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 $29/month. Shovels.ai's paid plans start at $599/month (Basic; Pro is $999/month, verified September 9, 2026). If you're an indie developer, small contractor, or solo operator, the entry cost is a meaningful difference.
PermitStack re-ingests most of its sources every night from 3 AM UTC. Shovels.ai documents a twice-monthly refresh, on the 1st and 15th of each month, with up to a week of processing before data reaches their API (verified September 9, 2026). 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. Shovels.ai figures verified against www.shovels.ai/pricing, www.shovels.ai, docs.shovels.ai and their production OpenAPI spec on September 9, 2026.
| Feature | PermitStack | Shovels.ai |
|---|---|---|
| Entry price | Free → $29/mo (Indie) | $599/mo and up |
| Free tier | 100 requests/day, no card | Free plan — 500 credits/mo, no card |
| Data refresh | Nightly for most sources (3 AM UTC) | Twice monthly (1st and 15th) |
| Signup → first API call | ~2 minutes (email verification) | Self-serve |
| Annual pricing option | 17% off (2 months free) | Custom |
| U.S. jurisdiction coverage | 8,000+ cities / 48 states and DC | Broader (2,770+ claimed) |
| Total permits | 119M+ | 178M+ claimed |
| AI enrichment | Claude-based description parsing | AI classification & tagging |
| Webhooks | From $79/mo | Not documented |
| Competitor tracking (alerts on a named contractor) | Built in — email digest on any plan, webhook from $79/mo | Not documented — query the API |
| Bulk CSV exports | CSV export on Developer; scheduled bulk on Enterprise | Data Feed (enterprise) |
| Snowflake / Databricks Marketplace | —Roadmap | Available |
| SOC 2 Type 2 | —Not yet | Certified |
Shovels.ai pricing and feature details sourced from www.shovels.ai/pricing, www.shovels.ai, docs.shovels.ai and api.shovels.ai/spec/v2/openapi.production.yaml as of September 9, 2026. "Not documented" means the capability does not appear in Shovels' published documentation index, OpenAPI specification or release notes as of that date; it is not a claim that the capability does not exist. 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 a 500-credit free plan to $599/month doesn't work. Our $79 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 two weeks old. Our nightly refresh means permits a city published yesterday are typically in the API today. A twice-monthly cycle plus up to a week of processing misses 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 (2,770+ jurisdictions; PermitStack already ingests 140+ Accela, 330+ Tyler EnerGov and 18 Click2Gov jurisdictions, though many Tyler-hosted EnerGov sources have been blocked by the vendor since August 2026), a deeper contractor graph (3.110M+ contractor profiles by their own count, re-verified on www.shovels.ai on 10 September 2026), 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 100 requests per day and paid plans starting at $29/month, with most sources refreshed nightly. Shovels.ai targets enterprise customers with paid plans starting at $599/month and refreshes twice monthly, on the 1st and 15th (as of September 9, 2026).
Yes. The free tier includes 100 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 re-ingests most of its sources every night from 3 AM UTC, through automated pipelines covering open-data feeds (Socrata, ArcGIS, CKAN, CARTO) and permit portals (Accela, EnerGov, Click2Gov and others). Permits that appear in a city's public portal are typically available in our API within 24 hours, and every jurisdiction reports a data-through date. Shovels.ai's public documentation states a twice-monthly refresh, on the 1st and 15th, with up to a week of processing before data reaches their API (as of September 9, 2026).
PermitStack currently covers 8,000+ U.S. cities across 48 states and DC — the highest-volume metros across all major regions including NYC, LA, Chicago, Austin, Philadelphia, Seattle, and more. Shovels.ai advertises broader jurisdiction coverage (2,770+ jurisdictions). 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@permit-stack.com.
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. The official Python SDK is available on PyPI: pip install permitstack (PyPI | GitHub). A Node/TypeScript SDK is on npm: npm install permitstack-sdk.
Shovels.ai is a strong choice for large enterprises with procurement teams, very high-volume data needs, and requirements for specific coverage areas (particular counties or smaller jurisdictions we don't cover) 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 CSV export (from the Indie plan, or as per-jurisdiction bulk files). 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.
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.
100 free requests per day. No credit card. No sales call.