Key takeaways
- The most common Toronto parking ticket is $75. That amount is printed on 528,363 of the 2,051,175 tickets written in 2025, and the median ticket is $65.
- Parking on private property without the owner's consent is the single most-issued violation in the city: 387,885 tickets in 2025, 18.9 per cent of every ticket written, at $75 each.
- Stopping on a signed rush-hour route is now $300. It was $150 until August 1, 2024, then $190, and the first $300 ticket did not appear until October 2, 2025.
- Ignore a $65 No Parking ticket and the City adds $15.39 after 15 days, $32.10 after 30 days and $32.10 more at plate denial, which is $79.59 on top of the fine.
- Tickets are written everywhere: 12,049 different Toronto streets got at least one in 2025, and the ten busiest account for only 13.5 per cent of the total.
The most common Toronto parking ticket costs $75. That amount sits on 528,363 of the 2,051,175 tickets the City wrote in 2025, more than any other figure. The median ticket is $65. The City's own summary says penalties "range from $15 to $500", which is true and close to useless: 25 tickets in 2025 were written at $15 and exactly one at $500. We read every 2025 ticket in the City's parking ticket open data and checked the amounts against the penalty schedule in Municipal Code Chapter 610.
One term first, because everything here rests on it. A set fine is the amount printed on the ticket. It is not what anyone paid. A screening officer (a City staff member who reviews a disputed ticket) can cancel or reduce a penalty, and an ignored ticket picks up fees on top. The open data has no payment field. So every total below is set-fine value, never revenue and never "collected".
What each Toronto parking ticket costs now
These are the amounts in Chapter 610, Schedule A, the by-law schedule that sets the penalty for each parking offence. Each was cross-checked against the amount actually printed on 2025 tickets.
Some rows look alike but are not. The $50 pay-station fine is the rate for a car; a bus left in a designated bus parking space with the fee unpaid is $300 under the same section. Two wordings share § 950-400D(1): obstructing a driveway is $65, and parking in front of one, or within 60 centimetres of it, is $75. The $450 accessible-space fine is the least ambiguous figure in the schedule. Every one of the 14,074 tickets written at $450 in 2025 was an accessible-parking violation.
The ticket you probably got
The top violation in Toronto is not a street offence at all. Parking on private property without the owner's consent produced 387,885 tickets in 2025, 18.9 per cent of every ticket written in the city. Those are shopping plazas, condo visitor lots and apartment lots, ticketed by the City under its own by-law.
Violation | Set fine | Tickets 2025 | Share of all tickets |
|---|---|---|---|
Parking on private property, no consent | $75 | 387,885 | 18.9% |
No Parking on a signed street | $65 | 286,961 | 14.0% |
Permit-parking area, no permit | $45 | 273,337 | 13.3% |
Green P street pay station, fee not paid | $50 | 270,929 | 13.2% |
No Stopping on a signed street | $120 | 144,101 | 7.0% |
Parked longer than three hours | $40 | 139,059 | 6.8% |
Rush-hour stopping | $300 | 75,710 | 3.7% |
Across all 2,051,175 tickets, the set-fine value was $164,705,020. That is $164,705,020 / 2,051,175, or $80.30 a ticket on average. The average sits above the median of $65 because a small number of $200, $250, $300 and $450 tickets pull it up.
Where tickets get written
Yonge St leads, and not narrowly: 45,361 kerbside tickets in 2025, meaning tickets written at the curb rather than in a lot. On most big downtown streets the busiest hour is late afternoon, and rush-hour stopping is what gets written then.
Street | On-street tickets 2025 | Busiest hour | Most-written violation in that hour |
|---|---|---|---|
Yonge St | 45,361 | 4 p.m. | Rush-hour stopping (81.3%) |
Queen St W | 33,519 | 3 p.m. | Rush-hour stopping (61.4%) |
Queen St E | 22,197 | 4 p.m. | Rush-hour stopping (65.7%) |
Danforth Ave | 21,500 | 8 p.m. | Pay station, fee not paid (75.8%) |
College St | 21,341 | 3 p.m. | Rush-hour stopping (68.9%) |
Dundas St W | 20,820 | 4 p.m. | Rush-hour stopping (69.4%) |
St Clair Ave W | 19,496 | 4 p.m. | Rush-hour stopping (67.9%) |
Bloor St W | 16,160 | noon | Pay station, fee not paid (43.4%) |
Ossington Ave | 15,198 | midnight | Permit parking, no permit (94.5%) |
King St W | 14,834 | 3 p.m. | Rush-hour stopping (77.5%) |
Two cautions. Officers type the location as free text, so we cleaned the names and aggregated to the street, never to an address. And counting every ticket, private lots included, puts Keele St second with 35,578. That says nothing about parking at its curb: 94.5 per cent are private-property tickets, and one institutional address accounts for 31,694 of the street's tickets. On kerbside tickets alone, Keele St leaves the top ten.
The concentration is also thin. 12,049 different streets were ticketed in 2025, and the ten busiest streets hold only 13.5 per cent of tickets of any kind.
Every violation has its own clock
The busiest hour citywide is noon to 1 p.m., with 157,398 tickets. That number is a trap, because each violation runs on its own schedule.
Violation | Tickets with a usable time | Busiest hour | Share of that violation |
|---|---|---|---|
Parking on private property | 387,558 | 3 to 4 a.m. | 8.9% |
No Parking on a signed street | 286,946 | noon to 1 p.m. | 9.9% |
Permit parking, no valid permit | 273,336 | 9 to 10 a.m. | 14.8% |
Green P street pay station | 270,929 | 1 to 2 p.m. | 10.4% |
Parked longer than three hours | 139,058 | 4 to 5 a.m. | 27.0% |
Rush-hour stopping | 75,694 | 4 to 5 p.m. | 36.3% |
Read the right-hand column. Over a quarter of three-hour tickets are written between 4 and 5 a.m., and over a third of rush-hour stopping tickets between 4 and 5 p.m. Those are the sharpest patterns in the data. (Counts sit just below the totals above because 422 tickets carry no usable time.)
Months barely matter: October was busiest at 187,403 tickets, February quietest at 138,615, and February is the shortest month.
Toronto raised fines twice, on two different dates
Keep the two dates apart. A schedule quoted against the wrong year misprices the ticket.
August 1, 2024. The City raised the fine for 123 offences at once. You can watch it happen in the ticket data: split the 2024 file at that date and 77 violation descriptions carry a different amount on each side.
Violation | On tickets before Aug 1, 2024 | On tickets from Aug 1, 2024 |
|---|---|---|
Green P street pay station, fee not paid | $30 | $50 |
Permit-parking area, no permit | $30 | $45 |
No Parking on a signed street | $50 | $65 |
Parked longer than three hours | $30 | $40 |
No Stopping on a signed street | $100 | $120 |
Within three metres of a fire hydrant | $100 | $125 |
Rush-hour stopping | $150 | $190 |
October 2, 2025. One fine changed again inside 2025, and the paper trail runs about a year ahead of the tickets. City Council voted on October 9 and 10, 2024 to take rush-hour stopping "from $190 ... to $300". Chapter 610 as consolidated on February 10, 2025 already printed $300. Tickets did not. The last $190 rush-hour ticket of 2025 is dated October 1 and the first $300 one October 2, with no overlap. In between, the City's own June 2025 news release about a No Stopping blitz still told drivers "they can receive a $190 ticket".
So 2025 holds both amounts: 51,939 tickets x $190 plus 23,771 x $300, or $16,999,710 of set-fine value. Priced at today's $300 for the whole year, the same 75,710 tickets would have been 75,710 x $300 = $22,713,000. Never reprice an old year at a new schedule. Council also raised the stopping offence only: standing on a signed street in the same rush-hour period is still $190, under § 950-405G.1.
Counted the same way, both years: Toronto wrote 2,147,159 tickets in 2024 and 2,051,175 in 2025, down 4.5 per cent. Set-fine value went the other way, from $145,978,460 to $164,705,020, up 12.8 per cent. The average set fine rose from $67.99 ($145,978,460 / 2,147,159) to $80.30, because 2025 was the first full year priced entirely at the higher schedule.
What happens after the ticket
Toronto parking tickets run through the Administrative Penalty System, or APS, a City process rather than a court. You have 15 days from the penalty notice date to pay or to ask for a screening review. Miss it, and the penalty "shall be deemed to be affirmed on the 16th calendar day". An extension is possible, but the City is blunt about the outer limit: "There are no further dispute options beyond 60 days from the penalty notice date."
Paying is a decision, not a formality. Once a full or partial payment is made, "the matter is considered affirmed and resolved. Any further right to review has been waived." You do not have to pay while a review is pending, and only one screening review is allowed per ticket. If the screening decision goes against you, ask for a hearing review within 15 calendar days of it. None of this is fast: the City's dispute page says "Current turn-around time is up to 10 months."
The clock is 15 days, not 30
The first administrative fee lands 15 calendar days after the penalty notice date if you have neither paid nor asked for a screening review. Do one of the two inside 15 days. If a screening officer later cancels the penalty, its fees are cancelled with it.
The fees added on top
Fee | Amount | When it is added |
|---|---|---|
Vehicle owner/address search | $15.39 | You have not paid or requested a screening review within 15 calendar days |
Late payment | $32.10 | The penalty is unpaid and no dispute started within 30 calendar days |
Plate denial enforcement | $32.10 | Penalty and fees unpaid 60 calendar days after deemed service |
Screening non-appearance | $64.18 | You booked an in-person screening review and did not attend |
Hearing non-appearance | $96.28 | You booked a hearing review and did not attend |
Non-sufficient funds | $46.12 | Your cheque did not clear |
Ignore a $65 No Parking ticket long enough and the first three add $15.39 + $32.10 + $32.10 = $79.59, turning it into $65 + $79.59 = $144.59.
Two City documents disagree on these amounts, and the by-law settles it. Chapter 610's Schedule C, consolidated to February 10, 2025, prints $31.01 for late payment, $14.87 for the owner search, $62.01 for screening non-appearance and $93.02 for hearing non-appearance. The Parking Violation Fees page, modified February 5, 2026, prints the higher set. Section 610-5.1A is the tie-breaker: where Schedule C and Chapter 441, Fees and Charges, differ on the same fee, "the amount that came into effect on the later date applies". The fee page publishes the current Chapter 441 amounts, which section 441-4A adjusts every January 1, so it is the later of the two. Budget for the fee page's numbers.
How to not get one
The data points at specific habits rather than general care.
- Check private lots, not just the street. Toronto's most-issued ticket is a private-property ticket, peaking between 3 and 4 a.m. Overnight visitor parking is the exposure.
- Watch 4 to 5 a.m. on residential streets. 27 per cent of three-hour tickets are written in that hour, and the limit applies on any street.
- Get off signed rush-hour routes by 3 p.m. That ticket is $300, and 36.3 per cent of them land between 4 and 5 p.m., on streets like Yonge, Queen W and King W.
- Display a valid permit before 9 a.m. Permit-parking tickets peak from 9 to 10 a.m., not overnight.
- Feed the machine at lunch. Pay-station tickets peak from 1 to 2 p.m., with a second wave at 8 p.m. on Danforth Ave.
- Holidays are not free. The City enforces parking rules on statutory holidays: "All parking signs must be followed as written."
Frequently asked questions
How much is a parking ticket in Toronto?
Most often $75, the amount on 528,363 of the 2,051,175 tickets written in 2025. The median is $65. The City's published "$15 to $500" range is correct but describes almost nobody: 25 tickets in 2025 were written at $15 and one at $500.
What are the current parking fines in Toronto?
The full list is Schedule A of Municipal Code Chapter 610. The common ones: $45 permit parking, $50 pay station, $65 No Parking, $75 private property, $120 No Stopping, $125 fire hydrant, $200 bike lane, $250 fire route, $300 rush-hour stopping, $450 accessible space.
What is the fine for parking longer than 3 hours in Toronto?
$40, under § 950-400D(5), up from $30 on August 1, 2024. It produced 139,059 tickets in 2025, and 27 per cent of them were written between 4 and 5 a.m.
How long do I have to pay a Toronto parking ticket?
15 calendar days from the penalty notice date to pay or request a screening review. On the 16th day the penalty is deemed affirmed and a $15.39 owner-search fee is added. There are no dispute options at all beyond 60 days.
Do I have to pay a private property parking ticket?
A City of Toronto penalty notice is a real City penalty under § 915-2B, on the same 15-day clock and the same fee schedule as a street ticket. At $75, it is also the most common ticket in the city. An invoice from a private company is a different thing and is not covered by this data.
What is the best excuse to appeal a parking ticket?
The by-law does not run on excuses. A screening officer decides "whether it was reasonable for the enforcement officer to impose the penalty notice", and cancels it if you establish on the balance of probabilities that the violation was not committed as described. A reduction or extension needs undue hardship, such as a large drop in income, illness or an unanticipated expense.
Does a Toronto parking ticket affect my driving record?
No. Parking violations "will not impact your driving record or demerit points". Ignoring them does something else: three or more outstanding violations with no payment or dispute, and more than 120 days since the last one, makes you a habitual offender. Habitual offenders "will have their vehicle towed if found parked illegally".
Every ticket total here is set-fine value, computed from the City's 2025 and 2024 open-data files. It is what the tickets said, not what drivers paid. Contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence, Toronto.
Sources (9)
- Parking Tickets (open data) · City of Toronto, Revenue Services (retrieved )
- Toronto Municipal Code Chapter 610, Penalties, Administration of · City of Toronto (retrieved )
- Dispute Your Parking Violation or Request an Extension · City of Toronto (retrieved )
- Parking Violation Fees · City of Toronto (retrieved )
- About Parking Violations · City of Toronto (retrieved )
- City of Toronto parking fines to increase on August 1 to support safer roads and reduce congestion · City of Toronto (retrieved )
- Congestion Management Plan 2023-2026 Fall Update (item 2024.IE16.4) · Toronto City Council (retrieved )
- City of Toronto and Toronto Police Service to launch No Stopping enforcement blitz · City of Toronto (retrieved )
- Toronto Municipal Code Chapter 441, Fees and Charges · City of Toronto (retrieved )
How this guide was made
Computed on August 27, 2026 from the City of Toronto's own 2025 and 2024 parking ticket open-data files (2,051,175 and 2,147,159 records), with every fine read out of Municipal Code Chapter 610 Schedule A and cross-checked against the amount printed on real tickets, plus the City's parking violation fee page, dispute page, About Parking Violations page, the July 2024 and June 2025 news releases and Council item 2024.IE16.4.
