What a permit costs for the same remodel across the Twin Cities

1. The same kitchen remodel costs $1,135 to $1,575 to permit across the 13 cities with a 2025 or 2026 schedule. The lowest is Wayzata ($1,134.64) and the highest is Apple Valley ($1,575.23), a gap of $440.59, or 1.39 times. The middle city is $1,324.72. The newest schedule we could find for 3 other cities is older, and may have been replaced, so they are kept out of this range: Corcoran (2024, $1,081.46), Saint Paul (2022, $1,675.66), Minneapolis (2019, $1,773.23).
2. Most of the gap starts in the base permit fee, which plan review then scales. The state surcharge is the same $30.00 in every city, and plan review is 65% of the permit fee in 15 of 16 cities. The base permit fee alone runs from $637.25 to $1,056.50. The exception is Wayzata (35% for this kind of work).
3. 7 cities come out at or above the state default table, and 9 below it. Minnesota publishes a default fee table that cities may use. Applied to this project with 65% plan review it gives $1,430.27. Two cities add a percentage on top of the permit fee: Golden Valley and Oakdale. We read 16 schedules, 12 of them for 2026.

These are fees for one invented project, worked out from published schedules. They say nothing about how long a city takes to approve, how its inspectors work or what your project would cost.

Reference project

$60,000 interior kitchen remodel (see the limits below)

Collected

Nov 6, 2026

Cities priced

16

Cities found but not priced

4 (partial schedules), 10 (documents could not be downloaded)

Calculation

Done in code from the raw data file, and each city's steps are shown in the table. Script: scripts/research/permit-costs.mjs

State rules used

Permit table: Minn. Stat. 326B.153. Surcharge: 326B.148, which is 0.0005 times the valuation for projects up to $1,000,000.

How the state default adds up for this project:

• Permit fee: $764.15 + $8.45 x 10 (each $1,000 or fraction above $50,000) = $848.65
• Plan review 65% x $848.65 = $551.62
• State surcharge 0.0005 x $60,000.00 = $30.00
• Total $848.65 + $551.62 + $30.00 = $1,430.27

We looked for 30 cities. 16 are priced above. 14 are not, for the reasons below. We did not try to get around a site that refused automated downloads.

Published only part of what we needed (4)

• Ramsey. Publishes the 2026 permit fee table, which matches the state default, but no plan review rate on that sheet or its fee page. Document
• Roseville. Publishes a 2025 building permit table, but the only 65% plan review line sits in the mechanical section; the building plan review rate is not stated. Document
• Eagan. States plan review at 65% and a state surcharge, but values kitchen-type work from a square-footage valuation table that was not found, so no fee can be calculated for a stated $60,000 value. Document
• Hopkins. Describes a sliding scale, 65% plan review and a surcharge of 50 cents per $1,000, but the scale itself was not found on a page that could be read. Document

Documents could not be downloaded (10)

Plymouth, Minnetonka, Edina, Eden Prairie, St. Louis Park, Chanhassen, Woodbury, Shoreview, Minnetrista, Medina. Each city's own files were refused when we tried to read them, and we found no other official copy. Readers who want these cities can ask the city for its current schedule.

Inclusion rule. A city is included when its own published fee schedule, or the adopted ordinance appendix, could be downloaded and gives both a building permit fee for the reference valuation and a plan review rate. Cities that publish only part of that, or whose documents could not be downloaded, are listed separately.

• This is one invented project. A real permit is priced from the valuation the city assigns, which can differ from the contract price.
• It covers the building permit, plan review and state surcharge only. Electrical, plumbing and mechanical permits, and any city technology, records or inspection add-ons not printed on the main schedule, are not included.
• Fee schedules change, often each January. Each row shows the schedule year and the date we read it. Some schedules in the sample are several years old and may have been replaced.
• The cities were not drawn at random. They are the cities whose documents we could download, so the sample may lean toward cities that post fee schedules in a form that is easy to retrieve.
• Nothing here says one city is better or worse. A lower fee does not mean faster approval or better service.

Data. Download the table as a CSV file. It has one row per city, the date it was read and the source address. A script computes every figure from saved copies of the source files.