What an expired-registration ticket costs in North Dakota

North Dakota has no grace period. A passenger car's registration expires on the last day of its anniversary month (N.D.C.C. §39-04-14.1) and becomes delinquent immediately on expiration (§39-04-15), and NDDOT's Motor Vehicle Registration Manual (Rev. 07/25) says plainly that North Dakota has no grace period. From then on, driving the car on a highway violates §39-04-37(1), which makes it unlawful to operate a vehicle for which the registration fees required by Title 39 have not been paid, or which does not display the plates or validation tabs assigned for the current registration period. A citation for it is a noncriminal traffic offense (§39-06.1-02), and the amount is fixed by statute, not by a county schedule: §39-06.1-09 lists a violation of §39-04-37(1) as a moving violation for fee purposes, and §39-06.1-06(2) sets the statutory fee for a moving violation that is not listed separately at $20. The North Dakota State Patrol says the same thing in its Under the Trooper's Hat column: a violation for an expired registration is a $20 citation with zero points. The bond you post to contest the ticket equals that fee (§39-06.1-02(4)), and the court administration fee in §29-26-22 applies only to criminal cases, so paying a state citation normally costs $20. The only court costs Chapter 39-06.1 mentions are for an appeal of a municipal court finding to district court: if the finding is affirmed, the trial judge may assess costs (§39-06.1-03(5) and (6)). A city ticket written under a local ordinance can cost more: §40-05-06(2) lets a city set the fee for a traffic ordinance up to 100 percent above the state fee for the equivalent category, so up to $40. As one example, the Fargo Municipal Court's bail schedule effective June 19, 2026 lists $20 for failure to display a current vehicle license (Fargo ordinance 08-0305(A)(4)). The one higher registration fee in §39-06.1-06, $100 under subdivision (2)(f), is tied to §39-04-37(6), which covers a vehicle with out-of-state plates whose owner works in North Dakota and lacks a required temporary registration permit; it does not reach a lapsed North Dakota registration, and the Highway Patrol told the Legislature in 2021 that the change behind that wording was meant to keep residents who fail to renew at $20. One add-on does exist, for a driver holding a temporary restricted license, who pays an extra $100 on any moving violation (§39-06.1-11(10)). Renewing late adds no penalty fee. Chapter 39-04 contains no late or delinquency fee (its old penalty for delinquent registration fees, §39-04-16, was repealed in 1975); NDDOT's 2026 passenger and miscellaneous fee schedules list only the annual fees, with no late charge; the renewal section of NDDOT's Motor Vehicle Registration Manual lists none; and neither NDDOT's online renewal page nor its fee calculator page mentions a late or penalty fee. Renewing late does not reset your registration month, though: the renewal takes effect on the first day of the first month of the registration period (§39-04-14.1), so you pay the full annual fee for a year that began when the old registration expired. If the car was not used on North Dakota highways for a year or more, §39-04-18(1)(d) lets NDDOT register it for the current year's fee alone once you give satisfactory proof of that non-use.