US Building Permits (City Open Data)

US Building Permits (City Open Data) reads building permits from the official open-data portals of four US cities and returns them in one normalized schema. Choose one or more cities, a date range and optional filters (permit type, minimum cost, keyword), and get clean rows you can export as JSON, CSV or Excel, call through the API or schedule. A monitor mode returns only permits you have not seen before.

Cities covered: New York City, San Francisco, Seattle and Austin. This Actor is not affiliated with or endorsed by any of these cities or by Socrata or Tyler Technologies. City names are used only to describe the data source.

Who is it for?

• Contractors, suppliers and installers (roofing, solar, electrical, HVAC, signage) who want a daily list of new projects with a declared cost.
• Real estate investors, developers and analysts who track construction activity by city, permit type or project size.
• Researchers and journalists who need permit data from several cities in one consistent shape.

What you get

One record per permit with these fields: city, permit_number, permit_type, status, application_date, issue_date, address, work_description, declared_cost, fees, contractor_business_name, contractor_license_number and source_dataset_url.

How to use it

1. Open the Actor and pick one or more cities.
2. Set the date range: either "Issued in the last N days" or an exact "Issued from" and "Issued to" date.
3. Optionally add permit type words, a minimum declared cost and a keyword for the work description.
4. Set "Max results per city" and click Start. The default input returns the 25 most recent Seattle permits from the last 30 days.

Input

Field	What it does
Cities	One or more of New York City, San Francisco, Seattle, Austin.
Issued in the last N days	Date window counted back from today (UTC). Default 30.
Issued from / Issued to	Exact dates (YYYY-MM-DD). Override the days setting.
Permit types (contains)	Keep permits whose type text contains any of these words, ignoring case.
Minimum declared cost	Keep permits with a declared cost at or above this amount in USD.
Keyword in work description	Keep permits whose description contains this text, ignoring case.
Max results per city	Upper limit per city. Also caps your spend.
Mode	Search, or New since last run.
Monitor name	Names the saved memory used by New since last run.
Socrata app token	Optional. Not needed.

Example input:

{
  "cities": ["seattle", "austin"],
  "daysBack": 30,
  "keyword": "solar",
  "minCost": 10000,
  "maxResults": 100,
  "mode": "search"
}

Output example

{
  "city": "Seattle",
  "permit_number": "7168406-RR",
  "permit_type": "Roof",
  "status": "Issued",
  "application_date": null,
  "issue_date": "2026-10-20",
  "address": "7301 34TH AVE NW Seattle WA 98117",
  "work_description": "Remove 3 layers of comp shingles replace all plywood and install new comp shingles.",
  "declared_cost": 14465.5,
  "fees": null,
  "contractor_business_name": "Axis Roof and Gutter Inc",
  "contractor_license_number": null,
  "source_dataset_url": "https://data.seattle.gov/d/76t5-zqzr"
}

New since last run (monitor mode)

Set Mode to "New since last run" and give the run a Monitor name. The Actor remembers which permits it has returned for that name and returns only new ones on later runs. Schedule it daily to build a feed of fresh permits.

• Permits come back oldest first, so nothing is skipped when the max results limit is reached. The next run continues where the last one stopped.
• The first run for a monitor name uses your date window as its starting point.
• Each run re-reads the previous 7 days so permits that a city posts late are still caught, without returning any permit twice.
• If you change the permit types, minimum cost or keyword, the monitor starts a new baseline for that name.
• The memory is kept in a key-value store named us-building-permits-monitor-state in your Apify account. Delete the record named STATE-

Pricing

You pay per permit returned. Platform usage is not billed on top of these events.

Event	Price	When it is charged
Permit record	$0.003	Each permit returned in Search mode.
New permit record	$0.005	Each new permit returned in New since last run mode.

Nothing is charged for permits that are not returned, so a search with no matches has no record charges. Examples: 25 permits in Search mode cost $0.075, and 1,000 cost $3.00. Set a maximum cost per run in the run options and the Actor stops at that limit.

Data sources and licences

All data is read live from official city open-data portals through their public SODA APIs. No logins, scraping or proxies are used, and the Actor paces itself to about one request per second per portal.

City	Dataset	Licence or terms shown by the portal
New York City	DOB NOW: Build, Approved Permits (rbx6-tga4)	NYC Open Data and NYC.gov Terms of Use. NYC's Open Data Law (Local Law 11 of 2012) requires public data to be made freely available on a single web portal.
San Francisco	Building Permits (i98e-djp9)	Open Data Commons Public Domain Dedication and License
Seattle	Building Permits (76t5-zqzr)	Public Domain
Austin	Issued Construction Permits (3syk-w9eu)	Public Domain U.S. Government, plus City of Austin Open Data Terms of Use

Each record carries a source_dataset_url so you can check the original. You are responsible for following each portal's terms when you use the data. City data is provided as is and can be wrong or incomplete.

Privacy

The Actor does not output owner names, applicant names, individual names or phone numbers. Contractor fields hold business names only. A contractor value is dropped when it does not clearly look like a business, which means a few real businesses with plain personal-style names can be missing. Phone numbers and email addresses found inside work descriptions are replaced with "[removed]". Property addresses are included because they are part of the public permit record.

FAQ

Which dates do the filters use? The permit issue date. Permits that have not been issued yet are not returned.

Why are some fields empty? Cities publish different fields. Contractor names come from New York City, Seattle and Austin, and the license number only from New York City. New York City does not publish an application date. None of the four cities publishes permit fees in these datasets, so fees is empty. Declared cost is empty when the city reports none or zero.

How fresh is the data? The cities state daily refreshes for these datasets. The newest permits can lag behind the city's own permit search.

Do I need an app token? No. A free Socrata app token is optional and raises the portal's request limits for large pulls.

Can I use the API or schedules? Yes. Use the Apify API, schedules, webhooks and integrations as with any Actor.

Why does San Francisco show the same permit number twice? San Francisco publishes one row per address for some permits, so one permit number can appear on several rows.

Will more cities be added? Possibly. Cities are added only after their open-data terms are checked.

Limitations

• New York City data covers permits filed in DOB NOW: Build. Electrical, elevator and limited alteration permits are separate datasets and are not included, and older permits filed in the legacy system are not included.
• Permit type and status wording differs by city. Permit type filters match the city's own wording.
• Declared cost is the figure the applicant or city reports and is not collected for every permit type.
• Contractor data is missing for San Francisco because that dataset does not publish it.
• Results are capped at 50,000 permits per city per run.

Support

Found a bug or a changed portal field? Open an issue in the Issues tab of this Actor. Include your run link and input.