Texas Septic Permit Cost by County (2026 Fees)

A standard residential septic permit costs $250 in Kerr County and $712 in Travis County, and every figure in the table below was read on the issuing county’s own fee document on September 3, 2026. Texas septic permit cost varies by county because there is no statewide fee: each county sets its own, revises it on its own schedule, and publishes it in whatever format it likes. This page prints sixteen counties, names the document and its date on every row, and says which counties have removed the state’s ten-acre permit exemption. Where a county publishes nothing, the row says so rather than borrowing a number.

Texas septic permit cost by county, from each county’s own document

Each row below names the document the figure came from and the date printed on it, because a fee without its date is a fee you cannot trust next year. Where the county prints no date, the row says “undated” and gives the date we read it. Texas law calls a septic system an on-site sewage facility (OSSF), and the document names below use that term. Flow tiers are in gallons per day (gpd).

Travis County has announced a new fee schedule effective October 1, 2026, with the proposal describing a 22 percent increase on general fees and a new $15 IT fee; the $712 above is the schedule in force on September 3, 2026, and this row will be re-read after October 1. Gillespie’s ten-acre status is unconfirmed: two secondary sources say the county requires a permit on every tract, tracing to a county brochure we have not read directly, so the column says so instead of printing a yes.

Six counties charge the same for aerobic as for conventional

In Comal, Kendall, Parker, Waller, Hays and Montgomery, the permit is priced by design flow or by the number of dwellings, and an aerobic spray system pays exactly what a gravity trench pays. Kendall’s $300 covers any system under 500 gallons a day; Comal’s $310 does the same; Parker prints $480 twice, once under each heading. In those six counties the fee schedule says nothing about what the soil will accept; the site evaluation decides that, and with it the real cost.

The other ten price by technology, in steps from $20 to $249, except Burleson, which has no aerobic tier at all. Grayson adds $20, Kerr $50 for a maintenance-contract system, Blanco $75 where a licensed professional designs the system, Gillespie and Bastrop $100, Burnet $150, Wise $200 for “anything requiring testing,” and Williamson $200. Travis is the outlier: its $249 “maintenance contract fee” is a separate line that sits on top of the $712 permit, and an engineered system is a different permit at $1,262.

The $10 state fee is handled five different ways

Texas Health and Safety Code Chapter 367 attaches $10 to every septic permit, and the counties present it every way it can be presented. Kerr and Comal fold it in and say so ($240 + $10; $300 + $10). Travis, Hays and Montgomery print it as a separate line added to the permit. Bastrop and Waller do not print it on the fee schedule at all; it lives in section 12 of each county’s OSSF Order. Kendall’s schedule does not mention it, though the county’s April 2026 bills list shows $1,060 remitted to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) for exactly that fee. Williamson, Grayson, Gillespie, Burleson, Wise, Parker, Burnet and Blanco print nothing about it. Where this page says “not stated,” ask the county permit desk whether the number you were quoted is before or after the $10.

Twelve of sixteen counties have closed the ten-acre exemption

The state rule at 30 TAC §285.3(f)(2) lets the owner of a single-family home on a tract of ten acres or more skip the permit under four conditions, and twelve of the sixteen counties on this page have removed it by local order. Kerr is the newest: the OSSF Order its Commissioners Court approved on July 13, 2026 took effect August 7, 2026, and the county’s own page now says a permit is required “regardless of tract size.” Kendall’s order has said so since 2006, Parker’s since 2007, Wise’s since 2012, Comal’s and Hays’s since 2013, Bastrop’s and Waller’s since 2017, Montgomery’s since its 2020 order won TCEQ approval in 2021 (and the San Jacinto River Authority’s, inside its Lake Conroe ring, since its 2015 order took effect in 2016). Burnet and Grayson require a permit on every tract by order as well, and Burleson’s own page says “regardless of acreage.”

Gillespie is unconfirmed, and Travis, Williamson and Blanco were not checked on this pass; those three cells say “not checked” rather than repeating the state rule as if it were the county’s. The rule itself, its four conditions and what happens on sale are in our Texas ten-acre rule guide.

Reading the table without getting burned

The permit is the smallest number in the project, and the extras are where budgets break. A permit of $250 to $712 sits on top of a system that runs into five figures; what the system itself costs is a different question. But one failed inspection adds $150 to $200 in most of these counties (Bastrop $200, Travis $200, Comal $150, Hays $150), Grayson charges $50 to file on paper, Waller charges $75 for a re-draw, and Blanco collects a $40 or $60 filing fee at the County Clerk on top of the permit.

Larger systems change the picture again. Grayson prices strictly by flow at $310 per 1,000 gpd. Travis adds $125 for each 500 gpd above the first 500, LCRA adds $45, Gillespie steps to $550 at 500 gpd, Kendall doubles to $600, and Comal steps to $510.

Waller’s schedule has been in force since January 1, 2020; Comal’s fee PDF since January 1, 2019; Kerr’s fee sheet carries a 2013 revision stamp inside a file named for 2025. None of that makes the figure wrong, but a six-year-old schedule is one Commissioners Court agenda item away from changing, which is why every row carries its date.

Why this table has sixteen counties and not 254

We publish the rows we have read in the county’s own document, and no others. Texas has 254 counties and permitting is delegated to local authorized agents under Health and Safety Code Chapter 366; no central register of what they charge exists. Two competitor sites now print a fee for every Texas county. On one of them, Hays County and Chambers County carry the identical band, which cannot be true of two counties with different fee schedules; the actual Hays figure is $610 plus $10, from a schedule dated January 1, 2026. A template fills every cell. A document fills one at a time.

County fee schedules turn up in four states: a dated PDF (Kerr, Gillespie, Williamson, Travis, Hays, Kendall, Bastrop, Waller, Comal), a spreadsheet (Grayson), a web page with amounts and no date (Burleson, Burnet, Parker), or only inside the application packet (Blanco, whose packet we fetched in full for this update). We also keep finding figures that circulate widely for counties whose own documents say otherwise: Parker’s $400 traces to a county file that now returns 404, and a Travis range quoted across the web traces to a lapsed rebate scheme.

Cite this page

This table may be quoted with attribution. Cite it as: Nearby Septic, “Texas Septic Permit Fees by County,” https://nearbyseptic.com/guides/texas-septic-permit-fees/, as of September 3, 2026. Each county’s row links to that county’s own permit guide, which carries the full document citation and quotes the county’s order; link the county page when you cite a single figure.

To embed the headline range on your own page:

<blockquote cite="https://nearbyseptic.com/guides/texas-septic-permit-fees/">
A standard residential septic permit costs $250 to $712 across 16 Texas counties,
each figure read from the county's own fee document.
<a href="https://nearbyseptic.com/guides/texas-septic-permit-fees/">Nearby Septic, as of September 3, 2026</a>
</blockquote>

County staff: if we have a fee wrong, or a schedule has changed, email corrections@nearbyseptic.com. Corrections are published with a date and a credit.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does a septic permit cost in Texas?

Between $250 and $712 for a standard residential system among the sixteen counties we have verified, plus a $10 state fee that some counties fold in, some add, and some do not mention. There is no statewide rate; each county sets its own.

Why do septic permit fees vary so much between Texas counties?

Because Texas delegates septic permitting to local authorized agents, each of which sets its own fee schedule. Counties with engineered-design requirements and larger inspection staffs generally charge more (Travis, Hays, Bastrop); rural programs charge less (Kerr, Burnet, Kendall). Some price by system type and some by design flow, which is why aerobic costs $20 to $249 extra in one county and nothing extra in the next.

Does the permit fee include inspections?

Usually the first inspection, and rarely the second. Re-inspection fees on this page run from $50 (Kerr, per additional inspection) to $300 (Kendall, for systems of 500 gpd or more), with $150 the most common figure. Budget for one if your installer’s schedule is tight.

Do I need a septic permit on 10 acres in Texas?

In twelve of the sixteen counties on this page, yes, regardless of acreage. The state exemption survives only where the county has not overridden it, and the overrides on this page date from 2006 to 2026. Check the county’s order, not the state rule.

Which Texas county has the cheapest septic permit?

Of the counties verified here, Kerr and Burnet, at $250 for a standard residential system. Kerr’s figure includes the $10 state fee; Burnet’s page does not say. The most expensive is Travis at $712 plus $10, with a new schedule announced for October 1, 2026.

Sources & Methodology

Every fee here was read on the issuing county’s own published document on September 3, 2026, and each row carries that document’s printed date or says the document is undated. The seven counties in the July 2026 version of this page were re-read and confirmed unchanged; nine counties were added from the permit guides written since, each re-read on the county document the same day. Blanco’s packet, which the July version could not fetch, was read in full.

For each county we locate the fee schedule published by the office holding OSSF authority and confirm it against TCEQ’s authorized agent directory. Fees are transcribed exactly, awkward ones included: “Add $20 to Conventional System Permit” stays as written. The ten-acre column is read from each county’s OSSF Order as served by the county or by TCEQ’s authorized-agent database, and is marked “unconfirmed” or “not checked” where we have not read the order ourselves. Nothing in the table comes from a competitor page, a directory, or memory.

Document list, with the date each prints: Kerr EHD fee PDF (footer Rev 10/23/13; file dated 2025-08-13); Grayson Development Fee Schedule 2026 (.xlsx, undated; page label 04/14/2026); Gillespie OSSF Fees (effective 10/14/2025); Burleson Environmental Department page (undated) and How-to PDF (updated 11/14/2025); Williamson OSSF Fees (updated 9/12/25); Travis TNR fee schedule (effective 01/01/2026); Blanco OSSF packet (effective October 2025); Wise How to Obtain Your Permit (updated 4-30-2024); Burnet OSSF page (undated) and LCRA fee page (undated); Parker Permitting Procedures (file 6/13/25); Bastrop Development Services fees (adopted 06/20/2025); Waller Environmental fee schedule (effective 1/1/2020); Comal EHD fees PDF (effective 1/1/2019) and Steps page; Hays Development Services fee schedule (effective 1/1/2026); Montgomery Permitting Fee Schedule (effective 6/2/2025) and SJRA rate schedule (adopted 9/1/2010); Kendall Engineer’s Office fee schedule (effective 9/1/2023). Statutes: Tex. Health & Safety Code Ch. 366 and Ch. 367; 30 TAC §285.3(f)(2).

Full data practices: how we verify.

Find any county’s permitting office, local rules, and licensed providers: browse all 254 Texas counties.