Home Security in San Antonio: Burglary Numbers, Alarm Permits, and Costs

Burglary and property crime in San Antonio

SAPD 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.

Total property crime is down about 25 percent across the window, a big move. Burglary is down too but far more slowly, about 11 percent, which means burglary is becoming a larger share of San Antonio's property crime rather than a smaller one. For a home security decision that is the more relevant fact than the headline property crime drop.

As rates in the same CDE payload, SAPD burglary ran roughly 548 per 100,000 in 2023, roughly 500 in 2024, and roughly 470 in 2025. The verified national burglary rate is roughly 232 per 100,000, so San Antonio runs at about twice the national figure. We checked these counts against SAPD's own offenses file on the San Antonio open data portal, which gives 7,858 burglary offenses in 2023, 7,175 in 2024, and 6,984 in 2025. The two series agree within about 5 percent in every year and move in the same direction, and the city's own monthly counts for 2025 are steady with no missing months. 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.

San Antonio requires an alarm permit and publishes a full fee schedule

City of San Antonio Code of Ordinances Chapter 25, Article IV governs alarm systems, and SAPD's Alarms Investigation Office administers permits. All residents and businesses operating a burglar, panic, or fire alarm system inside the city are legally required to have a permit, and the alarm user is responsible for getting it within 12 hours of the installation being completed. Residential locations need only one permit, which covers both police and fire calls. Locations with self-monitoring cameras only do not need a permit at all.

Permit fees are published. A residential alarm permit is $50, a residential permit for a resident 65 or older is $30, and a residential alarm exempt category under the ordinance carries no fee. Commercial permits are $200 each for fire and for police. Permits are valid one year and SAPD sends a renewal notice 45 days before expiry.

Unpermitted false alarms are billed at $250 for a residence, or $75 if the location qualifies as senior. For permitted locations the ladder is gentler: the first three false burglar alarms in a 12 month period carry no fee, the 4th and 5th cost $50 each, the 6th and 7th cost $75, and the 8th or more cost $100. Silent robbery, holdup, panic, or duress alarms are treated far more seriously, with the first free and the second at $200, rising to $500 for the fifth and beyond.

One useful detail, and a genuinely reassuring one: SAPD states it will respond to all alarm calls regardless of permit status or outstanding fines. The consequence of skipping the permit in San Antonio is money, not a loss of dispatch. That is different from cities that downgrade response priority. Context for the whole regime: SAPD reported responding to more than 62,000 false alarm calls in 2022, and states that 91 percent of all burglar alarms are false.

What home security costs in San Antonio

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 city permit, or $30 if you are 65 or older, to whatever monitoring line you land on.

A sensible setup for a San Antonio home

Start with the openings. Deadbolts and reinforced strike plates on exterior doors, locks and a secondary block on sliding doors, and attention to the garage, which in a lot of San Antonio housing is both the weakest door and the one people forget to arm. Lighting on the approach paths costs little and removes the cover that makes a rear entry attractive.

Then detection sized to the false alarm rules above. Entry sensors on ground floor doors and reachable windows, one or two motion sensors on the internal circulation paths, and a siren. Three free false burglar alarms a year is a reasonable allowance, but it disappears quickly if a pet triggers a motion sensor nightly, so use pet-friendly motion sensors if that applies to you. Note that SAPD's published appeal process for permitted users exists, but pets and user error are the classic non-starters.

If you rent, the permit and the equipment decisions both change; home security for renters covers what you can install without altering the property. If you would rather avoid monitoring entirely, best self-monitored systems with no monthly fee covers that route, and San Antonio's carve-out for camera-only setups means a pure camera install is outside the permit requirement, while a self-monitored alarm panel is not. Do security signs deter burglars covers what the yard sign actually buys you.