San Antonio sign permit — why your San Antonio wall sign depends on your street class
San Antonio sizes your wall sign as a percentage of your building elevation — but the floor you're guaranteed depends on whether your entrance faces a collector, an arterial, or an expressway. That table-driven structure is why a single number off a frontage calculator won't cut it. Here's what actually controls your sign.
30-second risk check
No address, no measurements — just tap Yes or No. This flags where a San Antonio sign gets risky.
Under the Unified Development Code (§35-310.15), the maximum wall-sign area is a percentage of each building elevation set out in Table 310.15-2. But on top of that percentage, every occupancy gets a guaranteed minimum that scales with the class of street its public entrance faces. So your real allowance is "the greater of the table percentage or your street-class minimum" — which you can't read off a simple per-foot formula.
Your street class sets your guaranteed minimum
Whatever the facade percentage works out to, the code guarantees each occupancy at least this much sign area based on the street its separate public entrance faces:
Source: San Antonio Unified Development Code §35-310.15, Table 310.15-2 (wall signs / attached signs). Confirmed June 2026.
The rules that apply citywide
Beyond the facade table, these are confirmed in the UDC and Sign Code (Chapter 28). Use them as a sanity check before you talk to a fabricator:
- A building sign over 32 sq ft requires a permit. Only non-electric, non-illuminated signs of 32 sq ft or less, securely affixed and within frame limits, are exempt (and never in the Riverwalk Area).
- Wall-sign area is a percentage of your building elevation (Table 310.15-2), measured along all street frontage.
- No fluorescent colors, reflective surfaces, blinking lights, or rotating/moving parts are permitted on a sign.
- Digital displays must have a dimmer control and a photocell that auto-adjusts to ambient light, and must stay under the code's brightness (nits) limits.
- The Riverwalk Area has its own sign rules that override the standard exemptions.
Source: San Antonio UDC §35-310.15; City Sign Code Chapter 28 (§28-30, §28-43). Confirmed June 2026.
The exact facade percentage lives in Table 310.15-2, and your real allowance is the greater of that percentage or your street-class minimum (50 / 75 / 100 sq ft). Getting it wrong — or missing that your entrance faces an arterial vs a collector — means a rejected permit. Any sign over 32 sq ft needs a permit, and electrical/structural work pushes you toward a licensed contractor.
Get a free quote from a licensed San Antonio sign contractor
Skip the facade-percentage table and street-class lookups. A licensed local pro confirms your exact allowance, checks the Table 310.15-2 figure for your elevation, and handles the permit.
Get my free sign quote →How to apply for a San Antonio sign permit
San Antonio gives you two numbers and takes the better one — but only after you know what street class your entrance faces.
The three permit triggers, the Sign Plan Review pairing, the doubled fee and contractor violation notice, the application name, and the contractor's inspection and closeout duties are from City of San Antonio Development Services official permitting documents; the street-class minimums and Table 310.15-2 steps are from the confirmed items on this page. We do not publish a fee amount or a review time here. San Antonio provides a "Fee Schedule & Estimator" on the DSD pages at sa.gov that will calculate the figure for your specific sign — use that rather than any quoted number, and remember it doubles if you build first.
San Antonio sign checklist
Before you design or order anything, confirm:
- What street class does my public entrance face? (Collector → 50, Arterial → 75, Expressway → 100 sq ft minimum.)
- What's the facade percentage for my building elevation in Table 310.15-2?
- Is my sign over 32 sq ft? → permit required.
- Does my sign have blinking lights, reflective surfaces, or moving parts? → prohibited.
- Is it a digital display? → dimmer + photocell + nits limits required.
- Am I in the Riverwalk Area? → separate, stricter rules.
Official San Antonio resources
Go straight to the city for permits and the binding code:
San Antonio Sign & Billboard Permits (Development Services) — applications, fees, and UDC §35-310.15.
Machine-readable source not obtained for the UDC figures on this page. The link above is permit-application guidance, not binding text. Searched again on 21 August 2026: the Municode copy of the Unified Development Code returns only site navigation, with or without a headless browser; the American Legal library, the sanantonio.municipal.codes mirror and the sa.gov UDC document paths all return nothing. A Wayback index of archived sa.gov documents surfaced no UDC article file. We attach no substitute URL, because none carries the figures.
Other US city sign guides
Sources and official references: San Antonio Development Services — Sign & Billboard Permits. Binding ordinance text not obtained. San Antonio publishes its sign rules in City Code Chapter 28 and Unified Development Code Article VI. No machine-readable copy was obtained on 21 August 2026 — the Municode library returns only site navigation on both the chapter and the article paths, the American Legal library returns nothing, and no city PDF of either was found in a Wayback index. We attach no substitute link, because none carries the figures, and the numbers on this page therefore stay outside the weekly automated check.