Stage 1 private pilotCapture paused / reliability 0 of 14 / public record pages intentionally closed
Permit ArchiveFoundation / 01

Coverage ledger

Official permit search and data links for eight U.S. cities.

Each guide links to the city's public permit-search service and its reviewed open-data source. Pilot coverage remains intentionally narrow: a city appearing here does not mean every permit type is covered.

Use the research kitEight reviewed sources · metadata only · no permit rows
01 / Sources

Search officially. Read each dataset by its actual scope.

02 / Research kit

A citation-ready directory, without republishing permit records.

Researchers, librarians, journalists, planners, and civic-data teams can download the reviewed source ledger in an open format. It contains official links, source scope, update patterns, access methods, known limits, and reuse references for all eight cities.

Open source directory · reviewed 2026-09-24

U.S. building-permit open-data sources

Use the CSV for spreadsheets and analysis, or the JSON for software and research workflows. Both files carry the same eight source entries.

Download CSVDownload JSON

Suggested citation

Permit Archive. “U.S. building-permit open-data source directory.” Reviewed September 24, 2026. permitarchive.com/coverage.

Permit Archive compiled the directory. Each publisher retains its own data, terms, and attribution requirements; verify them at the official source before reuse.

Compilation license

To the extent Permit Archive holds copyright or database rights, its original selection, arrangement, compilation, and annotations in this directory are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). Give appropriate credit, link to the license, and indicate if changes were made.

Municipal datasets, permit records, publisher names and logos, linked third-party materials, and rights Permit Archive does not own are excluded. Each source publisher's separate terms and attribution requirements continue to apply. A reasonable attribution is: “Permit Archive, U.S. building-permit open-data source directory, https://permitarchive.com/coverage#research-kit”.
03 / Held out

Volume does not override unclear reuse rights.

Los Angeles and Seattle are not in the pilot.

Their current commercial-reuse boundaries require written clarification or focused legal approval. Permit Archive will not ingest them merely because their datasets are large.