US Building Permits — 11 Cities, Official Open Data

Get fresh building permits from 11 US cities in one clean table: job-site address, what is being built, estimated job cost, permit type, issue date and (where published) the contractor company. Filter by keyword and cost, schedule it daily and receive only permits you have not seen yet.

City	Permits per month*	Contractor company
New York, NY	~15,000	✅
Los Angeles, CA	~5,800	–
Austin, TX	~5,100	✅
Chicago, IL	~3,000	–
San Francisco, CA	~1,500	–
New Orleans, LA	~1,400	–
Cincinnati, OH	~850	–
Baton Rouge, LA	~750	–
Seattle, WA	~550	✅
Mesa, AZ	~430	–
Montgomery County, MD (commercial)	~120	–

* Permits issued 20 Aug – 18 Sep 2026, counted from the official datasets.

Who uses it

• Contractors and trades (solar, roofing, HVAC, pools, electrical, windows): see new projects in your area as soon as the city publishes the permit.
• Building-material suppliers and equipment rental: spot large new-construction and renovation jobs by cost and location.
• Real-estate investors and analysts: track construction activity, ADUs, new housing units and remodel trends by ZIP code.
• Market research and lead-gen agencies: feed a CRM or dashboard with a daily, uniform permit feed across cities.

What you get (one row per permit)

{
  "city": "New York",
  "state": "NY",
  "permitNumber": "Q01441961-I1-SL",
  "permitType": "Solar",
  "workType": "Initial Permit",
  "description": "Installation of solar panels, rooftop, grid tied, railed, 23 modules, 9.43 KW",
  "status": "Permit Issued",
  "appliedDate": null,
  "issuedDate": "2026-09-21",
  "address": "150-36 114 ROAD, Queens",
  "zipCode": "11434",
  "latitude": 40.685546,
  "longitude": -73.792973,
  "estimatedCost": 47150,
  "squareFeet": null,
  "housingUnits": null,
  "contractorCompany": "MOMENTUM SOLAR",
  "permitUrl": null,
  "sourceDataset": "https://data.cityofnewyork.us/d/rbx6-tga4",
  "fetchedAt": "2026-09-23T12:00:00.000Z"
}

Every row has the same fields in every city; a field is null when that city does not publish it. Export as JSON, CSV, Excel or connect via API, Make, Zapier or n8n.

How to use

1. Pick cities (default: New York, Chicago, Los Angeles).
2. Optional: keywords in the work description (solar, roof, HVAC, pool, new building, demolition…), a minimum estimated cost, and a date range (default: issued in the last 7 days).
3. Run. Results from the selected cities are mixed evenly until Maximum permits is reached.
4. For a daily lead feed, turn on Only new since the last run and add a schedule. You pay only for permits you have not received before.

Example input — solar and roofing jobs over $20,000 in Los Angeles and Austin in the last 30 days:

{
  "cities": ["los-angeles", "austin"],
  "keywords": ["solar", "roof"],
  "minEstimatedCost": 20000,
  "daysBack": 30,
  "maxResults": 500
}

Pricing

Pay per event: you pay only for permits delivered to your dataset. No results = nothing to pay for results. The run stops by itself when it reaches your maximum cost per run. Most runs finish in seconds and need only 256 MB of memory.

Data sources and privacy

All data comes from the cities' official open-data portals (Socrata Open Data API), which publish permits as public records for anyone to reuse. No login, no scraping of protected pages.

No personal data: names of owners, applicants and individual license holders, phone numbers and e-mails are left out on purpose, and e-mails/phone numbers inside descriptions are removed. The contractor field is filled only where the city publishes it as a business name.

FAQ

How fresh is the data? Cities update their datasets daily or several times a week; most permits appear within a few days of issue.

Why is the cost empty for some permits? Some permits (e.g. many electrical or sign permits) have no declared job value. With a minimum cost filter, those permits are skipped.

Can you add my city? Yes — open an issue with the city name. Cities with an official open-data permit feed can be added quickly.

What if a city portal is down? The other cities still deliver; the run summary (SUMMARY in the key-value store) lists permits and errors per city.