Building Permit Costs in Toronto: What to Budget

Checked against City of Toronto pages, 23 July 2026. Toronto updates its fee schedule — verify before budgeting.

Toronto has a reputation as an expensive place to get anything approved. On permit fees specifically, that reputation is misplaced — the fee is published, calculable, and modest relative to a suite project.

What genuinely moves the number is what sits around the permit. And for a homeowner adding a unit, the largest of those costs was removed by provincial legislation in 2022, which a surprising amount of published advice hasn’t caught up with.

Toronto’s permit fee structure

The City calculates building permit fees based on the work you propose in your application. The building permit fees page sets out the fee schedule, which lists the rate charged for each type of work. Rates are expressed as a Service Index per square metre of proposed work unless otherwise specified.

We’re not going to quote you a rate here. Toronto revises its schedule, and a figure copied into an article ages badly — that’s precisely how so much stale permit advice stays in circulation. Open the City’s current schedule, find the row matching your type of work, and multiply. It takes two minutes and it’s right.

What we can tell you is the shape: for a residential secondary suite or a rear-yard suite, the permit fee is a few hundred to low four figures — a small fraction of the project. It is not the number that decides whether your project works.

Three City services worth knowing about, because they reduce cost rather than add to it:

• Pre-approved garden and laneway suite plans. The City maintains pre-approved plan sets. Using one can substantially reduce what you spend on custom drawings and shorten the review.
• Express Building Permits, for qualifying simpler applications.
• Preliminary Zoning Reviews, which let you test whether a proposal complies before committing to a full application.

What else you’ll pay

In rough order of size, and these are where a Toronto budget actually goes:

Drawings and design. Permit-ready drawings are the largest approval-stage cost for most projects. This is the item to shop, and the item the pre-approved plans can reduce.

Survey. A current survey or real property report, particularly for anything in the rear yard where setbacks and coverage are being assessed.

Arborist report. In Toronto’s mature neighbourhoods this is routine rather than exceptional. Protected trees can move a building, shrink it, or occasionally rule it out — and finding that out early is much cheaper than late.

Structural engineering. For underpinning to gain ceiling height, for altering load paths, or for a two-storey rear-yard build.

Committee of Adjustment, if you need a minor variance. This applies where your proposal doesn’t quite meet a zoning standard. The statutory test has four parts — the variance must be minor, desirable for the appropriate development of the land, and conform to the intent and purpose of both the official plan and the zoning bylaw. It adds time and cost, and it introduces uncertainty, so designing within the standards is worth real money.

Trade permits. Electrical and plumbing, separate from the building permit.

Servicing. For a rear-yard suite with no lane, running water, sanitary sewer and electrical the depth of the lot is frequently the single largest line item in the whole project.

The big one: development charges are waived

This is the section that changes budgets, and it is routinely absent from articles about Toronto permit costs.

Under the More Homes Built Faster Act, 2022 (Bill 23), the creation of additional residential units in existing houses and certain ancillary structures is exempt from development charges and parkland dedication. Specifically, the second and third units on a lot are exempt.

Toronto’s development charges are among the highest in Canada, levied per residential unit. Before this exemption, adding a suite could trigger a charge large enough to end a project on its own. Look up the residential rate on the City’s development charges rates page and you’ll see the scale of what you’re now avoiding — it typically dwarfs the permit fee by an order of magnitude.

On top of the exemption, Toronto defers. The City’s Development Charges Deferral Program for Ancillary Secondary Dwelling Units, approved by Council in April 2018, defers development charges on an eligible rear-yard suite — collecting them only if a new lot is created through subdivision, condominium or consent to sever within 20 years of the building permit being issued. For an owner who never severs, that deferral never comes due.

Two current developments. Council removed indexing for 2025 and 2026, holding DC rates at 2024 levels. And under a partnership with the federal and provincial governments announced in June 2026, the City expects to implement development charge reductions of 40 to 60 per cent between 2026 and 2029, depending on unit type. The direction of travel on this cost is downward — unusual, and worth factoring into timing.

One caution: the exemption attaches to the second and third units. A fourth unit doesn’t get it automatically, which is a real consideration if you’re weighing a triplex against a fourplex. Our tax and development charge guide covers that trade-off.

Garden suite vs laneway suite vs basement apartment

The permit fee scales with floor area, so the differences here come mainly from the work itself.

Basement apartment — generally the least expensive route, because the structure, foundation and services exist. Cost concentrates in what makes it legal: ceiling height (1.95 m minimum, and underpinning if you’re short), enlarging egress openings, fire and sound separation, and electrical capacity for a second kitchen. No new foundation, no new servicing run.

Garden suite — a complete new building in the rear yard, with no lane. Its own foundation, its own service connections trenched across the lot, and design constrained by Toronto’s angular plane rules, which slope the buildable envelope inward above 4.0 m. Construction access is across your property, which affects method and price.

Laneway suite — similar to a garden suite, but the lane provides servicing and construction access, which usually helps. Toronto permits a larger footprint for laneway suites than garden suites. The lane is also the eligibility condition: no lane, and you’re in the garden suite rulebook instead.

All three get the development charge exemption as second or third units. The rear-yard versions additionally get the deferral. Our Toronto building guide covers each route.

Timeline

Realistically, the approvals stage takes longer than owners expect and construction takes roughly as long as they expect.

We don’t publish a target, because review times depend on the City’s current volume and on how complete your application is — and an incomplete application is the most common cause of avoidable delay. The City publishes checklists for exactly this reason; work through yours before submitting.

Two things that lengthen a timeline materially: needing a minor variance through the Committee of Adjustment, and servicing work requiring utility coordination. Two things that shorten it: using pre-approved plans, and running a Preliminary Zoning Review before you commit to drawings.

How to get a real quote

1. Open the City’s current fee schedule and find your type of work. That’s your permit fee, exactly.
2. Check the DC rate schedule to see what the exemption is saving you — useful for understanding the real economics even though you won’t pay it.
3. Get drawings quoted, and ask whether a pre-approved plan set fits your lot.
4. Establish servicing early for a rear-yard build. It’s the biggest unknown and the most expensive surprise.
5. Run a Preliminary Zoning Review if there’s any doubt about compliance — cheaper than a variance application.

Get a real budget for your Toronto project

The permit fee is the easy part, and it’s published. What decides your budget is drawings, trees, servicing, and whether your proposal needs a variance — all establishable before you commit.

HouseLyft’s free property assessment covers what your Toronto lot permits and where the cost drivers sit. Our planning and permits page covers the approvals stage. Request your free report.