If you're evaluating building permit data APIs, you'll probably look at both. Here's an honest, fact-based comparison — focused on what most developers and small teams actually care about: price, speed, and whether you have to talk to sales.
No sales call. API key in 2 minutes. Cancel anytime.
PermitStack's lowest paid tier is $49/month. Shovels.ai's public pricing starts at $599/month. If you're an indie developer, small contractor, or solo operator, the entry cost is a meaningful difference.
PermitStack ingests from city open-data portals daily at 3 AM UTC. Shovels.ai's documentation indicates a monthly refresh cycle. For time-sensitive use cases (solar leads, insurance underwriting), the gap matters.
Sign up with email, verify a 6-digit code, and you have an API key. No sales call, no MSA to review, no "talk to an expert." Cancel from a self-serve Stripe portal when you're done.
Side-by-side on the factors that come up most often in evaluation. All Shovels.ai data points are from their public documentation as of April 2026.
| Feature | PermitStack | Shovels.ai |
|---|---|---|
| Entry price | Free → $49/mo | $599/mo |
| Free tier | ✓1,000 requests/day, no card | Trial access |
| Data refresh | Daily (3 AM UTC) | Monthly |
| Signup → first API call | ~2 minutes (email verification) | Contact sales |
| Annual pricing option | ✓17% off (2 months free) | Custom |
| U.S. jurisdiction coverage | 53 cities / 27 states | Broader (2,000+ claimed) |
| Total permits | 14.5M+ | 130M+ claimed |
| AI enrichment | ✓Claude-based description parsing | ✓AI classification & tagging |
| Query window limit | Unlimited | 90-day max window |
| Webhooks | ✓From $149/mo | ✓Enterprise tier |
| Bulk Parquet exports | ✓Weekly from $149, daily from $499 | Data Feed (enterprise) |
| Snowflake / Databricks Marketplace | —Roadmap | ✓Available |
| SOC 2 Type 2 | —Not yet | ✓Certified |
| Self-serve cancellation | ✓Stripe Customer Portal | Contact account manager |
| Long-term contract required | No — month-to-month | Annual typical |
Shovels.ai pricing and feature details sourced from publicly available documentation and pricing pages as of April 17, 2026. PermitStack is an independent company and is not affiliated with Shovels, Inc. All trademarks belong to their respective owners.
Four patterns we see most often from people comparing us to Shovels.
If you're an indie developer building a roofing leads app, a small solar installer, a contractor-SaaS side project, or a growth team experimenting with permit data, the jump from "free trial" to "$599/month enterprise" doesn't work. Our $49 Developer tier exists specifically for this zone.
Self-serve sign-up with email verification. No MSA to review, no "schedule a demo" button, no sales rep in your inbox for two weeks. Email + 6-digit code + API key. You can have working code running in under five minutes.
Solar lead gen, insurance underwriting, and roofing follow-up workflows all degrade quickly when data is a month old. Our daily refresh at 3 AM UTC means permits filed yesterday are typically in the API today. Monthly updates miss the window.
Every paid plan includes self-serve cancellation via the Stripe Customer Portal. No retention calls, no "are you sure" forms, no account manager following up. If PermitStack isn't working for you, click once and you're out. We'd rather win you back later than keep you against your will.
Here's what pulling recent solar permits in Austin looks like:
We're not going to pretend PermitStack is the right answer for everyone. Shovels.ai is a well-funded, enterprise-grade platform with significant investment in AI classification, broader geographic coverage (they scrape Accela and similar portals PermitStack doesn't reach yet), SOC 2 Type 2 certification, and listings on Snowflake Marketplace and Esri Living Atlas. If your organization needs any of those specifically — or if your procurement team requires a named account manager and custom MSA — Shovels is genuinely the right call.
If you're somewhere earlier in that curve — a developer, a startup, a small team, or a growth experiment at a larger company — PermitStack is almost always the more economical and faster-moving choice. That's who we built it for.
Switching considerations, migration logistics, and honest tradeoffs.
Both provide building permit data via API. The primary differences are pricing structure and data freshness. PermitStack offers a free tier with 1,000 requests per day and paid plans starting at $49/month, with data refreshed daily. Shovels.ai targets enterprise customers with plans starting at $599/month and typically refreshes on a monthly cadence.
Yes. The free tier includes 1,000 requests per day with no credit card required. You only need to verify your email with a 6-digit code to get an API key.
PermitStack ingests from city open-data portals daily at 3 AM UTC via automated pipelines covering Socrata, ArcGIS, CKAN, and CARTO sources. This means permits that appear in a city's public portal are typically available in our API within 24 hours. Shovels.ai's public documentation indicates a monthly data refresh cycle.
PermitStack currently covers 53 U.S. cities and jurisdictions — the highest-volume metros across all major regions including NYC, LA, Chicago, Austin, Philadelphia, Seattle, and more. Shovels.ai advertises broader jurisdiction coverage through proprietary scraping of city portals we don't reach yet. If you need a specific jurisdiction, check our live coverage page before committing.
The APIs differ in parameter names and response shapes, but the core fields (address, permit_number, category, contractor_name, estimated_value, date_issued) are equivalent. Most migrations can be completed in an afternoon. If you'd like help mapping fields or reviewing your query patterns, email support@aisaasfactory.io.
No. PermitStack plans are month-to-month with self-serve cancellation via the Stripe Customer Portal. Annual plans offer ~17% off (two months free) and still allow cancellation at any time — you retain access through the end of the period you've paid for.
PermitStack offers REST endpoints with OpenAPI documentation, interactive docs at api.permit-stack.com/docs, and standard authentication via the X-API-Key header. Official Python and Node SDKs are currently in development.
Shovels.ai is a strong choice for large enterprises with procurement teams, very high-volume data needs, and requirements for specific coverage areas (Accela-based portals, specific county-level data) or enterprise formats like Snowflake Marketplace, Databricks, or Esri Living Atlas. Their platform is enterprise-grade with significant investment in AI classification and national coverage breadth.
You can export your data at any time via our bulk Parquet feature (available on Startup and Growth plans). Your API keys and historical data stay with you. There's no proprietary lock-in — our data is sourced from public city portals and we believe you should be able to leave at any time.
The first 50 customers to subscribe to an annual plan lock in 50% off for life. The code auto-disables once 50 redemptions are reached. Use FOUNDING50 at checkout.
Get a PermitStack API key in 2 minutes. Run the same queries against both APIs. Let your use case pick the winner, not the sales page.
1,000 free requests per day. No credit card. No sales call.