Building Permits Scraper - Construction Leads, 13 Cities

Building Permits Scraper: Construction Leads from 13 Cities

Get new building permits from 13 major US and Canadian cities in one consistent format, straight from each city's official open-data portal. Every city publishes permits differently. This building permits scraper maps them all into one schema: permit type, work description, address, issue date, declared project value, contractor and owner, so a single run gives you a table you can sort, filter and load into your CRM.

Cities covered: New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle, Austin, Cincinnati, Baton Rouge, Mesa, Corona, Marin County, Calgary and Edmonton.

What can this building permits scraper do?

• Pull fresh permits issued (or applied for, where a city publishes applications) in the last N days.
• Find the jobs you want with keywords such as roof, solar, pool, ADU, HVAC, demolition or new construction.
• Focus on bigger projects with a minimum declared project value, for example $50,000.
• Prospect contractors by keeping only permits that name a contractor.
• Stay balanced with a per-city cap so one large city does not crowd out the rest.

What data do you get?

Field	Meaning
city, cityKey	Jurisdiction
permitNumber, permitType, workType, status	The permit and what kind of work it covers
description	The city's description of the work
appliedDate, issuedDate	Key dates (YYYY-MM-DD)
address, zip, lat, lon	Where the work is
valuation	Declared project value in dollars, where published
squareFeet, units	Size and housing units, where published
contractor, owner	Contractor(s) and owner/applicant, where published
link, source	Link to the city's permit record (where available) and the source dataset

Who uses it?

• Contractors and trades (roofing, solar, HVAC, pools, electrical, plumbing) looking for owners and builders with active projects.
• Building-material suppliers and equipment rental firms finding job sites early.
• Real-estate investors, lenders and insurers tracking development and renovation activity.
• Market researchers measuring construction activity by city and project type.

How to use it

1. Click Try for free (or Start).
2. Pick your Cities (leave empty for all 13) and Days back.
3. Add Keywords and a Minimum project value if you want specific job types.
4. Run it and export to Excel, CSV or JSON, or push it to your CRM.
5. Schedule it weekly (Days back = 7) or daily (Days back = 1) for a steady lead feed.

Input example

{
  "cities": [
    "chicago",
    "austin",
    "seattle"
  ],
  "daysBack": 7,
  "keywords": [
    "roof",
    "solar",
    "new construction"
  ],
  "minValuation": 20000,
  "onlyWithContractor": true,
  "maxResults": 300
}

Output example

{
  "city": "Calgary, AB",
  "cityKey": "calgary",
  "permitNumber": "BP2026-20550",
  "permitType": "Single Construction Permit 1407 - Two Family Semi-Detached (1 Unit)",
  "workType": "New",
  "description": "SEMI-D,GARAGE,DECK,PORCH,",
  "status": "In Review",
  "appliedDate": "2026-10-26",
  "issuedDate": null,
  "address": "184 CREEKSIDE TC SW",
  "zip": null,
  "valuation": 246805.33,
  "squareFeet": 2017,
  "units": 1,
  "contractor": "MORRISON HOMES (CALGARY)",
  "owner": "MORRISON HOMES (CALGARY)",
  "lat": 50.86,
  "lon": -114.08,
  "link": null,
  "source": "https://data.calgary.ca/d/c2es-76ed"
}

How much does it cost?

Pay per permit returned: $4 per 1,000 permits ($0.004 each), plus a $0.00005 start fee per run. No separate compute charges.

You get	You pay
100 roofing and solar permits	$0.40
500 permits across all cities	$2.00
2,500 permits a month from a weekly schedule	$10.00

Use Maximum results and Maximum per city to control cost. Apify's free plan includes monthly credits to try it.

Volume discounts on higher Apify plans. The prices above are for the Apify Free plan. On paid plans the per-result price drops automatically: about 15% lower on Bronze, 25% lower on Silver and 38% lower on Gold and above.

Use it via API, Make, Zapier, n8n or an AI agent

Apify API. Start a run and get the results back in one HTTP request (replace YOUR_API_TOKEN with the token from Apify Console > Settings > Integrations):

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/plotpointtech~building-permits-feed/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_API_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"cities": ["chicago", "austin", "seattle"], "daysBack": 7, "keywords": ["roof", "solar", "new construction"], "minValuation": 20000, "onlyWithContractor": true, "maxResults": 300}'

For longer jobs, start the run asynchronously and read the dataset when it finishes. Official apify-client libraries exist for Python and JavaScript; the API tab on this page has ready-made code.

No-code automation. Connect the tool to Make, Zapier, n8n, Google Sheets, Slack, Airtable or any webhook with Apify integrations, and use Schedules in Apify Console to run it hourly, daily or weekly.

AI agents (MCP). Give Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, VS Code or any MCP-compatible agent direct access to this tool through the hosted Apify MCP server. Add this server URL to your client:

https://mcp.apify.com?tools=plotpointtech/building-permits-feed

The agent can then call the tool with the same input fields shown above and read the results.

FAQ

Is it legal to use building permit data? Yes. Building permits are public records, and every source here is a city's official open-data portal published for reuse. Some cities list owners who are private individuals; if you contact them, you are responsible for following privacy and marketing laws such as telemarketing and anti-spam rules.

Why are some fields empty? Fields are filled only where a city publishes them. Not every city publishes contractor names, owner names or project values, and some do not publish a link to each permit.

How fresh is the data? It follows each city's own update schedule, usually daily.

Can you add my city? Open an issue with the city's open-data permit dataset and we will look at adding it.

Do I need an API key? No. For very large pulls you can add a free Socrata app token, which raises the portals' rate limits.

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• Government Tenders Scraper - EU TED, UK & Canada Contracts: open public contracts from EU TED, UK and Canada in one format.
• Email & Contact Scraper - Website Emails, Phones & Socials: emails, phones and social links from any list of company websites.

Plot Point Technologies is not affiliated with any city government.

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If this tool saved you time, we would be grateful for a short review on this page; it helps other people find it. If something did not work as expected, please open an issue on the Issues tab and we will look into it quickly.