US Building Permits Scraper - 14 Cities & Counties

Pick US cities, set an issue date, and get one row per building permit: the number, type, status, issue date, address, scope of work, declared value, contractor and the city's own record link, under the same field names in every city. Add a filter if you want one: permit type, scope of work, contractor, status or declared value.

The awkward part: every city publishes different columns, so a roll that cannot answer one of your filters is skipped, free, with a row saying why. And big cities such as San Francisco, Boston, Houston and Philadelphia are not in it at all.

Input	Jurisdiction keys, an issue-date window, optional filters on address, city, postal code, type, scope, contractor, status or value, or exact permit numbers
Output	One row per permit: number, type, work class, status, issue, applied and expiry dates, address, scope of work, declared value, contractor, coordinates, record link
Ceiling	20,000 permits and 50 permit numbers per run
Account needed	None, and no API key
Price	$1.85 per 1,000 permits on the Free plan, a little less on paid plans. The free plan's $5 a month covers about 2,700

🔍 What US Building Permits Scraper does

A permit issued this week is a job starting next month. Each roll is read newest first, so issuedAfter turns the run into a feed of what was just approved.

Before anything is fetched, the run works out which rolls can answer your filters. A roll that cannot, such as one with no postal codes when you filter on a postal code, is skipped with a free FILTER_UNSUPPORTED row naming the roll and the filter. It is never sent a looser question and billed for the answer.

Your row budget is split evenly across the rolls first. Whatever a short roll does not use goes to the ones that still have permits.

No phone numbers, e-mail addresses or owner names are read, even where a city publishes them. Orlando's only free-text field is usually the homeowner's name, so it is not read, which is why Orlando comes back with no scope of work. On Chicago only contacts typed as a contractor are read.

Two rolls are narrower than their name. Seattle covers building permits only, not its electrical, trade or land-use permits. Nashville publishes a rolling recent window rather than its full history.

📋 What data you get from each building permit

What you get	Field
The jurisdiction, and the city's own permit number	jurisdiction, jurisdictionKey, permitNumber
Type, work class and status, in the city's own words	permitType, workClass, status
Issued, applied, expiry and status dates	issuedDate, appliedDate, expiresDate, statusDate
The site address, parcel and position	address, city, state, zip, parcelId, latitude, longitude
The scope of work and its declared value	description, declaredValueUsd
The contractor, where the city names one	contractorName, contractorLicense, contractorLicenseType, contractorTrade
Floor area and housing units, where published	buildingAreaSqFt, housingUnits
The city's own record page, and the department that published it	recordUrl, publisher

▶️ How to scrape US building permits

1. Open US Building Permits Scraper and click Try for free.
2. Pick your cities in Jurisdictions. The form arrives with Seattle and Austin chosen.
3. Set Issued on or after. It arrives set to 2026-09-01, so move it to the date you care about.
4. Add a filter such as Permit type contains or Declared value over if you want one, and set Maximum rows.
5. Click Start, then download the dataset as CSV, JSON or Excel, or read it from the Apify API.

💰 How much does it cost to scrape building permits?

$1.85 per 1,000 permits, which is $0.00185 a permit on the Free plan. Paid plans pay a little less: $1.83 on Starter, $1.81 on Scale and $1.79 on Business. On the free plan, the $5 Apify gives you each month covers about 2,700 permits. The 200-permit example below comes to about 37 cents.

You pay for permit rows and nothing else per row. The sample row and every diagnostic row are free, and so are rolls skipped for a filter they cannot answer, records missing a permit number or an issue date, and repeats inside one run. If you set a maximum charge on the run, it stops at that figure instead of going past it.

📥 What you give it

{
  "jurisdictions": ["seattle", "raleigh", "cleveland"],
  "issuedAfter": "2026-09-01",
  "permitTypeContains": "ROOF",
  "minValueUsd": 10000,
  "maxItems": 200
}

Field	Default	What it is
jurisdictions	all fourteen; the form starts with seattle and austin	Keys from the table below. A key that does not exist gets a free BAD_INPUT row listing the real ones.
issuedAfter	none; the box starts at 2026-09-01	YYYY-MM-DD. Every roll supports it.
issuedBefore	none	The other end of the window, same format.
permitNumbers	none	Up to 50 numbers for a direct lookup, in the city's own format. When set, every filter except jurisdictions is ignored, dates included.
addressContains	any address	Part of the site address, case-insensitive. Some rolls hold only the street name, so a street name matches more widely than a house number.
city	any city	Narrows to one city. A single-city roll either is that city or is skipped, free.
zipCode	any	A five-digit postal code. Chicago, Mesa, Orlando and Cleveland cannot be filtered on one and are skipped.
permitTypeContains	any type	Part of the permit type or work class, such as ROOF, SOLAR, DEMOLITION or NEW. Every city names its own types, so a short word travels further than a phrase.
descriptionContains	any	Part of the scope of work, such as KITCHEN or TEAR OFF. Orlando is skipped.
contractorContains	any	Part of the contractor or permit-holder business name. Los Angeles and Cincinnati are skipped.
statusContains	any	Part of the status, such as ISSUED, FINAL or EXPIRED, in each city's own words. Baton Rouge and Nashville are skipped.
minValueUsd	no minimum	Only permits declared above this figure, in dollars. New York City, Los Angeles and Cincinnati store the value as text and are skipped.
maxItems	50	Total permits, 1 to 20,000, shared across the rolls.
proxyUrls	none	Your own servers to send the traffic through, as http://user:pass@host:port. Leave it empty unless you need that.

Jurisdiction	Key	Permits on the roll, 20 Sep 2026	Skipped when you filter on
New York City, NY	new-york-city	1,002,770	declared value
Chicago, IL	chicago	847,927	postal code
Los Angeles, CA	los-angeles	412,133	contractor, declared value
Austin, TX	austin	2,376,402	nothing
Seattle, WA	seattle	193,083	nothing
New Orleans, LA	new-orleans	464,215	nothing
Cincinnati, OH	cincinnati	180,257	contractor, declared value
Mesa, AZ	mesa-az	156,208	postal code
Orlando, FL	orlando	1,110,846	scope of work, postal code
Baton Rouge, LA	baton-rouge	143,535	status
Cleveland, OH	cleveland	200,435	postal code
Columbus, OH	columbus-oh	682,606	nothing
Raleigh, NC	raleigh	184,185	nothing
Nashville, TN	nashville	29,512	status

A roll that carries decades of history holds far more old permits than new ones, so set issuedAfter if you only want what is current. The counts move as cities publish.

An input with nothing in it, such as {} sent through the API, returns one free sample row so you can see the shape first.

📤 What you get back

A real row from a run on 30 September 2026:

{
  "ok": true,
  "charged": true,
  "recordType": "permit",
  "jurisdiction": "Seattle, WA",
  "jurisdictionKey": "seattle",
  "permitNumber": "7088872-CN",
  "permitType": "Addition/Alteration",
  "workClass": "Non-Residential Institutional",
  "status": "Issued",
  "issuedDate": "2026-09-28",
  "appliedDate": "2026-06-24",
  "expiresDate": "2028-03-28",
  "statusDate": null,
  "address": "3919 OKANOGAN LN NE",
  "city": "SEATTLE",
  "state": "WA",
  "zip": "98195",
  "description": "Shoring and excavation for future Institutional building [UW CHEMICAL SCIENCES] per plan",
  "declaredValueUsd": 1885061,
  "contractorName": null,
  "contractorLicense": null,
  "contractorLicenseType": null,
  "contractorTrade": null,
  "buildingAreaSqFt": null,
  "housingUnits": null,
  "parcelId": null,
  "latitude": 47.65377801,
  "longitude": -122.30999134,
  "recordUrl": "https://services.seattle.gov/portal/customize/LinkToRecord.aspx?altId=7088872-CN",
  "publisher": "Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-09-30T02:37:45.865Z"
}

Field	How to read it
permitNumber	The city's own number. Not unique on its own: two cities can share a number, and one number can cover several lines of work. Key on jurisdictionKey, permitNumber and permitType together.
permitType, workClass, status	The city's own wording, never normalised. Seattle says "Addition/Alteration", Austin "Plumbing Permit". Filter with a short substring.
issuedDate	Always filled, as YYYY-MM-DD. A record with no issue date is never delivered.
description	The scope of work as the applicant wrote it. Columbus gives a work category instead, and Orlando gives nothing.
declaredValueUsd	What the applicant declared the work is worth. It is not an appraisal and cities do not audit it. A zero comes back as null.
contractorName, contractorTrade, contractorLicense	The contractor or permit-holder business, where the city publishes one. Seattle fills it on well under a fifth of its permits, as in the row above.
recordUrl	The city's own page for the permit. Six of the fourteen publish one.
latitude, longitude	As the city published them, not geocoded here. null where it publishes none.

🧾 Reading the output

Three kinds of row can share a dataset.

Row	How to spot it	Charged
A permit	recordType: "permit", charged: true	yes
The sample	recordType: "sample", _sample: true, charged: false	no
A diagnostic	recordType: "diagnostic", _diagnostic: true, charged: false, an errorCode	no

To keep only permits, filter on recordType == "permit". charged: true marks a real permit row; read it as that, not as a receipt. A diagnostic about one roll names it in jurisdiction.

Code	What it means
FILTER_UNSUPPORTED	One roll was skipped because it cannot answer a filter you set. The row names the roll and the filter.
NO_RESULTS	A roll had nothing matching, or none of the rolls you picked can answer your filters.
BAD_INPUT	A jurisdiction key that does not exist, or a city refused the query as sent.
RATE_LIMITED, SERVER_ERROR	That city's server was busy or answered with an error. The other rolls carry on.
NETWORK	A city's server could not be reached, or sent back something unreadable.
NOT_SERVED	This permit was not served this run. Re-run it later. Until 12 October 2026 this code was called BLOCKED.
TIME_BUDGET	The run ran out of time before a roll was finished.
CHARGE_ERROR	Some charges could not be recorded, so some rows may have arrived unbilled.

💡 What people use it for

• A roofing, solar or HVAC contractor watching what has just been permitted in their own area, filtered with permitTypeContains.
• A supplier sizing next quarter from what has actually been approved: count new-build permits above a declared value.
• A lender or proptech team spotting renovation work on a property before it reaches a listing.
• Anyone who has been checking four city portals by hand every Monday morning and would rather have one table.

🚧 What it does not do

• Fourteen jurisdictions, not fifty states. San Francisco, Boston, Philadelphia, Denver, Phoenix, Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, San Diego, Miami, Detroit, Baltimore, Washington DC, Kansas City and Honolulu are not covered. The cities that were checked and left out mostly had rolls that were stale, too thin to be a permit record, or split into one dataset per year.
• No contact details. No phones, e-mails or owner names, and nothing joined to parcel or assessment data.
• No normalised vocabulary. Types and statuses stay in each city's own words.
• No fields a city does not publish. A missing contractor or value is null, never filled in.
• Only as fresh as the city. A permit revised after the roll was last refreshed still reads as it did, and each city refreshes on its own schedule.
• Repeats across runs are billed again. Inside one run a permit is charged once. On a schedule, de-duplicate on jurisdictionKey, permitNumber and permitType.
• It is not an official tool of any platform or company named on this page. Dami's Studio is independent and is not affiliated with or endorsed by any of them.

🧭 Which property data scraper do you need?

If you want	Use
Building permits from 14 US cities and counties	This one
Parcel and assessment records from the public assessment roll	US Property Owner & Parcel Records Scraper
Local contractors by trade and town, with phone numbers	Yellow Pages US Scraper
Open bids from states, counties, cities and school districts	US Local Bid Portals Scraper

❓ Questions people ask

How current is the permit data?

Whatever the city last published. On most rolls that means permits issued within the last day or two, and a long weekend shows up as a gap.

Can I get a daily feed of new building permits?

Yes, and it is the main way people run it. Schedule it with a recent issuedAfter and de-duplicate against what you already have.

Why is contractorName empty on some rows?

The city did not publish one. Los Angeles and Cincinnati never name the contractor, and Seattle rarely does.

Why is the same address in there several times?

One job often needs several permits: building, then electrical, plumbing and mechanical. Each is its own permit and its own row.

Do I need an account or an API key?

No. These are open-data rolls the cities publish themselves, and nothing here needs a key.

Can I call it from code or connect it to an AI assistant?

Yes. The API tab has ready-made code for Python, JavaScript and the command line. For Claude, ChatGPT or another MCP client, connect https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,dami_studio/us-building-permits-scraper. Either way the run happens on your Apify account at the same price.

Is it legal to scrape building permits?

Each roll is a public record the city publishes as open data. No phone numbers, e-mail addresses or owner names are read, even where a city publishes them. Apify's write-up on the legality of web scraping is a fair starting point, and we are not lawyers.

🆘 If something breaks

Open the Issues tab on the actor page and send the run ID with the input you used. The errorCode, jurisdiction and details on a diagnostic row usually name the reason already.