendar time even when the fixes themselves take an afternoon.

What a corrections cycle looks like

When reviewers find problems, you receive comments tied to specific plan sheets and code sections. A corrections cycle is your response pass: your designer or contractor revises the plans, you write a response that addresses each comment, and you resubmit through the portal. Reviewers then check the revised sheets, usually focusing on the items they flagged. If everything is resolved, the plans are approved and you move to issuance. If a comment was only partly answered, expect another round on that item.

Two habits shorten corrections cycles. First, answer every comment, in writing, even the ones that seem obvious, because a reviewer cannot approve a fix they have to guess at. Second, change nothing unrelated while you are in there. New changes that were not part of the comments can trigger fresh review questions and stretch a cycle that was nearly done.

Expedited review and the small project lane

Austin offers expedited plan review for qualifying commercial and residential projects, which compresses the standard timeline for an additional fee. Not every project type qualifies, so ask the Development Services Department about eligibility before you build a schedule around it. At the other end of the scale, small straightforward projects, such as garage conversions, carport and porch enclosures, fences, and pools, fall under small project plan review at $132.86, a much lighter process than full plan review. Knowing which lane your project belongs in, before you submit, is one of the cheapest timeline decisions you will make.

A worked cost picture

Here is what the FY2025-26 tables produce for three representative projects, using the same math as our calculator:

• 2,000 square foot new home: $106.72 application processing, $1,255.10 plan review, and $984.01 across the five trade permits, for about $2,345.83 all in.
• 400 square foot home addition: $106.72 application processing, $896.50 plan review, and $838.82 across the five trade permits, for about $1,842.04 all in.
• 10,000 square foot new office building: $176.76 application processing, $4,420.58 plan review, and $2,548.73 across the five trade permits, for about $7,146.07 all in.

The addition puzzle: why 400 square feet costs nearly as much as a whole house

Look at the first two examples again. The addition is one fifth the size of the new home, yet it costs about $1,842.04 against the home's $2,345.83, which is nearly four fifths of the price for one fifth of the building. That feels wrong until you look at how the tables are built.

The reason is that most of an Austin permit bill is not really priced by the square foot. It is priced by the review and by the trade, and both of those have large fixed floors. Plan review for a new home starts with a flat $896.50 covering the first 1,000 square feet, and the rate above that is modest, so the 2,000 square foot home pays $1,255.10 in total. Plan review for additions and remodels uses a much steeper per square foot rate in its early brackets, so a 400 square foot addition already reaches $896.50. The addition's review is only about 29 percent cheaper than the whole home's, even though the project is 80 percent smaller.

The trade permits tell the same story. Each of the five trades charges a base fee that applies from the first square foot, because an inspector still has to visit, and a plan set still has to be checked, whether the addition is 400 square feet or 4,000. The home's five trades total $984.01 and the addition's total $838.82, a difference of only about 15 percent. Add the identical $106.72 application fee on both projects, and the small project ends up carrying most of the fixed cost structure of a large one. The lesson for budgeting is simple: in Austin, shrinking a project shrinks the permit bill far less than it shrinks the construction bill, and small projects should be budgeted with that fixed floor in mind.

Keeping your timeline and your bill under control

Submit complete plans the first time, respond to comments fully and in writing, and use the public permit search to see how similar projects moved. When you pay, remember that Austin charges a 2.35 percent service fee on credit and debit card payments, with a $2.00 minimum, while ACH eCheck payments are free. On a $7,146.07 commercial bill, paying by card adds about $168, so eCheck is worth the small extra effort, as long as the account is funded, because a returned ACH costs $30.

Finally, remember the calendar: Austin runs on an October to September fiscal year, so fee amounts refresh every October 1. The schedule cited here runs through September 30, 2026, and we re-verify these numbers every September. Confirm the current schedule with the city before you finalize a project budget.

Source: City of Austin FY2025-26 fee schedules, Ordinance No. 20250813-004, effective October 1, 2025, and Development Services Department permit materials. Last updated: November 2026.