Home Security in Philadelphia: Burglary Numbers, Alarm Registration, and Costs

Burglary and property crime in Philadelphia

The Philadelphia Police Department reports through NIBRS and the FBI's Crime Data Explorer publishes its monthly counts. Summing those monthly actuals for the agency record gives the following.

Burglary is down about 18 percent across the window and property crime about 14 percent, both moving steadily in the right direction rather than in one jump.

As rates in the same CDE payload, PPD burglary ran roughly 365 per 100,000 residents in 2023, roughly 321 in 2024, and roughly 299 in 2025. The verified national burglary rate is roughly 232 per 100,000, so Philadelphia runs at about 1.3 times the national figure. We checked these counts against the city's own crime incidents data on OpenDataPhilly, which gives 5,670 burglaries in 2023, 5,042 in 2024, and 4,495 in 2025. The two series agree within about 4 percent in every year and move in the same direction, which is the closest agreement of any city we checked. The 2025 line is still provisional. Figures for the most recent year are subject to revision as agencies resubmit, so treat 2025 as the current published number rather than a final one.

Philadelphia requires burglar alarm registration and fines excess false alarms

The city's rule is registration rather than a police permit, and it is not optional. Philadelphia requires all burglar alarms to be registered and imposes a $50 annual fee. You register using the city's burglar alarm registration form, which can be downloaded, requested by phone, emailed, faxed, mailed, or brought in person, and the fee can be paid online with a registration number or by check or money order. To cancel a registration for an alarm that is no longer active you email the city's alarm registration address.

On false alarms, the city's published rule is that any more than two false alarms per registration year is considered excessive and is a violation of the Philadelphia Code. Beginning with your third false alarm within a registration year you will be charged a fine of $75 for each additional false alarm. The city publishes a separate process for disputing an excess false alarm fine.

So the arithmetic in Philadelphia is straightforward: $50 a year to be registered, two free false alarms inside the registration year, then $75 each. That is toward the gentler end of the large-city range. Los Angeles, by comparison, charges from the first false alarm.

What home security costs in Philadelphia

Equipment and monitoring are priced nationally. What changes locally is the permit and false alarm overhead described above. As of August 2026, SimpliSafe's published monitoring plans run 33 cents a day for self monitoring with camera recordings (about $10 a month), 76 cents a day for Standard professional monitoring (about $23 a month), $1.10 a day for Core (about $33 a month), and $1.66 to $2.66 a day for the Pro and Pro Plus tiers. Those are list prices from SimpliSafe's own plan page rather than promotional rates. SimpliSafe was running an Anniversary Sale that was ending around this date, so a lower number quoted elsewhere is probably a promotion with an expiry attached, and it is worth checking what the price reverts to. Other national providers ladder similarly.

Home security cost per month breaks down the full annual cost stack including equipment, monitoring, and the extras that get added later, and cheapest professional monitoring ranks the budget monitored plans by published pricing. If you are still deciding whether to pay for dispatch at all, is professional monitoring worth it walks the trade-off, and DIY vs professional monitoring cost does the arithmetic over a few years.

If you decide monitoring is worth paying for, our short questionnaire at /quote fetches real quotes from professional monitoring providers for your address. Add the $50 annual registration fee to whatever monitoring line you land on, and give your registration number to your alarm company.

A sensible setup for a Philadelphia home

Philadelphia's rowhouse stock shapes the whole plan. A typical row property has a front door on the street, a rear door or yard door onto an alley or shared backspace, and party walls on both sides. That means fewer exterior openings than a detached house, which makes full entry sensor coverage cheap and realistic, and it concentrates the risk on the rear and on any basement access.

Physical measures first: a deadbolt into solid framing on both front and rear doors, a reinforced strike plate, secure basement windows and any cellar hatch, and roof access considered honestly if your block has flat roofs that connect. Lighting at the rear matters more than lighting at the front on most Philadelphia blocks.

For detection, put entry sensors on every exterior opening, which on a rowhouse is usually a small enough list to cover completely, add one motion sensor on the stair or main hallway, and a siren. Two free false alarms a year is workable but not generous, so use pet-friendly motion sensors if you have animals and keep motion coverage away from radiators and sunlit windows.

If you rent, home security for renters covers what installs and removes without damage, and the apartment door security checklist covers shared-entry buildings. If you would rather avoid a monitoring subscription, best self-monitored systems with no monthly fee covers that path, though the city's registration requirement is written around burglar alarms generally rather than around who monitors them, so confirm your obligation with the city rather than assuming a self-monitored system is outside it. Do security signs deter burglars covers the deterrence evidence.