How Much Is Bail, Really? A County-by-County Bail Schedule Comparison Across the Bay Area

If you or someone you love has just been arrested, one of the first questions is almost always the same: how much is bail going to be? The honest answer is "it depends where you were arrested" — literally. Each of the nine Bay Area counties sets its own felony bail schedule, and the numbers for the same charge can differ by tens of thousands of dollars from one county line to the next.

We pulled the current, official felony bail schedule directly from each county's own Superior Court for six of the charges we see most often: domestic violence, robbery, burglary, assault with a deadly weapon, sex offenses, and theft/embezzlement. The table below shows exactly what each county's own schedule says today.

What the Numbers Actually Show

A few things stand out once you line all nine counties up side by side, and they don't sort neatly along the lines you might expect.

Napa and Marin set the highest bail of any county with a usable figure on the most serious charges — $250,000 for first-degree robbery and rape in Napa, and $200,000 for rape in Marin. That's a real complication for the assumption that a Bay Area county's politics predict how tough its bail schedule is. Marin is routinely counted among the most liberal counties in California; Napa is smaller and more agricultural. Neither fits a simple story, and that's the point — bail schedules are set by each county's own bench and court administration, not by a county's voting record.

San Francisco is the clearest example of why the dollar figure alone doesn't tell the whole story. Since a 2019 court settlement, San Francisco has used a Public Safety Assessment (PSA) — a risk-assessment tool — to make most pre-arraignment release decisions, rather than a straight cash-bail number. The dollar schedule above still governs bail once a judge sets it post-arraignment, but San Francisco, despite its national reputation in the bail-reform conversation, is actually the county that has moved furthest away from relying on the dollar figure in the first place.

On theft and embezzlement specifically, the numbers cluster much closer together than on the violent charges — mostly in the $10,000–$25,000 range across the counties with usable data. There isn't a standout outlier in either direction once you look at the actual schedules.

And two counties are worth flagging for a different reason entirely: Solano ties its felony bail to a sentencing-exposure formula rather than a simple per-charge dollar table, and Sonoma's currently posted felony bail schedule was not available in a readable format when we checked. Neither omission is a value judgment — it's simply harder to tell someone in Solano or Sonoma exactly what to expect than it is in the other seven counties, and that's worth knowing before you assume every county's system works the same way.

A Reminder About How Bail Actually Works

These figures come directly from each county's official felony bail schedule as published by that county's Superior Court, and they're accurate as of the dates noted in the sources below — but a bail schedule is a starting point, not a guarantee. A judge can and often does deviate from the schedule based on the specific facts of the arrest, the person's criminal history, flight risk, and other factors under Penal Code 1275 and 1269b. If you or someone you know has been arrested anywhere in the Bay Area, the fastest way to get an accurate, case-specific answer — and to find out whether a bail reduction is realistic — is to talk to a criminal defense attorney directly.

Sources & Verification Status

Every figure above was pulled from the county's own official Superior Court felony bail schedule. Cells marked "not listed" or "not currently verifiable" mean exactly that — the charge or county's schedule didn't contain a usable number, not that we estimated one. Before this goes live, get these specific gaps confirmed directly with the relevant court rather than filling them in:

• Napa — burglary and theft/embezzlement don't appear in the current schedule as usable line items.
  Solano — domestic violence, ADW, and sex offenses aren't assigned dollar figures in the current schedule (bail there is tied to a sentencing-exposure formula); first-degree robbery specifically also isn't separately listed.
• Sonoma — the court's current posted bail schedule PDF was not in a machine-readable format when checked; every Sonoma cell needs to be confirmed by opening the document directly or calling the court's criminal clerk.
• San Francisco — figures above are from the schedule effective July 1, 2025. A newer schedule effective July 1, 2026 has since been posted but was also not machine-readable when checked; confirm the 2025 figures still match before publishing.

Full source list:

• Alameda County — 2024 Bail Schedule: alameda.courts.ca.gov/system/files/general/2024-bail-schedule.pdf
• Contra Costa County — Felony Bail Schedule, effective January 21, 2025: contracosta.courts.ca.gov/system/files/general/final_2025_felony_bail_schedule.pdf
• Marin County — Felony Bail Schedule, January 2026: marin.courts.ca.gov/system/files/general/4-felony-2026.pdf
• Napa County — Bail Schedule, effective June 11, 2025: napa.courts.ca.gov/system/files/general/bail-schedule2025.pdf
• San Francisco County — Felony & Misdemeanor Bail Schedule, effective July 1, 2025: sf.courts.ca.gov/system/files/bail-bonds/bail-schedule-2025-2026.pdf
• San Mateo County — Felony Bail Schedule, effective May 1, 2023: sanmateo.courts.ca.gov/system/files/criminal/felony_bail_schedule.pdf
• Santa Clara County — Criminal Bail Schedule, effective January 27, 2026: santaclara.courts.ca.gov/system/files/criminal/2026-criminal-bail-schedule.pdf
• Solano County — Local Bail Schedule, effective January 22, 2025: solano.courts.ca.gov/system/files?file=general/solano-county-local-bail-schedule-2025.pdf
• Sonoma County — Fee & Bail Schedules page (source PDF not machine-readable as of this check): sonoma.courts.ca.gov/forms-filing/fee-bail-schedules

About The Author

Rabin Nabizadeh

Attorney at Law

Rabin Nabizadeh is a dedicated criminal defense attorney with extensive experience in both Federal and State courts around the Bay Area. He has successfully represented clients in cases ranging from Misdemeanor DUI and Theft to serious felonies such as Grand Theft, Burglary, Sex Crimes, and Murder. Notably, Mr. Nabizadeh possesses a unique understanding of Immigration Law, allowing him to adeptly navigate cases with both criminal and immigration consequences. Fluent in Hebrew and Farsi, he also enjoys playing classical guitar in his spare time.