About PermitStack

PermitStack is a developer-first data service for U.S. building permits. We collect permit records from official city and county permit systems, normalize them into one schema, and make them searchable through a REST API, bulk CSV exports and email alerts.

What we do

Building permits are public records, but they are published by thousands of separate building departments on different platforms, in different formats and with different vocabularies. PermitStack reads those sources directly, maps each one onto a single record shape, classifies every permit into about twenty categories (roofing, HVAC, solar, new construction and so on) and serves the result through one API. The service launched in April 2026 and is self-serve: anyone can get an API key without a sales call, and the pricing is published.

Where the data comes from

• Every permit originates from a government authority: a city or county building department, or in a few cases a state program (for example statewide solar interconnection datasets).
• We read open-data portals (Socrata, ArcGIS, CKAN, CARTO) and public permit portals (such as Accela Citizen Access, Tyler EnerGov and Click2Gov), and in a few places records obtained through public records requests. We do not buy permit data from resellers and we do not infer permits from imagery.
• Contractor names come from the permits themselves. Contractor phone and email, where a source publishes them, are available only through the API on paid plans and never appear on public pages.

What we will and won't claim

• Coverage is uneven, as the sources are. Each jurisdiction on the coverage page shows the date its newest permit runs through, measured nightly, rather than the date we last polled it.
• Some sources are historical archives, some are temporarily frozen, and some sit behind a host that is currently refusing our requests. Those are labeled as such instead of being counted as current.
• The methodology page describes how sources are ingested, normalized and classified, and the status page shows freshness by jurisdiction.
• PermitStack is an independent company. We are not a government agency and are not affiliated with the jurisdictions whose public records we publish.

Contact

Questions about the data, coverage requests, billing or corrections: email support@permit-stack.com, or see the support page. If a record about you or your business is wrong, tell us which one and we will check it against the source.