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Find your city’s pre-approved ADU plans and whether one suits your lot

Government Code § 65852.27 required every California local agency to run a preapproval program by 1 January 2025. It did not require anyone to put plans in it, and it only bought a 30-day clock for detached units. Both halves change your answer.

30 days ministerial decision — detached, current-cycle plan, completed application only Cal. Gov. Code § 65852.27(b), added by AB 1332 (Carrillo, 2023), amended by Stats. 2024, ch. 7 (SB 477). Retrieved from leginfo 5 September 2026. Three conditions, all of which have to hold. The clock does not reach attached units, garage conversions or JADUs.

At the defaults — City of Los Angeles, detached new build, a standard plan is acceptable, site and pad not yet checked — the tool returns “worth pursuing first”, because the form is the one the statute was written for and Los Angeles had at least one plan posted when its page was read on 5 September 2026.

Change one input to a garage conversion and it drops to “worth a phone call, not a plan purchase”: § 65852.27(b) is written for a detached accessory dwelling unit, so the 30-day clock is simply not available.

Change it instead to “I need the plan modified” and it drops the same way, because Berkeley, Pasadena, Santa Barbara city, Sacramento County and Santa Monica all state on their own pages that a modified plan is not a preapproved submittal.

The sensitivity that matters is not which city you are in. Of the 35 agency programs this desk read directly, the split that changes a decision is between the ones with plans posted and the ones that are live but empty, expired, or not enumerable — and even an empty program is not a “no,” because the statute means one is supposed to exist everywhere.

What actually decides the answer is your project: detached or not, unmodified or not, benign site or not.

This tool will not tell you that you may build, and it will not tell you a plan is current-cycle — no agency publishes that in a form anyone can read automatically.

Five prompts, then a route

No address, no email, nothing stored. The jurisdiction list is 35 agency programs read directly on 5 September 2026 — not a census of California.

County programs usually serve the unincorporated area only. If you are inside city limits, pick the city.

The 30-day clock in § 65852.27(b) is written for detached units only.

Most programs void preapproval on any deviation from the approved set.

Several catalogs exclude hazard ground outright. Planning can tell you in one call.

Catalog plans assume a benign site. A difficult one puts the foundation engineering back in.

— Is this your route?
— The jurisdiction’s program
— Does the 30-day clock reach you?
— What is still reviewed
— Where to look, in one search

What this assumed —

A suitability judgment, not a determination. Pre-approved is not pre-permitted. This page does not establish that your property is eligible for an ADU, does not price a plan, is not legal advice, and HyreADU does not issue permits. Jurisdiction rows are a snapshot dated 5 September 2026; re-check the agency page.

What “pre-approved” actually buys, in the statute’s own words

The phrase is doing a lot of work in the marketing around it, and almost none of the work people assume. Read the two sentences that create the thing and the shape of it becomes obvious.

Source fact. Cal. Gov. Code § 65852.27, added by AB 1332 (Carrillo, 2023) and amended by Stats. 2024, ch. 7 (SB 477), subdivision (a): “Each local agency shall, by January 1, 2025, develop a program for the preapproval of accessory dwelling unit plans.” That is a duty to run a program.

It is not a duty to own plans, to publish a catalog, to give anything away, or to have a single purchasable design in it. The distinction is the reason this page exists.

Source fact. Subdivision (b) is the part with teeth: “A local agency shall approve or deny an application for a detached accessory dwelling unit ministerially without discretionary review pursuant to Sections 66317 and 66320 except that the local agency shall either approve or deny the application within 30 days from the date the local agency receives a completed application, if the application utilizes either of the following…” — the two following being a plan preapproved in the current triennial California Building Standards Code cycle, or a plan identical to one the agency already approved in that cycle.

HYRE analysis. Four words in that sentence decide whether the route is open to you, and the tool above is essentially a reader for them.

Detached: the clock is written for a detached ADU and reaches nothing else.

Completed: an incomplete application does not start it, and incompleteness is the single most common reason a fast statutory clock produces a slow real project.

Current cycle: preapproval dies with the code cycle. Utilizes: the application has to use the plan, which in practice means use it unaltered.

Source fact. The agency may charge the same permitting fees it would charge for a same-sized ADU under Gov. Code §§ 66314–66331. That is the sentence that kills the most persistent misunderstanding about these programs: they are not a discount.

A free city PDF saves you the design fee. It does not touch the building permit fee, the school fee, the impact fee or the utility connection, and those are usually the larger numbers.

Source fact. Preapproved plans and the applicant's contact information must be posted on the agency website. Posting is not an endorsement. A city listing a designer’s plan is not the city recommending that designer, and several program pages say so explicitly.

HYRE analysis. So the honest one-line summary is this: preapproval moves the structural and code review of the building to before you arrive, and buys a 30-day ministerial decision on a detached unit if — and only if — the plan is current-cycle and your application is complete.

Everything about your parcel is untouched. That is a genuinely valuable thing to have already done. It is not the same thing as a permit, and it is not the same thing as cheap.

The five prompts, and what each one is really testing

None of these needs a document, a survey or a measurement. They are five things you already know or can settle in an afternoon, and between them they decide whether a catalog plan is a shortcut or a detour.

The promptWhat it is really testingWhat a wrong guess costs you
Which form of ADUThe statutory clock at Cal. Gov. Code § 65852.27(b) is written for a detached accessory dwelling unit. Attached units, garage conversions, above-garage units and JADUs sit outside it unless a local program has separately chosen to cover them. Most catalogs are detached-only on their face: Santa Monica and Hayward say so in terms.You spend weeks looking for a catalog that does not cover your project, when the ordinary 60-day ADU decision at Gov. Code § 66317(a)(3) was always the applicable clock. Nothing was lost but the weeks, which is enough.
Whether a standard plan is fineWhether you can accept a design somebody else drew, at a size somebody else chose, unchanged. Programs are blunt about this. Berkeley: design changes are not accepted into a pre-approved submittal. Pasadena: modifications are not allowed, and a modified plan is a full review. Santa Barbara city: plans must be identical to the preapproved set, any deviation rejected. Sacramento County allows mirroring and nothing else.You buy a license for a plan you then need changed, and discover the change has returned you to the back of the ordinary plan-check queue with a license fee already spent.
Whether the site carries a hazard or overlayWhether the parcel sits in the ground the catalog plans were drawn to avoid. San Francisco excludes slope-protection, landslide, liquefaction, Maher and flood zones. San José requires a residential lot with an existing house or duplex and excludes geohazard, landslide, flood and WUI. Santa Barbara County says the plans are not suitable for steep slopes, unstable soils or flood hazards without special studies. Burbank caps the Very High Fire Zone at 800 sf and excludes new-construction ADUs in the Rancho area entirely.The special study you were trying to avoid arrives anyway, on top of the plan license. In the worst version the catalog is simply unavailable on your parcel and you find out after paying.
Whether there is a flat, clear padWhether the prescriptive foundation the plan was drawn with will actually work here. Catalog plans assume a benign site because that is the only way a plan can be approved without knowing where it will stand. Pasadena lists slope, hillside and expansive soil as things that may still require work. Placer County asks you to know your setbacks, septic or well and existing permits before you start.A geotechnical report and a re-engineered foundation, which is the expensive half of the “pre-approved” savings gone. Size the pad first with the size envelope calculator; it will not tell you that you may build, only which number binds.
Which jurisdictionWhether anyone has read your agency’s program page recently, and what state it was in. This desk read 35 agency pages on 2026-09-05. That is a snapshot, not a census: California has roughly 480 cities and counties, and a jurisdiction missing from the list has not been checked, not disproved.You conclude your city has no program because a blog did not list it. Since 1 January 2025 a program is supposed to exist everywhere in California, so the correct assumption is the opposite of the one most people make.

Every program characterization in this table is quoted from the agency’s own page as read on 2026-09-05. The full set, with URLs, statuses and method, is on the pre-approved plans directory. This tool does not restate it — it answers the different question of whether the route suits your project.

What the snapshot found, and why the headline is not the interesting number

The story most coverage tells is “more and more cities have pre-approved plans.” Since AB 1332, that is close to trivially true and therefore close to useless. The number that changes a decision is how many of those programs have anything in them.

HYRE analysis. A program page is now the baseline, because the statute required one.

An empty program page is therefore not evidence of a city dragging its feet on housing; it is evidence that no designer has yet submitted a plan there, which is a different problem with a different fix.

Santa Monica publishes the honest version of that sentence on its own page. San Francisco’s page is an intake form for designers rather than a shop window for homeowners.

HYRE analysis. The free-plan count is the one that surprises people. Where a city drew and owns the plans — Fresno, Anaheim, Oakland, Stockton, Sacramento’s Shelf Ready set, Los Angeles’s YOU-ADU — the drawings themselves cost nothing.

Where the catalog is designer-owned, you buy a license from the designer and the city does not publish the price. Neither arrangement is better; they are different products, and confusing them is how a budget goes wrong early.

35agency program pages read directlyHyreADU desk pass, 2026-09-05
25with at least one identifiable plan postedStatus: catalog
10live but with nothing this desk could confirm was purchasableStatus: process (7), empty (2), expired (1)
11where the agency’s own plans are freePlan fee as stated on the agency page

Counts are of the pages this desk read, not of California. See the directory for the per-jurisdiction rows and the status definitions.

Three things preapproval never removes

What preapproval never removes is the part the phrase misleads on, and it misleads consistently enough that most of the disappointment in these programs traces back to it. The review that was done was a review of a building in the abstract. Your project is a building on a specific piece of ground.

The site-specific review

Every single program page in the snapshot says some version of this. Sacramento: site-specific design and permitting, including planning and zoning, like any other new building project. Santa Clara County: project-specific site plan, Title 24 CF-1R, and a roof truss design from a manufacturer. Santa Barbara County: the application is incomplete without a site plan.

HYRE analysis. Zoning, setbacks, separation from the primary dwelling, height on your parcel, address assignment, fire access, and whether the ADU can physically stand where you want it are all still open questions on the day you pick a plan. The feasibility checker is the list of those questions; it deliberately never answers yes.

The utilities

Water, sewer or septic, gas and electrical service are outside the plan review entirely. Fresno’s catalog plans require a new electrical service panel. Placer County asks about septic and well before you start. Burbank routes a preapproved submittal through BWP Electric, BWP Water and Fire at permit stage regardless of the plan.

HYRE analysis. Connection capacity and connection charges are frequently the largest single surprise in an ADU budget, and they are indifferent to how the building was drawn.

HyreADU publishes no dollar figure for any of them, on purpose: we could not retrieve a single municipal or utility ADU connection fee schedule, and an invented magnitude would be worse than none. Get both utilities’ figures in writing before you sign anything.

The fees, and the clock you actually experience

Source fact. The agency may charge the same permitting fees it would charge for a same-sized ADU under Gov. Code §§ 66314–66331.

HYRE calculation. On this site’s own analysis of LADBS Building and Safety — Building Permits Issued from 2020 to Present (N) (n=27,188 issued ADU building permits, retrieved 2026-09-05), the median span from application to issuance in the City of Los Angeles was 162 calendar days, interquartile range 79 to 301.

HYRE analysis. That measures a different span from the statutory clock — it starts at the published application date, not at a completeness determination, so it includes every day spent curing an incomplete set.

A 30-day statutory decision inside a 162-day median is not a contradiction.

It is the clearest possible statement of where the time actually goes, and it is not in the structural review a preapproved plan already did. See permit times by city.

The code-cycle cliff, and why a plan on a website can be worthless

The code-cycle cliff is the failure mode with no warning label on it, and the one most likely to waste real money in 2026.

Source fact. Preapproval expires at the end of the triennial code cycle. The 2025 California Building Standards Code took effect 1 January 2026.

HYRE analysis. Preapproval is an approval against a specific edition of the code. When the edition turns over, the approval goes with it, and the plan has to be resubmitted and reapproved to stay in the catalog.

Agency websites do not always keep up. A PDF sitting on a city page in September 2026 may have been approved under the 2022 cycle and be, as a preapproved plan, void — still a perfectly good drawing, but no longer a shortcut, and no longer eligible for the 30-day clock.

Source fact. Fremont is the worked example. On 2026-09-05 its program page listed one plan under the current code cycle, with the remainder from the 2022 cycle marked as no longer valid.

Sacramento’s Shelf Ready page still described its plans as meeting 2022 CRC requirements, while a January 2026 city report said the plans had been updated in December 2025 — two city documents that do not agree with each other.

Pasadena labels its one citywide plan with the code edition it was approved under, which is the practice every program should copy.

Recommendation. Ask one question, in writing, before any money moves: is this plan preapproved under the current California Building Standards Code cycle, and what is its expiry? A program that cannot answer that in a sentence is a program you should treat as a design catalog rather than a permit shortcut.

The tool above cannot check this for you — the answer is not published in a machine-readable form anywhere, by anyone — which is exactly why the question is written into the output.

Finding your jurisdiction’s program in one search

The phrase “pre-approved ADU plans” is heavily commercially contested. Design-build firms and prefab vendors rank for “pre-approved ADU plans” with pages that are not a program and cannot give you the 30-day clock. Two habits cut through it.

  • Restrict the search to .gov

    Search site:.gov "[your city]" "pre-approved" OR "preapproved" ADU plans. The domain restriction is the whole trick. It removes the vendor pages in one move, and what is left is almost always the program itself or nothing.

  • Search the county too, and the right county page

    County programs generally serve the unincorporated area only. If you are inside city limits, the county catalog is usually not yours — unless a city has separately adopted it, which happens: the City of San Diego accepts the County of San Diego, Chula Vista and Encinitas catalogs, and Burbank lists an LADBS plan alongside its own.

  • If the search returns nothing, ring and use the statute’s name

    Ask the building department for “the AB 1332 preapproved ADU plan program.” Front-counter staff frequently know it by the bill number when they do not recognize the phrase, and since 1 January 2025 there is supposed to be one.

  • Ask two questions once you have a human

    One: which plans are preapproved under the current code cycle. Two: what the plan costs and who is paid — the city or the designer. Those two answers are the whole decision, and neither is reliably on the website.

  • Do not accept a vendor’s claim that its plan is pre-approved in your city

    A plan preapproved in one jurisdiction is not automatically preapproved in another; admission is a local act, and several agencies admit other agencies’ plans by name rather than in general. Check the claim against the city’s own posted list before you sign.

  • Do not treat an HCD insignia as a city pre-approval

    State design-and-factory regulation, not a city pre-approved plan catalog. An HCD Insignia of Approval on a factory-built unit or component is evidence the factory work was approved under Health & Safety Code §§ 19960–19997 and Title 25.

    The local building department still permits the foundation, site, utilities and installation. Some city galleries (Berkeley; some LADBS listings marked 'HCD Approved') admit HCD-approved designs into a local preapproval program under § 65852.27(a)(5)(B).

    That admission is a local act. It does not make the HCD FBH program itself a city pre-approval.

When a catalog plan is the wrong choice

Pre-approved plan programs are good. They are not universally good, and the pressure in the market runs entirely one way, so here is the other side stated plainly.

A catalog plan is probably right when

You want a detached unit — the only form the statutory clock reaches.

You can live with somebody else’s layout at somebody else’s size. The catalogs cluster around studio, one-bedroom and two-bedroom at roughly 350 to 1,000 square feet; Sacramento’s Shelf Ready set is 367, 559 and 747 habitable square feet, Monterey Park’s four are 800 and 1,000, Torrance’s four run 440 to 798.

The lot has a flat, clear, unremarkable rectangle to put it on.

Your city owns the plans and gives them away, so the design fee genuinely disappears rather than moving to a designer’s license.

You are not in a hazard zone, a coastal overlay, a historic district or a very-high-fire area.

It is probably the wrong route when

The project is a garage conversion, an attached unit or a JADU. The clock does not reach it and most catalogs do not either. Conversion economics are a different question with a different answer.

You need a specific thing — a particular bedroom count, an accessible bathroom, a roofline that matches the house, a window the neighbors will not object to. Every modification you request is a step back towards ordinary plan check, and most programs say a modified plan is simply a normal submittal.

The site is sloped, narrow, oddly shaped, or on questionable soil. The foundation engineering you avoid is the whole saving; if it comes back, the saving does not.

Your jurisdiction’s program is live but empty. You cannot wait for a designer to submit a plan into it, and a phone call will tell you whether one is coming.

You are outside California. There is no state mandate behind the program and no 30-day clock; some jurisdictions elsewhere run one voluntarily, and you should assume nothing.

One input changed at a time

Baseline: City of Los Angeles, detached new build, a standard plan is fine, no known hazard or overlay, a flat clear pad.

Every verdict below is the engine’s actual output for that input set, not a description of it.

The fit score is a HyreADU judgment about suitability — it is not a legal test and no agency uses it.

What changedFit scoreThe engine’s verdict
Nothing (baseline)9Worth pursuing first. Nothing you entered argues against a catalog plan, the form you want is the one the statute was written for, and this jurisdiction had at least one plan posted when the page was read.
Form becomes a garage conversion3Worth a phone call, not a plan purchase — a garage conversion, which the statutory clock does not reach.
Form becomes attached to the house4Worth a phone call, not a plan purchase — an attached ADU, which the statutory clock does not reach.
You need the plan modified3Worth a phone call — most programs void preapproval on any deviation (Berkeley, Pasadena, Santa Barbara city, Sacramento County and Santa Monica all say so in terms).
The lot is in a hazard or overlay5Worth a phone call — several catalogs exclude it outright (San Francisco names slope-protection, landslide, liquefaction, Maher and flood; San José names geohazard, landslide, flood and WUI).
The pad is sloped or tight6Worth a phone call — a sloped or awkward pad usually forces the site-specific foundation and soils work a catalog plan was drawn to avoid.
Jurisdiction becomes San Francisco5Worth a phone call — a program page with no plans posted on 5 September 2026.
Jurisdiction becomes Fremont5Worth a phone call — a posted catalog largely invalidated by the 1 January 2026 code cycle.
Jurisdiction is not in the snapshot7The project fits the route; the program is the unknown. Find the program page before spending anything.
Outside California3Worth a phone call — no state mandate behind the program where you are.
Garage conversion AND modifications−3Probably not your route. A custom or semi-custom set reviewed the ordinary way is likely to be faster than fighting a catalog plan onto this project.

Note what the scenarios show about the model’s shape: no single input except a two-fault combination drops you into “probably not.” That is deliberate. One adverse fact is a question for the counter, not a verdict, and a tool that said otherwise would be asserting a local rule it does not know.

The five ways people get this wrong

  • Reading “pre-approved” as “pre-permitted”

    It is the most expensive misreading available here. Preapproval is a review of the building in the abstract. You still file, you still pay, you still get inspected, and the site-specific review is entirely ahead of you.

  • Expecting the program to be cheaper

    The statute expressly permits the same fees as a same-sized ADU. Where the city owns the plans you save the design fee, which is real and can be five figures. You save nothing on permit fees, impact fees or utility connections. Model the whole thing on the cost calculator with your own numbers.

  • Concluding your city has no program because a list did not name it

    Since 1 January 2025 every California local agency has been under a statutory duty to have one. Absence from any list — including ours — means nobody checked. It is close to the opposite of evidence.

  • Downloading a plan without checking the code cycle

    A 2022-cycle plan is a drawing, not a shortcut, and it does not get the 30-day clock. Websites lag. Ask in writing.

  • Picking the plan before checking the parcel

    The order that wastes the least money is: planning counter, then envelope, then catalog. A beautiful plan for a building your setbacks do not permit is the most expensive PDF in this process.

What actually moves the verdict, ranked — including what is absent

1. The form of the ADU. Worth up to six points of swing between detached and a conversion, and it is the only input tied directly to statutory text rather than to a judgment.

If you are not building detached, the 30-day clock is not available and the question collapses to whether your specific agency chose to extend its own program.

2. Whether you need the plan changed. Six points of swing, and the most under-appreciated input on the form. People assume a catalog plan is a starting point. In most of these programs it is a finished document you take or leave.

3. The site. Four points. A hazard or overlay is not usually fatal, but it moves you from “open the page” to “ring the counter,” because whether the catalog is available on hazard ground is decided city by city and is often stated on the program page itself.

4. The jurisdiction’s catalog status. Four points between a confirmed catalog and an empty, expired or unenumerable one. Note that this is knowledge about the snapshot, not about your city — a status can change the week after we read it.

5. The pad. Three points. Smallest of the five, and deliberately so: “tight” is a judgment most people make pessimistically before measuring, and the honest response to it is a measurement rather than a verdict.

What is deliberately absent, and why. There is no cost input and no output in dollars.

We hold no dataset of plan license prices — most cities do not publish them, because the money goes to the designer — and we could not retrieve a single municipal or utility ADU connection fee schedule.

There is no time saving in days, because we have not measured one: the city claims in the snapshot range from Sacramento’s “typically approved within 10 days” to San José’s same-day issuance, and all of them are city claims about qualifying submittals, not observed medians.

And there is no probability of approval, because that is a determination about a parcel and no web page holds one.

What this tool ignores

The picker is a snapshot of 35 agencies, not a census. California has roughly 480 cities and counties. The jurisdictions in the picker are the ones read directly on an agency page on 2026-09-05. Everything else routes to the search string, which is the honest answer rather than a blank screen.

It cannot tell you whether a specific plan is current-cycle. No agency publishes that in a machine-readable form. The question is written into the output because you have to ask it yourself.

It does not price anything. Not the plan, not the permit, not the connection, not the build. We hold no dataset of ADU bids, quotes or contracts.

Every dollar figure on this site is a named third party’s published figure, arithmetic we performed on one and have labeled as ours, or a number you typed in.

It does not read your parcel. Zone, setbacks, coverage, easements, overlays and utility capacity are all facts about your address that this page does not have and does not attempt to infer.

It scores suitability with weights we chose. The point values are published in the formula section above and in the engine comment; they are a HyreADU judgment, and reasonable people would weight them differently. Treat the band, not the number, as the output.

And the disclosure that makes the rest of it credible. HyreADU does not design, permit or build accessory dwelling units.

It does not appraise, lend, invest, let property or prepare taxes, it does not rank or refer contractors, and it takes no referral fee from anyone who does any of those things.

That is what allows these tools to conclude that the numbers do not work, that the answer is to keep the garage, or that the honest next step is a question at the planning counter rather than a deposit.

How this calculator works

The verdict is a band, not a number, and the number behind it is published so you can disagree with it. Five inputs carry points:

fit score = form + design need + site + pad + jurisdiction status

Form: detached +3, attached −2, garage conversion −3, above garage −3, JADU −3, undecided 0. Design need: standard plan is fine +2, need a specific size 0, need changes to the plan −4.

Site: no known hazard +1, unknown 0, hazard or overlay −3. Pad: flat and clear +1, unmeasured 0, sloped or tight −2. Jurisdiction: confirmed catalog +2, live-but-empty/expired/unenumerable −2, not in the snapshot 0, outside California −4.

Bands: 5 or more with no adverse fact and a confirmed catalog → worth pursuing first. 5 or more with no adverse fact but no confirmed catalog → the project fits, the program is the unknown.

1 to 4, or any adverse fact → worth a phone call, not a plan purchase, and the adverse facts are named back to you. 0 or below → probably not your route.

Choosing “not decided yet” for the form short-circuits everything and sends you to the type selector, because detached-or-not decides whether the question is live at all.

The weights are a HyreADU judgment. They are not a legal test and no agency uses them. What is not a judgment is the form rule: the 30-day clock genuinely is written for detached units only, and that is quoted from the statute above.

The design-need weight is the largest single penalty on the form because it is the one people most often assume away — a catalog plan is a finished document in most of these programs, not a starting point.

Notice what the arithmetic does not do: no single adverse fact drops you into “probably not.” One bad fact is a question for the counter.

It takes a combination — a conversion you also want modified — to reach a negative verdict, and even then the output is a recommendation to price the ordinary route, never a statement that you cannot build.

What each input means

Inputs on this tool, in the order they appear on the form.
InputWhat it is actually asking
Jurisdiction The agency that will issue the building permit. Find it on your property tax bill or by searching your address on the county assessor’s parcel viewer — the answer is “city of X” or “unincorporated county of Y,” and county programs generally serve only the unincorporated area. The picker holds the 35 agencies whose program pages this desk read on 5 September 2026; anything else routes to a search string rather than a blank screen.
Form of ADU Detached new build, attached, garage conversion, above a garage, or a JADU inside the house. If you have not decided, the type selector is the page for it. This is the only input tied to statutory text rather than to our judgment.
Design need Whether you can take a plan exactly as drawn. Be honest with yourself here rather than optimistic: “we would just move the door” is a modification. If you already know you need a second bedroom, an accessible bathroom or a roofline that matches the house, say so — that is the answer that saves you the most.
Hazard or overlay Flood, fire hazard severity / WUI, landslide, liquefaction, coastal zone or historic district. You do not need a report. Ring planning and ask “what overlays apply to this parcel” — it is a one-call question and they answer it for free. “I don’t know” is a valid answer and is the default.
Pad Whether there is a flat, clear, roughly rectangular area big enough for the plan, once setbacks and separation from the house are taken out. Catalog plans run roughly 350 to 1,000 sf. The size envelope calculator turns this into numbers; it will not tell you that you may build.

Worked examples

Including one where the naive answer misleads, which is the example most calculators leave out.

The one it was built for

A flat rear yard in Los Angeles, a detached one-bedroom, no strong opinion about the layout. Fit score 9. Verdict: worth pursuing first.

The program output names the LADBS standard plan page directly; the clock output confirms the 30-day decision is available on a completed detached application using a current-cycle plan.

The one thing the tool insists on anyway is in the “still reviewed” line — Los Angeles still requires a building permit and site-specific zoning and foundation review. Free drawings, ordinary permit.

The one where the naive answer misleads

Same house, same city, but the project is converting the detached garage. Every article about pre-approved plans is still relevant-looking, and the city genuinely does have a catalog.

Fit score drops to 3 and the verdict is worth a phone call, not a plan purchase, because § 65852.27(b) is written for a detached accessory dwelling unit and a conversion is outside it.

Nothing about the catalog helps. The ordinary 60-day ADU decision at § 66317(a)(3) was always your clock. This is the single most common way this topic wastes someone’s month, and the reason the form question is first.

The one where the program exists and is still not usable

San Francisco, detached, standard plan, clear site, flat pad. The city has a program page — it must, the statute required one — and the fit score is 5.

The verdict is still worth a phone call, not a plan purchase, and the program line explains why in the city’s own terms: the page is a designer-intake program and no approved plan was posted when it was read.

A directory that only recorded “San Francisco: yes, has a program” would have sent you looking for a catalog that does not exist. That is why status, not presence, is what the picker carries.

The one that should stop you

A garage conversion you also need modified, anywhere. Fit score −3. Verdict: probably not your route, with both blocking facts named.

The recommendation is to price a custom or semi-custom set reviewed the ordinary way, because fighting a catalog plan onto this project will be slower than not using one.

Note what the tool still does not say: it does not say the project is a bad idea, and it does not say you may or may not build. Those are not its questions.

What changes the result

Ranked by how much they move the verdict: the form of the ADU (six points of swing, and the only input anchored in statutory text), whether you need the plan changed (six points, and the most commonly assumed away), the site (four), the jurisdiction’s catalog status (four), and the pad (three, smallest on purpose, because “tight” is usually a guess made before measuring).

What is deliberately absent is as informative as what is there. There is no cost input and no dollar output. Most cities do not publish plan license prices because the money goes to the designer, and this desk could not retrieve a single municipal or utility ADU connection fee schedule — so no figure is shown, rather than a plausible invented one.

There is no time saving in days, because we have not measured one; the city claims in the snapshot range from Sacramento’s “typically approved within 10 days” to San José’s same-day issuance, and every one of them is a claim about a qualifying submittal rather than an observed median.

There is no probability of approval, because that is a determination about a parcel and no web page holds one.

And one thing the tool cannot check and will not pretend to: whether a specific posted plan is preapproved under the current code cycle.

That is the question most likely to waste money in 2026 and no agency publishes it in a machine-readable form, so it is written into the output as a question for you to ask in writing.

Local considerations

Pre-approved ADU plans are a California-shaped topic, and the page says so rather than dressing it up as national.

Gov. Code § 65852.27 reaches California local agencies and nobody else; outside California there is no mandate and no 30-day clock, and the tool returns that plainly rather than inventing a program.

Some jurisdictions elsewhere run permit-ready plan programs voluntarily, and the search string works the same way for them.

Inside California, the variation between agencies is larger than the coverage suggests.

Free city-owned plans in Fresno, Anaheim, Oakland, Stockton and Sacramento; designer-owned licenses at prices the city does not publish in San José, Torrance, Monterey Park and Kern County; live program pages with nothing posted in San Francisco and Santa Monica; a set largely invalidated by the code cycle in Fremont.

Several cities accept other agencies’ catalogs by name — the City of San Diego accepts County of San Diego, Chula Vista and Encinitas plans — which is a genuine shortcut, but it is a shortcut granted city by city and never a general rule.

The per-jurisdiction rows, statuses, plan counts and method are on the pre-approved plans directory. This page does not restate them; it answers whether the route suits your project.

When not to use this

Do not use this as a determination that you may build, a legal opinion, or evidence for a lender. It is a suitability judgment made from five things you told it.

Do not use the jurisdiction list as proof that a city has no program. It is 35 agencies out of roughly 480 in California, and since 1 January 2025 a program is supposed to exist everywhere — absence from the list means nobody checked, not that nothing is there.

Do not treat a “worth pursuing first” as clearance to commission anything. The parcel questions are still entirely open; the feasibility checker is the list of them and deliberately never answers yes.

Do not read a free plan as a cheap project. The cost calculator takes your own figures for the parts a catalog never touches, and ADU cost in California explains what the published cost figures actually measure.

Nothing here is an instruction to perform structural, electrical, gas or foundation work. Pre-approved plans are engineered documents for licensed people to build from under permit and inspection; this page is for understanding whether one fits your project, never for doing the work.

HyreADU does not issue permits and does not establish eligibility.

Related on this site

Questions this calculator answers

Does my city have pre-approved ADU plans?
If you are in California, it is supposed to. Government Code § 65852.27(a) says “Each local agency shall, by January 1, 2025, develop a program for the preapproval of accessory dwelling unit plans.” That is a duty to run a program, not a duty to have plans in it, so the useful question is whether the catalog has anything purchasable in it today. Of the 35 agency pages this desk read on 5 September 2026, a clear majority had at least one identifiable plan; several had a live program page with nothing posted. Use the picker above, or the site:.gov search string it gives you if your jurisdiction is not in the snapshot.
How much time does a pre-approved plan actually save?
We have not measured it and we will not quote a number we did not measure. The statute buys a 30-day ministerial decision on a completed application for a detached ADU using a current-cycle plan. Cities make their own claims — Sacramento says shelf-ready applications are typically approved within 10 days, San José says same-day issuance is available where the site-specific documents are accurate and complete — and those are city claims about qualifying submittals, not observed medians. Against that, HyreADU analysis of LADBS issued ADU building permits found a median of 162 calendar days from application to issuance across 27,188 permits. That measures a different span, which is the point: most of the elapsed time in a real ADU project is not in the structural review a preapproved plan already did.
Are pre-approved ADU plans cheaper?
Sometimes the drawings are free, and that is the whole saving. Where a city drew and owns the plans — Fresno, Anaheim, Oakland, Stockton, Sacramento’s Shelf Ready set, Los Angeles’s YOU-ADU — the plans cost nothing. Where the catalog is designer-owned you buy a license from the designer, and cities generally do not publish that price. On the permit side there is no discount: § 65852.27 expressly lets the agency charge the same permitting fees it would charge for a same-sized ADU. Impact fees, school fees and utility connections are untouched.
Does “pre-approved” mean I do not need a permit?
No, and this is the most expensive misreading available here. Preapproval is a review of the building in the abstract. You still file a building permit application, you still pay, and you are still inspected. Every program page in the snapshot says so in some form. Sacramento’s is the bluntest: site-specific design and permitting, including planning and zoning, like any other new building project.
What is still reviewed if I use a pre-approved plan?
Everything about your parcel. The site plan, setbacks and zoning compliance, the foundation for your actual soils, drainage, fire access, address assignment, and the utility connections — water, sewer or septic, gas, electrical service and capacity. Several cities add their own conditions on top: Burbank routes the submittal through Planning, Public Works, BWP Electric, BWP Water and Fire; Santa Clara County wants a Title 24 CF-1R and a manufacturer’s roof truss design; Santa Barbara County treats the application as incomplete without a site plan.
Can I change a pre-approved plan?
Usually not without losing the preapproval. Berkeley states that design changes are not accepted into a pre-approved submittal. Pasadena states that modifications are not allowed and that a modified plan is a full review. Santa Barbara city requires plans to be identical to the preapproved set and rejects any deviation. Sacramento County allows mirroring and nothing else. If you need a particular bedroom count, an accessible bathroom or a roofline that matches the house, price a custom set honestly rather than assuming a catalog plan is a starting point.
Do pre-approved plans work for a garage conversion or a JADU?
The statutory clock does not reach them. § 65852.27(b) is written for a detached accessory dwelling unit; an attached unit, a conversion, a unit above a garage and a JADU are all outside it unless a local program has separately chosen to cover that form, and most catalogs are detached-only on their face. The ordinary 60-day ADU decision at Gov. Code § 66317(a)(3) still applies. If you are weighing a conversion against a new build, the trade-off is a different question from this one.
Why might a plan on my city’s website be worthless?
Because preapproval expires at the end of the triennial California Building Standards Code cycle, and the 2025 code took effect on 1 January 2026. A plan approved under the 2022 cycle is still a perfectly good drawing but is no longer a preapproved plan and no longer gets the 30-day clock. Websites lag. Fremont’s page on 5 September 2026 listed one current-cycle plan with the remainder marked as no longer valid, and Sacramento’s Shelf Ready page still described its plans as meeting 2022 CRC requirements while a January 2026 city report said they had been updated in December 2025. Ask, in writing, which plans carry a current-cycle approval.
Is an HCD-approved factory-built unit the same as a city pre-approved plan?
No. The California HCD Factory-Built Housing program is state regulation of the design and the factory. An HCD Insignia of Approval is evidence the factory work was approved under Health & Safety Code §§ 19960–19997 and Title 25; the local building department still permits the foundation, site, utilities and installation. Some city galleries admit HCD-approved designs into their local preapproval program, but that admission is a local act and does not make the state program a city catalog.
I am not in California. Is there a pre-approved plan program for me?
There is no state mandate behind one. § 65852.27 is California law and reaches only California local agencies, and the 30-day clock does not exist outside it. Some jurisdictions elsewhere run a preapproved or permit-ready plan program voluntarily. Run the site:.gov search the tool gives you and assume nothing until you find the agency’s own page.
Does HyreADU sell plans or take a fee from anyone who does?
No. HyreADU does not design, permit or build accessory dwelling units, does not rank or refer contractors, and takes no referral fee from anyone who does. That is what allows this page to tell you that a catalog plan is the wrong route for your project.

Sources and methodology

Figures dated 5 September 2026. Last reviewed .

  • Government Code § 65852.27 (ADU plan preapproval programs) (California Legislature (leginfo), retrieved 2026-09-05. Added by AB 1332 (Carrillo, 2023); amended by Stats. 2024, ch. 7 (SB 477), effective 25 March 2024. Subdivisions (a) and (b) are quoted verbatim on this page: the 1 January 2025 program duty and the 30-day ministerial decision for a detached ADU using a qualifying preapproved plan.)
  • Government Code § 66317 (ADU decision clock) (California Legislature (leginfo), retrieved 2026-09-05. The ordinary 60-day ADU decision that continues to apply where the 30-day preapproval clock does not.)
  • ADU Standard Plan Program (Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety, retrieved 2026-09-05. YOU-ADU, the free city-owned plan, plus the designer catalog. Supports the Los Angeles row and the default result.)
  • Get your detached ADU plan pre-approved for future use (City and County of San Francisco, retrieved 2026-09-05. Designer-intake program with no approved-plan catalog posted on retrieval; names the excluded slope-protection, landslide, liquefaction, Maher and flood zones.)
  • Preapproved ADUs (City of San José, retrieved 2026-09-05. Seven approved plans from five vendors; the geohazard, landslide, flood and WUI exclusions; the same-day issuance claim quoted as a city claim.)
  • Preapproved ADU Program (AB-1332) and Shelf Ready ADU Plans (City of Sacramento, retrieved 2026-09-05. Three free Shelf Ready plans at 367, 559 and 747 habitable sf; the 2022 CRC labeling that conflicts with the January 2026 city report; the 10-day approval claim quoted as a city claim.)
  • Preapproved Accessory Dwelling Units (City of Fremont, retrieved 2026-09-05. The code-cycle example: one current-cycle plan listed, the remainder from the 2022 cycle marked no longer valid.)
  • ADU Standard Plans Program (City of Pasadena, retrieved 2026-09-05. Modifications not allowed; a modified plan is a full review. Slope, hillside, expansive soil, sprinklers and surveys may still be required. Labels its citywide plan with the 2025 CBC.)
  • Pre-approved designs for accessory dwelling units (City of Berkeley, retrieved 2026-09-05. Design changes are not accepted into a pre-approved submittal; zoning confirmation with Land Use Planning before selecting a design.)
  • Preapproved ADU Program (City of Santa Monica, retrieved 2026-09-05. Live program page stating no plans at this time — the honest empty-catalog sentence. Detached only, no modifications.)
  • Pre-Approved Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) Program (County of Santa Barbara, retrieved 2026-09-05. Four plan sets in three styles; not suitable for steep slopes, unstable soils or flood hazards without special studies; site plan required for a complete application.)
  • Pre-Approved ADU (City of Burbank, retrieved 2026-09-05. Multi-department review at permit stage; Very High Fire Zone 800 sf cap; no new-construction ADUs in the Rancho area; lists an LADBS plan alongside its own.)
  • Factory-Built Housing program (California Department of Housing and Community Development, retrieved 2026-09-05. State design-and-factory regulation under Health & Safety Code §§ 19960–19997 and Title 25. Cited to distinguish an HCD insignia from a city pre-approval, not as a plan catalog.)
  • Building Permits Issued from 2020 to Present (N) (LADBS / Los Angeles open data, retrieved 2026-09-05. HyreADU analysis of issued ADU building permits: n=27,188, median 162.0 calendar days application to issuance, IQR 79.0–301.0. Measures a different span from the statutory clock; used only to show where elapsed time actually sits.)

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