What Chicago charges to permit a new electrical service — and what that does to our band

Published 2026-08-07 · records retrieved 2026-08-07 · our band fixed as of 2026-08 · how we build these numbers

Run your own numbers in the electrical panel calculator →

This is the smallest thing we have opened a dataset for. Our electrical panel calculator carries one line called permit and inspection — $75 low, $250 typical, $400 high — a single addition to a job that runs into the thousands. It is also the only line this file can test, and it tests it head-on: Chicago publishes the fee it collected and, in the same sentence, the size of the service it collected it for. That denominator is what our first four price records went looking for and did not find.

Four thousand filings say our floor is right to the dollar and our typical is a figure almost nobody in Chicago pays. Checking it also sent us back to read our own source line properly.

1. What this record is

The dataset is the City of Chicago building permit file, resource ydr8-5enu on the city's open-data portal. The metadata reads Data are updated daily, and its rowsUpdatedAt stamp was 2026-08-06T12:19:20Z when we pulled on 2026-08-07. Three fields do the work: issue_date, work_description (templated scope text), and total_fee.

This license does not come pre-cleared. The metadata carries licenseId: "SEE_TERMS_OF_USE" rather than a public-domain dedication, and our first automated attempt to fetch the terms was refused by the city's web server — which is how a license ends up filed as unverified and then quietly used anyway. So we read them. They disclaim warranty, reserve the City's right to require a user to stop distributing the data, add an indemnity obligation, and require derivative applications to carry a disclaimer. Nothing restricts derived statistics or commercial use. We reproduce no rows, and print the disclaimer verbatim:

“This site provides applications using data that has been modified for use from its original source, www.cityofchicago.org, the official website of the City of Chicago. The City of Chicago makes no claims as to the content, accuracy, timeliness, or completeness of any of the data provided at this site. The data provided at this site is subject to change at any time. It is understood that the data provided at this site is being used at one’s own risk.”

Two queries reproduce everything below. Both carry an upper date bound, so the window cannot grow with the calendar — though a file rewritten daily can still gain a late filing inside it:

# population: new permanent electrical services, Jan 2024 through Jul 2026
curl -s -G 'https://data.cityofchicago.org/resource/ydr8-5enu.json' \
  --data-urlencode "\$where=issue_date >= '2024-01-01' AND issue_date < '2026-08-01' \
                    AND upper(work_description) like '%NEW PERMANENT%SERVICE DISCONNECTING%'" \
  --data-urlencode '$select=count(1)'

# => [{"count_1":"4612"}]

# the four fields the analysis needs. No owner names, no contact columns,
# no street number - the raw file carries all of them and this site
# publishes derived statistics and the queries behind them, never rows.
curl -s -G 'https://data.cityofchicago.org/resource/ydr8-5enu.csv' \
  --data-urlencode '$select=permit_,issue_date,total_fee,work_description' \
  --data-urlencode "\$where=issue_date >= '2024-01-01' AND issue_date < '2026-08-01' \
                    AND upper(work_description) like '%NEW PERMANENT%SERVICE DISCONNECTING%'" \
  --data-urlencode '$limit=50000' > chi_service.csv

2. What it measures — and what it quietly does not

What makes this file unusual is that Chicago's scope text is machine-written, not typed: LINE VOLTAGE ELECTRICAL WORK. NEW PERMANENT 200 AMP SERVICE DISCONNECTING MEANS WITH 40 CIRCUITS…. Amperage and circuit count both parse on 4,612 of 4,612 filings, and total_fee is populated on every one.

Now the limit that decides what this record can be. There is no job-cost or valuation column for electrical work here — every dollar column is a fee the city collected. The bands covering the work itself cannot be touched. One line can: permit and inspection.

The fee also behaves like a schedule, which in our Los Angeles record was grounds for throwing a comparison out. Across the 4,114 residential-size filings there are 36 distinct fee values, ten of which carry 98.7% of the cohort, and $75.00 alone carries 62.1%. There, that shape disqualified a field named valuation: a valuation is supposed to be a price, and prices spread. Here it confirms the field is what it claims to be — a fee schedule is allowed to look like one.

Two things it does not measure, both cutting against us. We could not establish whether total_fee includes inspection; if Chicago bills inspections separately, the real figure is above $75 and every comparison below flatters us. And the NEW PERMANENT template describes establishing a service — a homeowner replacing a panel at the same amperage may file under wording this cohort never sees. Unpermitted work is invisible, as always.

3. The cohort, and what we dropped

The population is every filing issued from 2024-01-01 up to 2026-08-01 whose work_description matches NEW PERMANENT…SERVICE DISCONNECTING: 4,612 permits. The dates do not do what the filter says: the earliest match is 2024-09-16 and the latest 2026-07-31, because the template does not appear before September 2024. The record covers 23 months, not 31.

The eight commonest service sizes, 4,509 of the 4,612: 200A 2,037 · 100A 1,646 · 125A 314 · 400A 263 · 225A 101 · 800A 75 · 600A 57 · 150A 16. We kept the five residential sizes — 100, 125, 150, 200 and 225 amps — leaving n = 4,114 and dropping 498: 420 at 400 amps or larger, which is commercial and large-multifamily territory; 45 under 100 amps, which is a feeder or a subpanel rather than a house service; and 33 at ratings between 100 and 400 amps that are not standard house services.

Then the part we would rather not print. Widen the pattern to plain AMP SERVICE and the population goes from 4,612 to 6,323, the residential subset from 4,114 to 5,439, and the 200-amp median moves from $75 to $93.75. The median fee for "a Chicago electrical service permit" is $75 or $93.75 depending on a filter choice no reader would ever see you make.

So we looked at what the widening adds. The 1,711 extra filings have a median fee of $175; 1,302 read ADD n CIRCUITS TO EXISTING n AMP SERVICE, which is not the job our band prices, and 72 are NEW TEMPORARY construction power. The wider net also reaches back to 2024-01-02, changing the period as well as the population. We print both medians and use the narrow one.

4. The distribution and our band on the same axis

No state adjustment is applied to that last row, and the rule comes from our data file: the state index applies to labor components only… equipment and permit bands vary less by state. Illinois would be the worst place to break it — its index is 1.58, the second highest in our table. Applying it would lift our typical to $395 and widen the gap instead of closing it.

One row there is not $75, so take it first: at 150 amps the median is $96.88. That is 16 filings out of 4,114, and the figure is the midpoint of $93.75 and $100.00 on an even count. We print it because dropping the one non-conforming size from that table is the kind of quiet edit this section exists to catch.

The floor, though, is remarkable. Our $75 is not merely near Chicago's median; it is its median, its mode, its 25th percentile and its outright minimum across 4,114 filings, holding across three calendar years and a doubling of service size. We did not fit it to this record — the band's asOf stamp is 2026-06, the retrieval 2026-08-07.

5. Verdict

6. If you are pulling an electrical permit in Chicago

Ask the contractor for the permit number and look it up yourself: the same endpoint returns the fee the city charged for it, and the description states the amperage and circuit count permitted. Check both against your contract: a bid promising 200 amps against a permit filed for 100 is a discrepancy visible for free before any money moves. Ask whether the permit fee is passed through at cost or marked up, and what happens if a re-inspection is needed, since that is the likeliest reason a $75 line becomes a larger one. And if a bidder quotes several hundred dollars for permitting a straightforward residential service, that is a fair question to put with this file open. Anywhere else, do not carry the $75 with you: check your own city's fee schedule, because these numbers are local. Our panel calculator itemises the rest of the job; the EV charger guide covers the case where the upgrade is driven by a charger.

Frequently asked questions

How much is an electrical permit in Chicago?

For a new permanent residential-size service, the median total fee is $75. Across 4,114 filings issued between September 2024 and July 2026 at service sizes of 100 to 225 amps, $75 is the most common fee (2,554 filings, 62.1%), the median, the 25th percentile, the 10th percentile, and the outright minimum — not one filing in the cohort paid less. The 75th and 90th percentiles are both $100. Only 68 filings, 1.7%, reached $250. This is a fee schedule, not a market: 36 distinct fee values exist in the whole cohort and ten of them account for 98.7% of it.

Does a bigger electrical service cost more to permit?

In Chicago, essentially not. The median fee is $75 at 100 amps (n=1,646), $75 at 125 amps (n=314), $75 at 200 amps (n=2,037) and $75 at 225 amps (n=101). Doubling the service does not move the fee. The one exception is 150 amps at $96.88, and that is 16 filings out of 4,114. What moves the fee is the circuit count written into the same description: filings with 1–20 and 21–40 circuits both run a $75 median, while 41–60 circuits and 61-plus both run $93.75. That is worth knowing because our own data file prices permit and inspection as a single band that does not vary with amperage, and this record supports that choice rather than undermining it.

Why doesn't this record drop your national permit typical to $75?

Because permit fees are set by ordinance, one jurisdiction at a time, on bases that do not resemble each other. Chicago prices this permit off circuit count. Our Los Angeles re-roof record found a city computing permit fees from the applicant's declared job valuation instead — a basis that produces a completely different number from Chicago's $75. A single city can establish that our floor is a real floor, because 4,114 filings sat on it. It cannot establish where the middle of a national range belongs. What the Chicago record does do is break a tie inside our own sources, and that is enough to move the band without being enough to set its new value.

Where did your $75, $250 and $400 come from?

From three contractor cost guides, quoted verbatim in our data file: This Old House permit fees $50–$300 (2026-03-31), HomeGuide electrical permits $250–$350 (2026), Angi EV and electrical permits $50–$300 (2026). Checking the band against Chicago sent us back to read that line properly, and it does not support what was built on it. Only $250 is an endpoint of any cited range. Our $75 low sits inside two of the three ranges but is an endpoint of none. Our $400 high sits above the top of all three. The same data file flags this kind of extension elsewhere — the new-200A-panel band records that its high was pushed from $2,500 to $2,800 and why — and the permit line carries no such flag.