US Building Permit Portal Finder — Accela EnerGov Socrata

What does US Building Permit Portal Finder do?

Resolve US cities to official building-permit portal URLs and identify the platform family — Accela, EnerGov, Socrata, ArcGIS, or custom agency portals. Each row includes portal URL, search URL, optional reachability check, and a suggested Apify Actor (bakos_bence/accela-permits for Accela tenants). Curated catalog of 30+ jurisdictions — no login required. Export JSON or CSV via Apify API, schedule, or MCP.

Unofficial. This Actor is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or maintained by Accela, Tyler Technologies, OpenGov, Esri, or any municipal agency. It maps public portal endpoints only.

Dashboards: connect Power BI, Tableau, Looker Studio, or Qlik to the dataset API — see Export to Power BI, Tableau, Looker Studio & Qlik near the end. AI agents: paste this Actor’s Store page URL into an Apify-capable agent (MCP / Claude / Cursor with Apify), create an Apify account and API token once, and the agent can run the Actor and wire up the output.

Why use this portal finder?

• 🏛️ Know whether a city runs Accela, EnerGov, Socrata, or ArcGIS before you scrape
• 🔗 Official portal + search URLs in one dataset row
• 🧭 Suggested bakos_bence/accela-permits Actor for Accela jurisdictions
• 📋 Curated catalog — Salt Lake (SLCREF), Oakland, COSP, Alameda, Santa Clara, Austin Socrata, and more

How to find permit portals

1. Open this Actor in Apify Console.
2. Click Start on the prefilled Salt Lake City / Oakland / Austin run (maxItems 5), or enter your own city list.
3. Leave proxyType on none unless reachability checks fail.
4. Export the dataset or pull via API. For Accela rows, run bakos_bence/accela-permits with the tenant code.

{
  "cities": ["Salt Lake City, UT", "Oakland, CA", "Austin, TX"],
  "maxItems": 5,
  "checkReachability": true,
  "proxyType": "none"
}

How much does it cost?

Pay per event (PPE): Actor start + each result row. See the Pricing tab on this Actor’s Store page.

Input

Field	Description
cities	City/jurisdiction strings (case-insensitive)
maxItems	Cap on portal rows
checkReachability	Optional HEAD/GET reachability flag
proxyType	Optional proxy for reachability checks

Sample output

{
  "city": "Salt Lake City",
  "state": "UT",
  "jurisdiction": "Salt Lake City, UT",
  "portalFamily": "accela",
  "portalUrl": "https://aca-prod.accela.com/SLCREF/Default.aspx",
  "searchUrl": "https://aca-prod.accela.com/SLCREF/Cap/CapHome.aspx?module=Building",
  "suggestedActor": "bakos_bence/accela-permits",
  "portalReachable": true,
  "scrapedAt": "2026-09-09T11:00:00+00:00"
}

FAQ

Is this an official Accela or city product?

No. It is an unofficial curated directory of public permit portal URLs.

Does this scrape permit records?

No — it returns portal metadata only. Use bakos_bence/accela-permits or a platform-specific Actor to pull permit rows.

Can AI agents call this?

Yes — Actor ID bakos_bence/permit-portal-finder via Apify API or MCP.

Something broke?

Open the Issues tab on this Actor’s page.

Related Actors

Actor	Use together when…
Accela Building Permits Scraper	You need permit grid rows from Accela Citizen Access
Public Document Finder	You need broader public-records routing

Profile: bakos_bence on Apify.

For AI agents & LLM apps

Paste this Actor’s Apify Store URL into an agent that can use Apify (MCP, Claude, Cursor, etc.). With an Apify account and API token, the agent can set input, run the Actor, and fetch the dataset.

Export to Power BI, Tableau, Looker Studio & Qlik

1. Run the Actor (or open a finished run).
2. Open the Dataset → API / Export.
3. Copy the dataset items URL (JSON or CSV).
4. In your BI tool, add a web / API data source with that URL (and your Apify token as a header or query param if required).
5. Refresh on a schedule that matches your jurisdiction onboarding cadence.

Portal URLs are public facts from agency sites — always verify the live portal before production scrapes.