What permits do you need to open a contractor or trade in Denver?

There is no single figure, and any site quoting one is rounding away the part that matters. Of the 10 records listed for a contractor or trade in Denver, CO, 3 apply to every business of this type and 7 are conditional. Adding every fee on the page together would overstate what most operators pay, because it would include permits they never need.

Of the 3 that always apply, 2 carry a flat fee, coming to $259.75. That is a floor, not a total. 2 of the 10 are charged as a range or a formula set by the issuing agency, and 2 have no fee published at all. The ones that vary:

Commercial Building Permit: Valuation-based: $20 ($1–$500); $35 ($501–$2,000); $35 + $8 per additional $1,000 ($2,000–$25,000); $220 + $8/$1,000 ($25,000–$50,000); $420 + $7/$1,000 ($50,001–$100,000); $770 + $5.60/$1,000 ($100,001–$500,000); $3,010 + $4.75/$1,000 ($500,001–$1,000,000); $5,385 + $3.65/$1,000 above $1,000,000. Plan review is 50% of the permit fee generally (10% for type-approved permits; 20%, minimum $100, for express/over-the-counter review); a 25% or 50% surcharge applies for two-phase or three-plus-phase construction.

Electrical Contractor Registration: Fee not published — Colorado's licensing division publishes no fee schedule and quotes amounts only inside its authenticated application checkout

Permits for a contractor or trade in Denver, CO come from 4 separate offices: City and County of Denver, Department of Licensing and Consumer Protection, City and County of Denver, Community Planning and Development, Colorado Secretary of State, Business Division, Colorado State Electrical Board, Division of Professions and Occupations. No single office issues them all, which is why an opening means filing in several places rather than one.

• City and County of Denver, Department of Licensing and Consumer ProtectionIssues 1 permit on this page: Occupational Privilege Taxdenvergov.org/Government/Agencies-Departments-Offices/Agencies-Departments-Offices-Directory/Business-Licensing
• City and County of Denver, Community Planning and DevelopmentIssues 3 permits on this page: Temporary Certificate of Occupancy, Commercial Building Permit, Contractor Licence (Class A/B/C/D)www.denvergov.org/DSfees
• Colorado Secretary of State, Business DivisionIssues 4 permits on this page: Articles of Organization (LLC), Articles of Incorporation, Periodic Report, General Business Licence (local, not state)1700 Broadway, Suite 550, Denver, CO 80290 · (303) 894-2200www.coloradosos.gov/pubs/business/businessHome.html
• Colorado State Electrical Board, Division of Professions and OccupationsIssues 2 permits on this page: General Contractor Licence (local, not state), Electrical Contractor Registration1560 Broadway, Suite 1350, Denver, CO 80202 · (303) 894-7800dpo.colorado.gov/Electrical

A Denver-specific payroll tax, distinct from any state tax, triggered once an employee earns at least $500 in a calendar month working in the city.

A standard Certificate of Occupancy carries no separate fee — it is issued as part of the building permit's final inspection. A duplicate/reissued certificate shows two conflicting official figures: $10 on the live DSfees page versus $25 in the dated ADMIN 125/138 PDF; not reconciled.

Confirmed identically across two independent official sources (the live DSfees page and the dated ADMIN 125/138 PDF).

Colorado has no state general contractor licence — this is a genuinely city-specific requirement. Related credentials: Supervisor Certificate $60/3yr, Journeyman $40/3yr, Engineer $40/3yr, Operator $40/3yr. No primary Denver document states a bond dollar amount for this licence; surety-bond marketing sites give inconsistent, unverified figures and are not used here.

$50, and formation is online only — there is no paper option for an LLC or a corporation at all. Colorado genuinely did charge a dollar for a time: a 2022 fee-relief act funded a credit from a general fund transfer, and the Secretary of State's own announcement said the fee would return to $50 once the money was exhausted, which it has. Anything quoting $1 is describing a programme that has ended. A corporation costs the same $50, and so does a nonprofit. Expedited service costs $150 and applies only to paper filings, which these are not.

The same $50 as an LLC, with no share-based component, so Colorado gives no filing-cost reason to prefer either structure. Amending the articles later costs $25 and dissolving $10. A corporation sole is the one exception that must be filed on paper, at $125.

The fee went from $10 to $25 on 1 July 2024, having sat at $10 since online filing began in 2006, so older guidance understates it by more than half. The window is generous — two months either side of your periodic report month, penalty-free — and the escalation after that is worth knowing: miss the due date and the entity becomes noncompliant, miss the further two-month window and it becomes delinquent, at which point curing costs $100. A delinquent entity's name is released for anyone else to use on the four hundred and first day. Filing must be electronic.

No fee, because Colorado issues no general business licence — and the evidence is unusually clean, because the phrase appears in Colorado statute only to describe something a local taxing jurisdiction issues. A 2022 act forbids such a jurisdiction to charge a general business licence fee to a retailer that holds a state retail licence and has no more than incidental physical presence there, and from 2023 forbids requiring a separate application from that retailer at all. So the state legislated about the local licence without ever creating a state one. The Secretary of State directs you to the regulatory agencies department for industry licences and to your city or county for the rest.

No fee, because Colorado licenses no general contractor at state level — the regulatory agencies department's alphabetical list of everything it licenses runs from accountancy to veterinary medicine with electricians and plumbers among them and no contractor entry anywhere. Municipal and county building departments fill the gap, and Denver shows how sharply: it licenses contractors itself, states plainly that it does not accept or reciprocate licences from other Colorado counties or states, renews on cycles of one to three years depending on type, and accepts a state electrical or plumbing licence in place of its own supervisor certificate — precisely because those two trades are the ones the state does license. A contractor working across the Front Range needs a separate licence in each jurisdiction.

Electrical is one of only two construction trades Colorado licenses, and to perform electrical contracting you must be registered as an electrical contractor as well as employing licensed electricians. No fee is recorded because none is published anywhere: the licensing division's standing instruction is that fees are on the respective applications and forms, the posted forms carry no fee table, and the rules refer only to the current fee. The amount appears solely inside the authenticated checkout. What is published is the permit side, on a schedule effective December 2024 — new residential wiring runs $146 up to a thousand square feet, $218 to fifteen hundred and $292 to two thousand, and the inspection fee doubles if the permit is filed after work starts. The state only inspects where the local jurisdiction runs no electrical inspection programme of its own. Plumbing works the same way, on a two-year cycle expiring the last day of February in odd years.