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DUI Total Cost Estimator

By the DUI Cost Guide Editorial Team · Last updated: November 3, 2026

Pick a state and this estimator stacks the first-offence charges that state actually publishes — the fine, fixed assessments, the license reinstatement fee and the DUI program fee — into one itemised total. Anything no official source prices statewide is named and left out, never guessed.

Why a DUI total is a stack, not a single fine

Ask what a DUI costs and most answers quote the fine, because the fine is the one figure a statute prints in advance. It is rarely the whole bill, and sometimes it is not even the largest part. A first conviction sets off a sequence of separate charges, each collected by a different payer-facing office: the court collects the fine and its own costs, the driver-licensing agency collects a reinstatement fee before it will hand a license back, a program provider collects tuition for the education or treatment course the court orders, and — where an ignition interlock is imposed — a private vendor collects installation, lease and removal charges for as long as the device stays fitted. Insurance sits behind all of it, repriced for years. This estimator exists to keep those layers separate and visible, so you can see which parts of a total are fixed by law, which parts a court sets case by case, and which parts nobody publishes at all.

That last category matters more than it might seem. On the pages this site has already published, court costs are not published as a single statewide figure in any of the twelve states covered here — each court, county or municipality sets its own schedule. Program fees split the same way: Georgia sets its Risk Reduction Program by law at $360 and Delaware prices its standard education program at $400 plus a $50 material fee, while California, Texas and Illinois leave program and evaluation fees to licensed providers and publish no statewide amount. An estimator that filled those gaps with plausible-looking numbers would be tidier and less honest. Ours leaves the gap labelled, which is why every total here should be read as the published floor of a first offence, not its ceiling.

How the estimator treats each layer

The fine is entered as the range the state guide publishes, not a single point. Where a state publishes only a minimum — Arizona's $250 and Oregon's $1,000 — the high total is shown as a floor rather than a made-up maximum. Where a state layers a mandatory charge on top of the base fine, that charge is shown on its own line: Arizona's two $500 statutory assessments, New York's $395 mandatory surcharge package, Rhode Island's $500 highway safety assessment and $86 fee, Oregon's $255 conviction fee, and Texas's $3,000 mandatory state fine, which sits on top of a base fine of up to $2,000 and takes the Texas fine line to $3,000–$5,000 on its own.

Reinstatement is the fee the licensing agency charges to restore the license, taken from the state guide and cross-checked against our reinstatement guide's table. Where an agency publishes components rather than one fee, the estimator adds the components and says so: Arizona's $10 suspension fee plus its $50 Admin Per Se fee makes $60, and California's $55 reissue fee, $125 Admin Per Se reissue fee and $15 admin fee make $195 where both the court and administrative actions are on the record. Where the amount could not be verified from an official page — Oregon is the case here — the layer is left out entirely rather than estimated.

The program layer uses a published fee only. Six states here have one: Delaware at $450 including materials, Georgia at $360, Nevada at about $150 for DUI School, New York at $75 to $308 once the enrolment fee and the capped provider fee are combined, Oregon at $150 for the screening interview alone, Rhode Island at $405, and South Carolina at $500 for ADSAP education services. Everywhere else the requirement itself is real — a course must still be completed before reinstatement — but its price belongs to the provider, so the estimator records it as not included.

Interlock is kept out of the state-set total on purpose. The requirement is state law — required for every first offender in Arizona, Delaware, Nevada, New York, Oregon and South Carolina, conditional in California, Illinois, Ohio, Rhode Island and Texas, and not required for a first offence in Georgia — and where a state publishes the period, the estimator pre-fills it: twelve months in Arizona, Delaware, New York and Oregon, six months in South Carolina. The price, though, is a market price. Our interlock guide publishes the typical structure — roughly $75 to $150 to install, $70 to $120 a month to lease, and $50 to $100 to remove — so you can add that estimate for the months you choose and watch it stay clearly separated from the charges the state itself sets. Illinois is the exception that proves the rule: its Monitoring Device Driving Permit carries state-published charges of its own, a $30 monthly monitoring fee plus an $8 permit fee, which the estimator counts as a state fee over a six-month summary suspension — $188 — while the vendor's own device charges stay unpublished and uncounted.

Worked example: Georgia, step by step

Georgia is the cleanest illustration because every layer is published and no interlock applies. Start with the fine: OCGA §40-6-391, as published in the DDS driver manual, sets a first-offence fine of $300 to $1,000. Add the program: the DUI Alcohol or Drug Use Risk Reduction Program is priced by law at $360, made up of a $100 assessment fee, a $235 intervention fee and a $25 workbook fee — and $100 + $235 + $25 = $360. Add reinstatement: $210 when the fee is paid in person, after at least 120 days of the twelve-month suspension and on production of the Risk Reduction certificate. Interlock adds nothing, because Georgia does not require one for a first offence. The low total is therefore $300 + $360 + $210 = $870, and the high total is $1,000 + $360 + $210 = $1,570. That is exactly the $870 to $1,570 stack published in the worked total on our Georgia state guide, which is a useful check: two pages built from the same published figures should agree, and they do. What the $870 to $1,570 still omits is everything Georgia does not price statewide — the sentencing court's own costs and surcharges, the clinical evaluation and community-service and probation conditions a court may add, towing, and the insurance consequences that follow.

Worked example: New York, with interlock

New York shows the opposite pattern: more layers, and one large market layer on top. The fine is $500 to $1,000. The mandatory surcharge package adds a fixed $395. Reinstatement — technically a re-application after revocation, with Driver Improvement Unit approval — costs $100. The Impaired Driver Program costs $75 in DMV enrolment fees, plus a provider fee capped at $233, so the program line runs $75 to $308. Before interlock, the low total is $500 + $395 + $100 + $75 = $1,070 and the high total is $1,000 + $395 + $100 + $308 = $1,803. Interlock is mandatory for at least twelve months under Leandra's Law. At the market ranges our interlock guide publishes, twelve months costs, at the low end, $75 installation + ($70 × 12 = $840) in lease payments + $50 removal = $965, and at the high end, $150 + ($120 × 12 = $1,440) + $100 = $1,690. Combined, a New York first offence therefore runs $1,070 + $965 = $2,035 at the low end and $1,803 + $1,690 = $3,493 at the high end — before court-set extras and before insurance, which for most drivers will outweigh everything on this page over the following three years.

Reading your result honestly

Three habits will keep this estimator useful rather than misleading. First, treat the low figure as a floor you can defend line by line, and the high figure as the top of the published ranges — not as a worst case, because court costs, treatment ordered after an evaluation, and insurance all sit outside it. Second, follow the link under your result to the full state guide before relying on any number: the guides carry the conditions this page compresses, such as higher fine tiers at higher blood-alcohol levels in Rhode Island and South Carolina, the Texas state fine rising to $6,000 at a BAC of .15 or above, and Ohio's separate $315 administrative suspension fee, which this estimator deliberately does not double-count. Third, check the date. Every figure here was researched for this site's October 2026 guides; legislatures and agencies revise fee schedules, and the court handling your case and your own licensing agency are the final authorities on what you owe.

Frequently asked questions

What does this DUI total cost estimator actually add up?

It adds only the first-offence charges this site has already published for the state you pick: the statutory fine range, any fixed assessments the state page lists, the license reinstatement fee, the DUI program fee where the state publishes one, and any other fixed state fee the state guide records. Where a layer is not published statewide — court costs in most states, for example — the estimator names it as not included rather than inventing a number, so every total is a floor built from published figures, not a prediction of a final bill.

How much does a first DUI cost in Georgia, worked in full?

Using the figures on the Georgia state guide: the fine runs $300 to $1,000, the Risk Reduction Program costs $360, and the reinstatement fee is $210 paid in person, with no interlock required for a first offence. The low total is $300 + $360 + $210 = $870, and the high total is $1,000 + $360 + $210 = $1,570 — the same $870 to $1,570 stack the Georgia guide itself publishes.

Why is ignition interlock shown separately from the state total?

Because the state orders the device but does not sell it. Our interlock guide is explicit that no statute or DMV schedule publishes the price — a private vendor charges it. That guide does publish typical market ranges (about $75 to $150 to install, $70 to $120 per month, and $50 to $100 to remove), so the estimator can add a clearly labelled market estimate for the months you enter, but it never folds that estimate into the state-set total.

Which states in the estimator have a complete published stack?

Delaware, Georgia, Nevada, New York, Rhode Island and South Carolina each publish a fine, a program fee and a reinstatement fee, so their stacks are complete on state-set layers. Arizona, California, Illinois, Ohio, Oregon and Texas publish some layers but not others — a program fee that providers set themselves, for instance — and the estimator marks those layers as not included instead of filling them in.

What big costs does the estimator leave out entirely?

Attorney fees, towing and storage, bail, probation charges, and the insurance increase that follows a DUI. This site covers several of those in separate guides, but no official source prices them as a single statewide figure, and the insurance layer in particular depends on your insurer and record. Leaving them out is deliberate: a smaller total you can trace to a published source beats a larger one built on guesses.