How Much Does Tree Removal Cost in Ottawa? The Permit Rule That Changed Under the Suburbs

Croft Tree Experts and Wright Tree Service each publish $500 to $2,500 for most tree removals, Green Thumb publishes $150 to $2,000, and Arboraxepert publishes no brackets at all, only a $300 minimum charge to send a crew. Arboraxepert prices stump grinding at $10 per inch with a $150 floor; Croft prices the same work at $150 to $500. All four were read on 2026-08-12 and none of these are our prices. The number that decides more of this bill than any of them, though, is the City of Ottawa permit: it costs $200 per tree, going without one carries a fine from $500 to $100,000, and if you live outside the Greenbelt the threshold that triggers it tightened from 50 cm to 30 cm, on a change the City's own staff report put at February 1, 2024. Most of the tree companies ranking for this question still publish the old figure.

The suburbs changed in 2024, and that is the part nobody tells you

Ottawa protects what the by-law calls a distinctive tree. Until 2024 that meant two different things depending on where you lived. A City staff report to the Environment and Climate Change Committee spells out the old split: distinctive meant 30 cm or more inside the Greenbelt and 50 cm or more outside it, in what the report calls the suburban area. The report then recommends closing that gap, in these words:

“reduce the size of a distinctive tree in the suburban area of Ottawa from 50 centimetres to 30 centimeters in diameter measured at breast height, effective February 1, 2024”

Source: the City staff report, text extracted 2026-08-12. It records 1,087 responses to the public survey, 70 per cent of them in support. And ottawa.ca today publishes a single figure of 30 cm across the urban area with no suburban exception, which is the amended rule in force. We are attributing the date to the staff report and the current rule to ottawa.ca, because that is exactly what each document supports.

Hundreds of thousands of people live outside the Greenbelt. If your address is in Kanata, Barrhaven, Stittsville or Orleans, this is about you. A 35 cm maple in a Barrhaven backyard was outside the by-law before that date and is inside it now. Nothing about the tree changed. The line moved. Nepean is the one to check rather than assume, because it sits on both sides of the Greenbelt: part of it was already at 30 cm and part of it was not. The staff report defines the suburban area only as urban lands outside the Greenbelt and names no communities at all, so treat any list of suburb names, including this one, as a prompt to check the mapped boundary rather than as the by-law speaking.

Here is the checkable part, and it is the reason this section comes first. Three of the four Ottawa tree companies whose prices appear further down this page were still publishing the superseded 50 cm figure when their pages were read on 2026-08-12. Green Thumb's separate by-law page states protection for trees “50 cm or greater in diameter in suburban townships”. Wright's page says a permit is likely needed if the tree is “larger than 50 centimetres in diameter”. Croft, which covers the regulation in more depth than the other three and gets the 30 cm test and the current fees right elsewhere, still carries a paragraph reading “For trees larger than 50 cm in diameter, a permit is required” on the same page. Arboraxepert is the one of the four that states the 30 cm test and nothing stale beside it. None of that is dishonest. It is what happens when a threshold moves and the content behind it does not. Check the rule at the source before you rely on any of it, including this page.

When a permit is required, in the City's own terms

The commercial pages in this market treat the permit question as a function of trunk width alone. It is not. The by-law keys on diameter, lot size and whether a Planning Act application is open, and missing any one of the three gives you the wrong answer. The City lists the protected trees as:

• All City-owned trees throughout the urban and rural area.
• All trees 10 cm or more in diameter at breast height on private urban properties subject to a Planning Act application for Site Plan, Plan of Subdivision or Plan of Condominium.
• All trees 10 cm or more in diameter at breast height on private urban properties over 1 hectare in size.
• All distinctive trees, meaning 30 cm or more in diameter at breast height on private urban properties of 1 hectare or less.

Diameter at breast height is measured on the trunk at chest height, not at the base and not across the canopy. Thirty centimetres is a trunk about the width of a dinner plate.

Rural addresses are the other half of this, and it is good news. The City's own decision-tree flowchart, linked from the by-law page and read 2026-08-12, puts it in one line: “In the City's rural area, a permit to remove private trees is not required”, against “In the City's urban area, a permit may be required”. Ottawa is a very large municipality and the urban boundary is a mapped line, not a feeling, so the flowchart also tells you to check the by-law boundary in geoOttawa or use the City's Decision Tree tool for your specific property. Two neighbours a few concessions apart can genuinely be under different rules.

Four exemptions are worth knowing, all stated by the City. You do not need a permit to remove a dead or hazardous tree on private property where it is an immediate threat to public health and safety, and the City advises taking photos before removal as evidence of the condition. A private ash tree infested with emerald ash borer can be removed without a permit. Pruning private trees needs no permit at all, though the City asks that it follow good arboricultural practice. And there are exemptions for normal farm practices, power line maintenance, regulated aggregate extraction and professional surveying.

What skipping the permit actually costs

Set the two numbers next to each other. Since February 1, 2026the City's tree permit application fee is $200 per tree, capped after five trees by ownership, for a City-owned or distinctive tree unrelated to infill development. Where the removal is tied to infill development it is $1,240 per tree, also capped after five. If the removal forms part of a Planning Act development application, the permit fee is inside the development application fee. Source: City of Ottawa, tree permits and compensation, read 2026-08-12.

Budget from the City's figure, not from a contractor's. Green Thumb's cost page tells readers “permit costs are usually between $60 and $150”, which is below the City's published $200 for a single non-development tree and far below the $1,240 infill rate. Both were read on 2026-08-12. We are not averaging those, and we are not treating them as equally weighted: one of them is the body that issues the permit and charges the fee.

Now the other side. On conviction, the City states the penalties run from a minimum fine of $500 to a maximum of $100,000. Ignore a stop work order and the $500 minimum and $100,000 maximum apply for each day or part of a day the offence continues, and the total of those daily fines is not capped at $100,000. There is also a special fine chargeable on top where the person breaking the by-law stood to gain financially. Source: City of Ottawa, enforcement, read 2026-08-12.

Three more consequences are easy to miss:

• You have to replace the tree. In non-development scenarios the City requires replacement at a 1:1 ratio. For infill development it is 2:1 for distinctive trees 30 to 49 cm and 3:1 for those 50 cm or greater.
• The permit hangs where the street can see it. Distinctive tree permits must be posted on the property and on the tree itself for at least seven days before removal, and stay up for seven days after. Anyone walking past can see whether one exists.
• Your neighbours are invited to check.The City's enforcement page tells residents to call 3-1-1 and ask whether a tree permit has been issued for an address, and a Forestry Inspector visits the site. So budget calendar time as well as money: with a seven-day posting before removal, this is not a same-week job.

What four Ottawa companies publish

Every figure below is published by the named company and was read on 2026-08-12: Croft Tree Experts, Green Thumb Tree Specialists, Wright Tree Service and Arboraxepert. This directory publishes no prices of its own, sets none of these, and endorses none of them. The table keeps each company's own size wording rather than forcing them into shared rows, because the wording is part of the problem.

Their headline ranges: Croft publishes “most tree removals in Ottawa land between $500 and $2,500”, Wright publishes “typically falls between $500 and $2,500”, and Green Thumb publishes $150 to $2,000 with $750 offered as a rough average and a separate FAQ figure of $285 to $2,000. Croft adds a warning worth repeating: those bands assume a healthy tree, reasonable equipment access and no permit required.

The 80-foot tree costs $2,000 or it costs $4,000

Look at the top of that table again. For a tree over 80 feet, Green Thumb publishes $1,000 to $2,000 and Croft publishes $2,500 to $4,000+. Green Thumb's ceiling sits below Croft's floor. Same city, same size class, and the two ranges do not touch at any point. Averaging them would produce a number neither company would honour, so we are not going to.

The small tree is worse in proportion. Green Thumb publishes $150 to $450 under 30 ft, Croft publishes $400 to $700 up to 30 ft, and Wright publishes $500 to $700under 20 ft. Green Thumb's floor is roughly a third of Wright's. Age explains less of that gap than it looks like it should: Green Thumb's page carries a byline of July 22, 2025, but its own metadata records it as last modified on February 26, 2026, so these are prices the company was still standing behind well after the byline date.

And the words do not line up either. “Large” means 60 to 80 ft to both Croft and Green Thumb, but 50 ft and up to Wright. Wright's page even disagrees with itself: its summary block describes smaller trees as under 30 feet and medium as 30 to 60, while its body applies the same dollar figures to under 20 feet and 20 to 50. Two quotes both labelled “large tree removal” may not be quoting the same job at all. When you compare, compare the measured height and trunk diameter of your tree, never the adjective.

Stumps, brush and the rest of the bill

Removal prices usually stop at the felling. The stump, the chips and the brush are separate lines, and here the three companies do not even use the same unit.

Arboraxepert's per-inch method is the only one you can check before anyone turns up. Measure the stump at its widest point, multiply by ten, and if the answer is under $150 you are paying $150. Croft's range prices the same work as a band, and its two rows are worth separating in your own head: grinding takes the stump 15 to 30 cm below grade and leaves the roots, while full removal extracts the root ball and leaves you a large hole to fill. Green Thumb's per-stump figure of $100 to $150 sits below both, on a page dated July 22, 2025.

One number reframes the cheap end of this market. Arboraxepert's minimum charge for any tree service work is $300, because a small job still needs travel, setup, safety checks and labour. That floor sits above Green Thumb's entire small-tree band of $150 to $450. What the market has a floor on is the truck roll, not the tree. If a quote comes in under a few hundred dollars, the useful question is not why it is cheap, it is what has been left out of it.

Emergency and after-hours work is the one thing nobody in this market publishes. Croft is straightforward about refusing: its own table gives same-day emergency removal as “higher than a scheduled job” and asks you to call for a current figure. Rather than invent a surcharge, the honest answer is that no Ottawa company publishes one, so get it in writing before the crew is dispatched.

You can also just buy the paperwork

One company prices the permit application as a product. Arboraxepert publishes a flat $400for its tree removal permit service covering one tree on a private urban residential property, and states that the fee includes preparing the required report, completing and submitting the application, and paying the City's application fee for one standard permit where no development is taking place. Set that against the City's own $200 and the arithmetic is visible: roughly $200 of labour for handling the report and the submission. Whether that is worth it depends on how you value an afternoon of forms, but it is now a priced comparison rather than a guess. Croft states separately that it handles the permit application as part of the job where one is required, so it is worth asking every company on your shortlist whether that work is included or billed.

Ottawa licenses the tree. Ontario does not license the person cutting it

This is the part that surprises people, and it changes what vetting means. In O. Reg. 876/21, read 2026-08-12, arborist is a prescribed trade, and it is also one of the trades for which a certifying examination is required. So a Certificate of Qualification exists and there is a real exam behind it. But arborist does not appear on the same regulation's list of 23 compulsory trades, and plumber and electrician both do.

The practical translation: a plumber can be asked for a card the law requires them to hold, and a tree crew cannot. Nothing in Ontario law stops an uncertified person from taking down your 70-foot silver maple over a hydro line. The province regulates the credential; it does not gate the work behind it. Ottawa, meanwhile, regulates the tree itself down to the centimetre. The maple has more legal protection than you do, which means the entire burden of checking the crew falls on the homeowner.

What to ask before you book

Generic advice is not much use here. These are the questions that separate quotes on this specific job:

• “What is the diameter at breast height, and did you measure it?” Everything about the permit turns on this one number. Anyone quoting a removal in Ottawa without measuring the trunk is quoting blind, and you can check them with a tape measure at chest height.
• “Is my lot over or under one hectare, and is any Planning Act application open on it?” Above one hectare the threshold collapses from 30 cm to 10 cm, and the same is true under a Site Plan, Plan of Subdivision or Plan of Condominium application. A contractor who has never heard of the lot-size rule has not read the by-law.
• “Who applies for the permit, and is the $200 City fee in your price or on top?” One company prices this at $400 flat with the City fee inside it, another folds it into the job. Both are fine. Not knowing which one you bought is not.
• “Does the price include stump grinding and hauling, and to what depth?” Published stump work runs from $100 to $1,100 depending on company and method, and grinding below grade is a different product from extracting the root ball. Hauling is a separate $100 to $300 line at one company.
• “Can you show me your liability insurance and WSIB coverage?” Since no compulsory certificate applies to this trade, insurance is the credential that actually exists and actually protects you. Get it in writing, not verbally.
• “If you say the tree is dead or hazardous, will you put that in writing with dated photos?”That exemption is the one route around the permit, and the City's own guidance is to photograph the tree before removal as evidence of its condition. If a contractor invokes the exemption verbally and the City later disagrees, you are the property owner holding the fine.

Where to shortlist Ottawa tree companies

The tree removal and tree service directory on Ottawa Service Directory lists Ottawa companies with their Google rating, the review count behind it, and the date last checked. Claimed listings are labeled and may appear first; how other listings are chosen is on the methodology page. Shortlist two or three, have each of them measure the trunk at breast height, confirm in writing who is filing the permit, and ask for insurance before anyone climbs anything.