The question we are asked most often is what a permit costs in a particular town, and our answer disappoints every time. General estimates, by type of works, are on the calculation page.
A per-town answer cannot be given correctly by anyone who is not reading that council’s own decisions. Ourselves included.
This is not caution, it is the code’s structure
The reason is not caution. It is how the code is built.
The Codul urbanismului sets deadlines precisely and amounts almost not at all. We set that out in the piece on cost layers, but the conclusion bears repeating: of the four layers of cost, only one is a market price, and the other three are set outside the code.
The fees for the certificate and the permit come from the Codul fiscal and from the local council’s decision.
The fees for avize are set by each issuing body and calculated, in the words of article 308 paragraph (1), “potrivit reglementărilor legale specifice fiecărui domeniu de avizare”, according to the rules specific to each field. There is no single price list.
And the code adds three optional charges, which each authority may or may not introduce: the urgency fee in article 273 paragraph (2), the special fee for the acord unic in article 308 paragraph (3), and the local territory-equipment tax in article 576 paragraph (4).
A per-town answer is therefore an answer about that town, not about the law.
What answering anyway would mean
We could publish a table of estimates by county. It would look useful and it would be read as a figure, not as an estimate.
The reason we do not is the one in article 577 paragraph (9): the Codul fiscal is itself due to be amended so that article 63 paragraph (3) and article 301 paragraph (8) can be applied. Which means the basis of one of the layers is changing, on a deadline we estimated at around 24 October 2026 in the transition calendar.
A table published now would be wrong by construction, and wrong tables outlive the articles that correct them.
How to find out yourself, in four steps
One. Look up the local council decision on local taxes and charges for the current year, for the administrative unit where you are building. It is a public document and it carries the fees for the certificat de urbanism and for the permit.
Two. Apply for the certificat de urbanism. Article 266 paragraph (1) says the list of required avize and agreements is communicated to you through the certificate. Until you have it, you do not know how many avize you are paying for, so you cannot estimate the most variable layer.
Three. With that list in hand, ask each issuer for its tariff. Article 308 paragraph (2) says payment goes through www.ghiseul.ro, so you will also have a record of what was paid.
Four. Ask the primărie whether it has introduced any of the three optional charges. It is a publicly answerable question and it moves the total more than the difference between designers does.
What we do instead
We publish the mechanism, not the figure. When the Codul fiscal amendment arrives, we will write about what changes in the basis of calculation. When the first local decisions introducing the equipment tax appear, we will write about how they chose their base.
It is less satisfying than a number. It is also the only thing that will still be true in six months.
What we do once the first figures land
Whether a pattern emerges across local decisions, such that an estimate by category of town becomes possible without being misleading. We wrote separately about what the code leaves local.
This article is analysis, not legal advice. The provisions cited are from Legea 169/2026, published in Monitorul Oficial no. 661 of 10 August 2026. Check your own situation with the issuing authority.