Building Permits Scraper: Construction & Contractor Leads (US & Canada)

Get newly issued building permits from 12 official city and county open-data portals in one clean, normalized dataset. Filter by trade keyword (solar, roofing, HVAC, pool, ADU, demolition), date and project value. Schedule it daily with "Only new since last run" and get a fresh construction-lead feed in Google Sheets, your CRM, Slack or an AI agent.

Price: $3 per 1,000 permits ($0.003 per permit). There is no monthly rental and you pay only for the permits returned.

Covered jurisdictions: Chicago IL · New York City NY (DOB NOW) · Los Angeles CA · San Francisco CA · Seattle WA · Austin TX · Cincinnati OH · Mesa AZ · Marin County CA · Montgomery County MD (commercial) · Calgary AB · Edmonton AB.

Tutorials & examples: How to get daily building permit leads for your city, a step-by-step guide with a runnable Python example, on GitHub.

What you get

• Official sources only. Every record comes from the city's or county's documented open-data API (Socrata SODA) and carries the dataset URL and license. There is no HTML scraping, no login and no proxy, so it doesn't break when a website is redesigned.
• One schema for every city. Permit number, permit type, work class, description, status, applied and issued dates, address, ZIP, project value (USD and local currency), fee, contractor business name, latitude/longitude and a link back to the source record.
• Privacy-safe by design. Owner names, applicant names, phone numbers and email addresses are never collected. Contractor business names are included only where the city publishes them, and you can switch them off.
• Built for recurring lead feeds. Use date windows, keyword filters, a minimum project value and de-duplication across runs (onlyNewSinceLastRun).
• Polite and reliable. It respects the portals' crawl delay and retries with backoff.

Who uses it

You are…	Use it to…
Roofing, solar, HVAC, electrical, plumbing or pool contractor	Find homeowners and GCs who just pulled a permit in your service area (keyword: "roof", "solar", "pool")
Subcontractor or building-material/equipment supplier	Spot active job sites by area and project value (minValuation: 250000)
Real-estate investor, proptech or analyst	Track renovation activity, new construction and ADU trends by neighborhood
Insurance, home services or market research	Measure permit velocity and seasonality across cities
Developer or AI-agent builder	Give your app or agent a structured, citable feed of construction activity

How to use it

1. Click Try for free, choose jurisdictions (or all), and set daysBack and an optional keyword.
2. Click Start. A 7-day pull for 3 cities usually finishes in under 30 seconds.
3. Download the results as Excel, CSV, JSON or XML, or connect them to your tools (see Integrations).
4. For a daily feed, create a Task with onlyNewSinceLastRun: true and add a Schedule (e.g. every morning at 7:00).

Input example

{ "jurisdictions": ["chicago-il", "austin-tx", "seattle-wa"], "daysBack": 7, "keyword": "solar", "maxItems": 500, "onlyNewSinceLastRun": true }

Field	What it does
jurisdictions	One or more source keys (e.g. chicago-il, new-york-ny), or all
daysBack / issuedSince / issuedBefore	Issue-date window (issuedSince overrides daysBack)
keyword	Full-text filter applied by the portal, e.g. roof, solar, ADU, demolition, elevator
minValuation	Minimum declared project value in local currency
maxItemsPerJurisdiction, maxItems	Spending caps; you pay only for the permits returned
onlyNewSinceLastRun	Skips permits already returned by earlier runs
includeContractorBusinessName	Includes the contractor company name (default on)

Output example (real record)

{
  "id": "chicago-il:101083682",
  "jurisdictionKey": "chicago-il",
  "jurisdiction": "Chicago, IL",
  "permitNumber": "101083682",
  "permitType": "PERMIT - RENOVATION/ALTERATION",
  "workType": "SELF CERT",
  "description": "NEW KITCHEN EQUIPMENT AND SINKS INSTALLED WITHIN EXISTING BANQUET HALL KITCHEN.",
  "status": "ACTIVE",
  "appliedDate": "2026-05-19",
  "issuedDate": "2026-10-28",
  "address": "2620 W 51ST ST",
  "city": "Chicago",
  "state": "IL",
  "zip": null,
  "valuationUsd": 15000.0,
  "valuationLocal": 15000.0,
  "currency": "USD",
  "feeUsd": 2177.0,
  "contractorBusinessName": "I REMODEL YOUR HOME",
  "latitude": 41.80116489821182,
  "longitude": -87.69009853263145,
  "url": null,
  "source": {
    "portal": "data.cityofchicago.org",
    "datasetId": "ydr8-5enu",
    "datasetUrl": "https://data.cityofchicago.org/d/ydr8-5enu",
    "license": "City of Chicago Data Portal Terms of Use"
  },
  "scrapedAt": "2026-10-29T18:29:56+00:00"
}

Pricing and cost examples

Pay per event: $0.003 per permit returned plus a tiny Actor-start fee ($0.00005). Platform compute is included in the price.

Scenario	Permits	Cost
One city, last 7 days, keyword solar	~50	~$0.15
3 cities, daily "only new" feed	~100–500 per day	~$0.30–$1.50 per day
All 12 jurisdictions, last 30 days, default maxItems cap	2,000	$6

Set maxItems to cap spending on any run. Apify's free plan includes monthly credit, so you can test without paying.

Integrations

• API and SDKs: run it from any language with the Apify API or the official JavaScript/Python clients (apify-client). The run endpoint run-sync-get-dataset-items returns permits in a single HTTP call.
• Zapier, Make, n8n: use the Apify app/node, e.g. "new permits → Google Sheets row → Slack message → CRM lead".
• AI agents (MCP): add the Actor to Claude, Cursor or any MCP client through the Apify MCP server (opendatafrontierlab/us-building-permits), or use the Apify integrations for LangChain, LlamaIndex and CrewAI.
• Webhooks: get notified or trigger your pipeline when each run finishes.

Python example:

from apify_client import ApifyClient
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>")
run = client.actor("opendatafrontierlab/us-building-permits").call(run_input={"jurisdictions": ["austin-tx", "los-angeles-ca"], "daysBack": 7, "keyword": "solar", "maxItems": 50})
for permit in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    print(permit["issuedDate"], permit["address"], permit["valuationUsd"], permit["contractorBusinessName"])

FAQ

Is this legal to use? Yes. All data comes from official government open-data portals published for public reuse. Each record links to its dataset and license (source.license). No personal contact data is collected.

How fresh is the data? It is as fresh as each portal. Most update daily; Los Angeles typically lags 2–5 days. Run it daily with onlyNewSinceLastRun to catch every new permit once.

Can I get the homeowner's name, phone or email? No. This Actor deliberately does not collect personal data. Use the address and contractor business name for your outreach and follow local marketing laws.

Why is the project value sometimes 1 or empty? Some cities record placeholder values (e.g. Austin and San Francisco over-the-counter permits). Values are passed through exactly as published. Use minValuation to filter.

Do you cover my city? The 12 jurisdictions above are supported today. Open an issue on the Actor's Issues tab: any city with a Socrata or ArcGIS open-data permits dataset can usually be added quickly.

Will I get the same permit twice? No, not in one run. San Francisco publishes one row per address, so only the permit's primary-address row is returned. New York City (DOB NOW) returns one record per work permit and work type, and Cincinnati one per permit and permit type, because those portals publish each as its own line. With onlyNewSinceLastRun, permits you already received are skipped.

Are Canadian values in USD? Calgary and Edmonton values are in CAD. Check the currency field.

Related Actors

• US Public Bids, RFPs & Grants: open government solicitations for contractors.
• PDF to Markdown & RAG Chunks: turn plan sets, specs and RFP PDFs into searchable Markdown.

This Actor is not affiliated with any government agency.