Jurisdiction vs. Municipality

A jurisdiction is any governmental body that issues and enforces building permits — a city, a county, or a special district — while a municipality means specifically an incorporated city or town. Every municipality is a jurisdiction, but not every jurisdiction is a municipality: a county building department that permits unincorporated areas is a jurisdiction but not a municipality.

PermitStack counts coverage in jurisdictions because that is the unit at which permit data is actually published. Some of our biggest feeds are counties (which cover many unincorporated communities at once) or even statewide datasets, not single municipalities. That is also why a "jurisdiction count" is the honest coverage metric — it maps one-to-one to a source feed.

Browse all 522 active jurisdictions on the coverage page. Related: AHJ.