How much does a DUI actually cost in Georgia?

By Ben Sessions on October 6th, 2026 in DUI / DWI

The number on the sentencing sheet is not the number you pay

A first DUI conviction in Georgia carries a fine of not less than $300 and not more than $1,000.

That is O.C.G.A. § 40-6-391. It is the number almost everyone finds first.

It is also the smallest line on the bill.

Georgia does not collect fines the way people assume. The court sets a base fine. Then a stack of statutory add-on penalties is calculated on top of it — each one a percentage written into the code and earmarked for a specific fund. Jail construction. Peace officer training. The Brain and Spinal Injury Trust Fund. Crime victims. Driver education. Local victim assistance.

One is easy to name. A sum equal to 10 percent of the original fine goes to the jail fund under O.C.G.A. § 15-21-93. The rest work the same way, at their own rates, and they are not discretionary.

Stack them and the base fine is not what leaves your account. A $600 fine is not $600. In most Georgia courts the total due lands well above the number the judge announced, and on some offenses the add-ons approach or exceed the fine itself.

So when someone tells you a first DUI “runs about a thousand dollars,” they are quoting the top of the fine range and stopping there.

What the statute actually requires for a first conviction

Set aside money for a moment and look at what a first conviction obligates you to do, because most of the cost flows from the obligations.

A fine of $300 to $1,000, before add-ons.

Not fewer than 40 hours of community service. Twenty hours if the conviction is under the low-BAC subsection.

Not fewer than ten days in jail and not more than 12 months. That can generally be suspended or probated, but a minimum period of actual confinement applies in defined circumstances.

Twelve months of probation, less any days actually served.

Completion of a DDS-approved DUI Alcohol or Drug Use Risk Reduction Program within 120 days of conviction.

A clinical evaluation, and substance abuse treatment if the evaluator recommends it.

For a second conviction within ten years, the fine floor rises to $600, the jail exposure rises to not fewer than 90 days, and community service jumps from hours to days — not fewer than 30 days of it. A third within ten years starts at $1,000 and runs to $5,000, with not fewer than 120 days in jail.

The gap between a first and a second is not incremental. It is a different sentence.

The DDS side of the bill is separate, and it arrives later

The court and the Department of Driver Services are two different creditors. Paying one does not satisfy the other.

For a first DUI conviction at age 21 or over, DDS imposes a 12-month suspension, with eligibility for reinstatement after 120 days if you have completed Risk Reduction and paid the reinstatement fee.

That fee is $200 by mail or online, $210 in person. DDS publishes it.

If you want to drive during the suspension, a limited driving permit costs $32, with a $10 renewal. An ignition interlock device limited permit is $25, $5 to renew, and $100 to have the restriction removed. Those are DDS’s published figures, and they are per-transaction — a permit that renews several times is several charges.

Eligibility is the catch. A first-offense DUI conviction where you refused the state-administered test makes you ineligible for an ordinary limited permit. That is the entire reason the interlock permit exists as an alternative route.

We walk through that fork on our pages on your license after a DUI and the limited permit.

Risk Reduction is $360, and the clock is 120 days

The DUI Alcohol or Drug Use Risk Reduction Program — most people call it DUI school or ADAP — has a fee set by the state, not by the individual school.

DDS publishes it as $360.00 total: $100.00 for the assessment component, $235.00 for the intervention component, and $25.00 for the workbook.

A replacement certificate runs up to $20.00. Transferring an assessment between schools if you move runs up to $25.00.

The 20-hour course is not a formality, and the 120-day deadline is not advisory. Miss it and you have a probation problem on top of a license problem.

The clinical evaluation is separate, performed by an evaluator approved through the Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities. There is no state-published flat fee for it. If treatment is recommended, that is a further cost, and its length is driven by the evaluation rather than by the court.

The interlock is mostly a second-offense cost, and it is the expensive one

This is where people guess wrong in both directions.

Georgia’s interlock statute requires a certificate for an ignition interlock device on a second or subsequent DUI conviction within five years, for a period of not less than one year. It is not a standard first-offense requirement.

But a first offender who refused testing may end up on the interlock permit anyway, because that is the path to driving at all. So “first offense” and “no interlock” are not the same sentence.

The device is a private, ongoing expense, and you pay it. One DDS-certified provider publishes installation labor starting at $150.00, a monthly lease starting at $89.99, and calibration starting at $25.00, with an enrollment fee and a removal charge on top. Those figures are that vendor’s, dated, and vary by vehicle and location.

Run twelve months of monitoring and the device is comfortably the largest single line item in the whole case. Larger than the fine. Larger than DDS. It is the cost nobody budgets for.

There is a hardship route in the statute, but a person granted a financial hardship exemption is ineligible for any driving privilege for a year. That is not relief. That is a different penalty.

More on the mechanics on our ignition interlock permit page.

Georgia still requires an SR-22, and that surprises people

You will read on a lot of websites that Georgia did away with SR-22 filings when it moved to electronic insurance verification.

For DUI reinstatement, that is wrong.

The DDS rule governing reinstatement after a DUI suspension requires an SR-22 certificate of insurance, filed and maintained for three years from the date of conviction. It also requires coverage above Georgia’s ordinary minimums: $50,000/$100,000 bodily injury and $50,000 property damage after a first conviction, rising to $100,000/$300,000 and $100,000 after a second or subsequent one.

Understand what that does. It is not a fee. It is a three-year obligation to carry more insurance than you carried before, purchased as a driver your carrier now rates as high risk, from an insurer willing to file the certificate.

We will not give you a percentage, because carriers rate this differently and anyone quoting a single number is making it up. The mechanism is what matters: the conviction is visible to underwriters, the SR-22 flags you affirmatively for three years, and some carriers decline to renew rather than reprice. The replacement policy is the cost.

Probation, community service, and the price of your own time

Twelve months of probation is twelve months of supervision fees. In most misdemeanor courts that supervision is contracted out, and the monthly fee is paid by the person on probation.

Georgia has put guardrails on the worst version of this. Where someone is on supervised probation solely because they could not pay the fine and surcharges up front, the fees collected may not exceed three months’ worth, and supervision must end once the financial obligation is satisfied. That protection exists because it was being abused.

Community service is unpaid by definition. Forty hours is a full work week you are not paid for, and some placements charge an administrative fee.

Then there is the part no one puts on a chart.

Court dates are on weekdays. Arraignment, motions, plea or trial — each is a day or half-day of missed work, and on a busy State Court calendar you may sit for hours to be heard for ten minutes. Risk Reduction is 20 hours. The evaluation is another appointment. Calibration is a monthly errand.

If you drive for a living, the arithmetic changes entirely. A CDL holder faces disqualification consequences that have nothing to do with the fine. A delivery driver, a home health aide, a contractor with a company truck, anyone insured under an employer’s fleet policy — a DUI on the motor vehicle record can end the job regardless of what the court does. That is often the largest number in the case, and it is on no invoice.

Attorney fees, described honestly

We are not going to quote a price on a webpage, because a fee that fits one case would be wrong for the next one.

Here is what actually drives the range.

Whether there is an administrative license case running alongside the criminal one. That window is 30 days from arrest and it is separate work — see the first 30 days after a DUI arrest and administrative license suspension.

Whether it is a refusal case or a breath or blood case, because the evidence to review is different.

Whether there are motions worth litigating — the basis for the stop, the implied consent reading, the maintenance and calibration records on the testing instrument.

Whether it is a first offense or a second, because a second within ten years carries mandatory confinement and interlock.

Whether it resolves at a plea or goes to trial.

Flat fees are common in first-offense DUI work, and trial is usually priced separately. What you should expect from any lawyer you call is a written fee agreement that says what is included and what is not, before you pay anything.

Add it up before you decide

Take a first offense and be conservative.

Fine and add-on surcharges. Reinstatement at $200 or $210. Risk Reduction at $360. A clinical evaluation. Twelve months of supervision fees. A permit fee, maybe two. Three years of SR-22-rated insurance. Forty unpaid hours. Several unpaid weekdays in a courthouse.

Interlock if it applies, at roughly a hundred dollars a month for a year.

And the job, if you drive for one.

The fine is the part people can see. It is not the part that hurts.

That is the honest reason to answer this question before you walk into court and dispose of the case yourself. Not because any outcome is promised. Because the price of getting it wrong is not $300.

Talk to someone who tries these cases

A DUI is two cases running on two clocks, and the money follows both of them. Before you decide how to handle it, you should at least know what the whole bill looks like.

We handle DUI cases throughout middle Georgia from our office on Mulberry Street in Macon.

Start with first-offense DUI penalties, our Macon DUI page, or the Georgia DUI overview.

Free consultation. Call (478) 254-2665.