South Dakota does not charge you a state fee for a concealed pistol permit. No provision of chapter 23-7 sets an application fee or a renewal fee for...
Reviewed by Will Luker, Founder of CCW Hub. USCCA Training Counselor, USCCA Certified Instructor, NRA Certified Instructor, Law Enforcement.
South Dakota does not charge you a state fee for a concealed pistol permit. No provision of chapter 23-7 sets an application fee or a renewal fee for the regular permit, the enhanced permit, or the gold card permit, and the Secretary of State's permit pages publish no price for any of the three. The one section in chapter 23-7 that prices a permit, SDCL 23-7-72, runs the opposite direction: it makes the Office of the Secretary of State pay the counties for permits the counties issue.
So the money question in South Dakota is not "what does the permit cost." It is "what do the steps around the permit cost." For the regular and gold card permits that list is short. For the enhanced permit it is dominated by one item the state does not price at all: the qualifying handgun course, which you buy from a private instructor.
The Secretary of State reimburses each county based on the number of concealed carry permits the county issued during the year. The amounts are fixed by statute:
| Permit type | Initial | Renewal |
|---|---|---|
| Regular | Three dollars | Three dollars |
| Enhanced | Fifty dollars | Twenty-five dollars |
| Gold card | Thirty dollars | Thirty dollars |
Those six amounts are the enumerated list in SDCL 23-7-72. Read them as a transfer between two units of government. Nothing in that section authorizes a sheriff to collect the same amount from you, and nothing in it caps what a county may charge.
The mechanics matter if a sheriff's office tells you a payment is "the state fee." Reimbursement is annual, not per transaction. Counties report their permit counts to the Secretary of State on a form the office provides, the form is due on or before January thirty-first, and the office pays the counties on or before March thirty-first. Only permits issued on or after July 1, 2022 are eligible. SDCL 23-7-72 was enacted by SL 2022, ch 70.
You apply to the sheriff of the county where you live. Before issuing, the sheriff runs a background investigation that includes a computer check of available online records and a check through the National Instant Criminal Background Check System. That duty sits on the sheriff under SDCL 23-7-7, which attaches no charge to it. The application form itself is prescribed by the Secretary of State under SDCL 23-7-8, again with no fee named.
Renewal works the same way. Under SDCL 23-7-8.11 you renew through your county sheriff starting ninety days before expiration, and you pass the same background investigation. No renewal fee appears in that section either.
Practical guidance: ask the sheriff's office what, if anything, it collects at the counter. Chapter 23-7 does not set that number, so the sheriff's office is the only place it can be answered accurately.
Two paid steps sit in front of an enhanced permit. Apart from one no-charge protection in SDCL 23-7-53, no statute or rule sets what an applicant pays for either one.
Fingerprinting. SDCL 23-7-53 requires your application to include a copy of your fingerprints for submission to the FBI for a state, national, and international criminal background check, plus an authorization to run a fingerprint background check. The same section adds a protection worth knowing: if the sheriff takes the fingerprints, the sheriff must secure them "at no additional charge to the applicant." The sheriff then forwards the fingerprints, the authorization, and "the payment for the criminal background check" to the Division of Criminal Investigation. SDCL 23-7-53 does not state the size of that payment or say who hands it over, so treat the amount as a question for your sheriff rather than something you can look up in the code.
The qualifying handgun course. SDCL 23-7-58 defines it as any handgun course taught by a National Rifle Association certified instructor who also holds a current certificate of completion from the South Dakota Division of Criminal Investigation on the use of force. The course must cover South Dakota firearms and use of force law, safe and responsible handgun use, self-defense principles, and live fire training including the firing of at least ninety-eight rounds of ammunition by the student. The Secretary of State publishes the current list of Enhanced Concealed Pistol Use of Force Instructors.
What that course costs is set by the individual instructor. No statute or rule caps the tuition an enhanced permit applicant pays, so any single number quoted as "the South Dakota course price" is one instructor's price, not a rule. Call two or three instructors on the current roster and compare. Ask each one specifically whether ammunition, range time, and a rental pistol are included, because the ninety-eight round live fire minimum is a real consumable cost and instructors handle it differently.
Read this figure carefully, because it sits one party away from where a student would expect it. SDCL 23-7-59 directs the Division of Criminal Investigation to offer a use of force course open to NRA certified pistol instructors, and to promulgate rules that "establish a course fee not to exceed one hundred fifty dollars." The rule implementing it, ARSD 02:01:18:06, sets the amount: an applicant attending the use of force training course pays Law Enforcement Training a fee of $150.00.
The applicant in that sentence is the instructor seeking certification, not the student seeking a permit. The course runs at least eight hours, is held at the criminal justice training center in Pierre unless the executive secretary directs otherwise, and its certificate is what qualifies an instructor to teach your qualifying handgun course. Do not budget $150 as your enhanced permit training cost. It is a business expense on the instructor's side of the transaction.
SDCL 23-7-60 requires the same fingerprint submission for a state, national, and international criminal background check, plus an authorization to run a criminal background check, and directs the sheriff to forward both to the Division of Criminal Investigation. No qualifying handgun course is required, which removes the enhanced permit's largest expense.
One drafting difference deserves attention. SDCL 23-7-60 contains neither of the two payment clauses that appear in SDCL 23-7-53: there is no sentence directing that fingerprints taken by the sheriff be secured at no additional charge, and no sentence about forwarding a payment for the criminal background check. Ask your sheriff's office what it charges to print a gold card applicant before you assume the enhanced permit's no-charge language reaches you.
The Division of Criminal Investigation's fingerprint background check page lists $50.00 for a Request for Agency/State and FBI and $30.00 for Personal/State only, payable by credit card or bank account, with no refunds. That page routes permit applicants away from those products in one line: "For Pistol Permits: please contact your local sheriff's office." The same page also warns that "Other fingerprinting fees may apply" at the livescan location that captures your prints. Neither figure is a published price for a permit fingerprint check, so do not carry them into your permit budget.
Missing the enhanced renewal window has a price attached. Under SDCL 23-7-56, a permit not renewed within the period is deemed invalid, and getting an enhanced permit afterward means a fresh application meeting every requirement of SDCL 23-7-53. For an applicant who must satisfy SDCL 23-7-53(4) with a fresh qualifying handgun course, late is not a late fee. It is buying the whole course again. A current or former law enforcement officer may satisfy SDCL 23-7-53(4) instead with a certified shooting course qualification or requalification from the preceding twelve months, administered by a firearms instructor approved by the Law Enforcement Officers Standards Commission.
SDCL 23-7-69 requires you to notify the Secretary of State in writing of a name change by marriage or court order, or of a change in physical address, and provides that if the revised address is in South Dakota the Secretary of State must provide a new permit. The section names no charge for that new permit. The Secretary of State's replacement page accepts the request by mail to the Pierre office or by email to the permits address, asks for name, date of birth, mailing and physical address, and the update needed, and lists no payment step.
A holder of an unexpired restricted enhanced permit who reaches twenty-one may request an unrestricted enhanced permit in writing from the Secretary of State. SDCL 23-7-54.4 says that permit "shall be issued at no additional cost."
The Secretary of State's South Dakota Firearm Handbook dated July 2026 collects these statutes in one document, and it is accurate on SDCL 23-7-72 and on the $150.00 use of force training fee. Two divergences are worth checking against the code before you rely on either the handbook or the permit pages.
It reproduces SDCL 23-7-54.1 in full, including that section's line that "No additional charge may be imposed for a reissuance under this section." It reproduces SDCL 23-7-54.3 as well. Both sections now read "Repealed" on the legislature's site, repealed by SL 2023, ch 77. A no-charge guarantee in a repealed section is not one you can hold anyone to.
The handbook is right on this one. The Secretary of State's application page, and at least one county sheriff's permit page, describe giving false information or false evidence of identity when applying for a permit as a Class 6 felony punishable by up to two years imprisonment "or a fine of two thousand dollars." SDCL 23-7-12 grades that offense as a Class 6 felony without stating a number, and SDCL 22-6-1 sets the Class 6 felony penalty at two years imprisonment in a state correctional facility or a fine of four thousand dollars, or both. The handbook prints the four thousand dollar figure. The statute controls.
South Dakota residents and nonresidents who may lawfully possess a pistol are not required to hold a permit to carry a concealed pistol in the state, and SDCL 23-7-7 says plainly that issuing permits "does not impose a general prohibition on the carrying of a pistol without a permit." The offense that once punished unpermitted concealed carry, SDCL 22-14-9, was repealed by SL 2019, ch 113. If you never leave South Dakota and never need to carry in the state capitol, your out of pocket cost to carry concealed is zero.
People still buy in for reasons a fee schedule will not show you. Recognition and reciprocity in other states differ by permit type. The exception in SDCL 22-14-24 that lets an ordinary citizen carry a concealed pistol in the state capitol, outside the Supreme Court chamber and access-controlled private offices under security supervision, is available only to a holder of an enhanced permit who has notified the superintendent of the Division of Highway Patrol at least twenty-four hours before first entering. Weigh the course tuition against those, not against a permit fee that does not exist.
Chapter 23-7 also attaches money to things going wrong. These are consequences, not application costs.
Under SDCL 23-7-67, refusing to surrender a revoked gold card or enhanced permit to your county sheriff on lawful demand is a Class 1 misdemeanor, punishable under SDCL 22-6-2 by one year in a county jail or a two thousand dollar fine, or both. If the sheriff must send an officer to recover the permit, that officer receives ten dollars and fifty cents plus mileage at the rate set under SDCL 3-9-1, paid by the violator. Failing to pay that fee and mileage is itself a Class 2 misdemeanor, which SDCL 22-6-2 punishes by thirty days in a county jail or a five hundred dollar fine, or both.
Under SDCL 23-7-12, giving false information or false evidence of identity when applying is a Class 6 felony, punished under SDCL 22-6-1 by two years imprisonment in a state correctional facility or a four thousand dollar fine, or both.
Amounts collected at a county counter are not published in chapter 23-7, and no statute or administrative rule sets what an instructor may charge for the qualifying handgun course. Two phone calls settle a South Dakota permit budget: the sheriff in the county where you have resided for the last thirty days, for anything charged at intake and for fingerprinting, and an instructor from the Secretary of State's current enhanced roster, for course tuition and whether ammunition is included.
This page covers one part of our South Dakota concealed carry guide.
Read the complete South Dakota guideBrowse local instructors offering state-approved training in your area. Book online, complete your training, and get one step closer to your concealed carry permit.