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How long does a sign permit take?

Every city says "it depends". We counted. These figures come from 18,138 sign permit records published by 17 city open-data portals, for permits issued since 2025-01-01.

Fastest
Seattle, WA
median same day
Slowest
Los Angeles, CA
median 50 days, and 1 in 10 waits 230 days
City Permits Median wait (calendar days) Slowest 10% Median fee Median job
Seattle, WA 793 same day 14 days — —
Corona, CA 140 same day 81 days — $5,000
Austin, TX 1,566 1 day 55 days — —
Howard County, MD 263 2 days 31 days — —
Winnipeg, MB 1,512 5 days 21 days — —
College Station, TX 199 7 days 36 days — $6,300
Toronto, ON 1,370 9 days 54 days — —
Norfolk, VA 287 19 days 39 days — $4,444
Kansas City, MO 154 21 days 98 days — —
Orlando, FL 666 26 days 95 days — $4,500
Cincinnati, OH 392 29 days 121 days — $5,552
Everett, WA 111 33 days 110 days — $6,000
Chicago, IL 3,620 34 days 132 days $250 —
New Orleans, LA 385 42 days 191 days $305 —
Los Angeles, CA 2,218 50 days 230 days — —

Measured differently

New York, NY — 4,234 permits. Its dataset records issuance rather than application, so there is no filing date to measure from. What can be measured is the approved to issued gap: a median of 3 days. That is a different question and is not comparable with the table above. Median declared job value $2,500 (n=4,217).

Baton Rouge, LA — 228 permits. Its dataset records issuance rather than application, so there is no filing date to measure from. What can be measured is the record created to issue gap: a median of 5 days. That is a different question and is not comparable with the table above. Median declared job value $8,500 (n=220).

Is it getting worse?

Median wait per year, from the same records. Most cities have held roughly steady; a few have not.

City 2019202020212022202320242025 Change
New Orleans 21d 30d 53d 41d 27d 33d 45d +24d
Chicago 12d 21d 13d 7d 10d 34d 33d +21d
Kansas City 4d 4d 11d 17d 19d 22d 21d +17d
Norfolk 15d 26d 25d 29d 17d 19d 21d +6d
Cincinnati 21d 28d 35d 36d 38d 43d 27d +6d
New York 1d 4d 4d 2d 3d 4d 3d +2d
Winnipeg 4d 4d 7d 5d 5d 3d 6d +2d
College Station 5d 5d 3d 5d 9d 13d 7d +2d
Seattle 0d 0d 0d 0d 0d 0d 0d —
Corona 0d 0d 0d 0d — 0d — —
Austin 1d 0d 1d 1d 0d 1d 1d —
Los Angeles — 54d 74d 62d 44d 49d 52d -2d
Orlando 33d 28d 24d 29d 32d 29d 26d -7d
Baton Rouge 14d 13d 19d 13d 13d 6d 5d -9d

Years with fewer than 100 measurable permits are omitted rather than shown, because a median over a handful of records looks the same on a table as one over thousands.

Busiest sign contractors

Who actually pulled the most sign permits in each city since 2025-01-01.

Chicago, IL
  1. 1. DOYLE SIGNS INC 162
  2. 2. OLYMPIK SIGNS, INC. 159
  3. 3. ALL-RIGHT SIGN, INC. 149
  4. 4. IDENTITY SERVICES LLC 142
  5. 5. J & Y ELECTR. CONTRACTOR & SER 133
New York, NY
  1. 1. SIGNSTAR NYC 337
  2. 2. MAD SIGNS INC 321
  3. 3. NEPTUNE SIGNS&AWNINGS INC 301
  4. 4. SIGNS CAD CORP 296
  5. 5. NEPTUNE SIGNS & AWNINGS 292
New Orleans, LA
  1. 1. A-1 Signs Inc 36
  2. 2. Pro Signs & Graphics 28
  3. 3. Quattro Graphics, LLC 26
  4. 4. OPA Graphics 17
  5. 5. NOLA Sign Shop LLC 16
Seattle, WA
  1. 1. National Sign Corporation 68
  2. 2. Tube Art Displays dba Tube Art Group 57
  3. 3. Western Neon 55
  4. 4. Heath Northwest 38
  5. 5. YESCO, LLC 22
Kansas City, MO
  1. 1. REACHING SOLUTIONS LLC 32
  2. 2. Midwest Sign Company 21
  3. 3. SEE-MORE SIGNS MGF, INC. 11
  4. 4. Midtown Signs 11
  5. 5. KC Sign Express, Inc 10
Orlando, FL
  1. 1. METRO ELECTRIC SERVICE INC 61
  2. 2. CREATIVE SIGNS INC 38
  3. 3. PROFESSIONAL SIGNS INC 33
  4. 4. L AND J AWNINGS AND SHADE STRUCTURES INC 29
  5. 5. A SUPERIOR SIGNS INC 20
Winnipeg, MB
  1. 1. Jed Dessureault 362
  2. 2. Contempra Signs 100
  3. 3. Electra Sign Ltd 88
  4. 4. Connelly Signs 88
  5. 5. Signex Manufacturing 87
Baton Rouge, LA
  1. 1. TTA Services LLC 18
  2. 2. Deep South Signs LLC 12
  3. 3. AAA Signs, L.L.C. 9
  4. 4. LED, Inc. 9
  5. 5. BRIGHTBOX WHOLESALE SIGNAGE, LLC 9

Common questions

How long does it take to get a sign permit?
It depends enormously on the city. Across 15 US cities we measured, the median ranges from same day in Seattle to 50 days in Los Angeles.
Which city issues sign permits fastest?
Seattle, at a median of same day across 793 permits issued since 2025-01-01.
How much does a sign permit cost?
Chicago: $250 median. New Orleans: $305 median.

How this was measured

Each city publishes its permit records as open data. We filter to sign permits using that portal's own permit-type values — there is no shared taxonomy, so Chicago's PERMIT - SIGNS and Seattle's Sign, Awning and Canopy are mapped by hand — then measure the gap between the application and issue dates on each record.

Medians rather than averages, because a handful of multi-year permits drags a mean somewhere useless. The "slowest 10%" column is the 90th percentile: nine permits in ten were faster than that.

What the clock includes. This is elapsed time from applying to holding a permit, which is what a sign shop plans around — but it is not a measure of how fast a city works. The City of New Orleans told us why, and it applies everywhere: a permit can be approved and then sit unissued until the applicant pays the fees, and the very slowest records are usually applications where the city asked for revisions and never heard back. Some of this wait belongs to the applicant, not the office.

These are records of what cities did, not a statement of what they promise. A permit filed today may take longer or less. Sample sizes are shown so you can weigh each figure, and every city links to its source dataset below.

Last computed 2026-08-02.

Use this data

Free to use with attribution. No permission needed.

Download CSV — approval times Download CSV — year by year

Suggested citation

PrinterFlo (2026). Sign permit approval times in 17 North American cities. Computed from municipal open data. https://printerflo.com/sign-permits/

Happy to run the same numbers for a city that is not listed — the constraint is whether that city publishes permit records as open data.

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