About
About PermitsByCounty
See what's being built. County by county.
Last updated: October 17, 2026
What this is
PermitsByCounty turns building-permit records — public documents scattered across more than 3,100 county and city systems, in incompatible formats, on incompatible schedules — into one clear picture: free public reports showing what is being built, where, and by which trades, county by county.
Contractors, suppliers, journalists, researchers, and plain curious neighbors all read the same tea leaves today: dozens of portals, PDFs, and lagging feeds. We do the collecting and cleaning once, in the open, and publish the result for everyone.
How we work
- Public records only. Business and project data from official sources. No homeowner names, no consumer personal data, no marketing lists of homeowners.
- A mirror, not an authority. Every figure names its source jurisdiction and shows when the source last updated and when we collected it. The official record always outranks us.
- No advice. We report permits; we never tell anyone what a project is worth or what they should do.
- Corrections in public. A standing corrections policy, applied on notice.
- Free to read. Public reports and the weekly county digest are free. What is never free: bulk export of record-level data and API access — that discipline is what keeps the free reports possible.
Brand facts. Name: PermitsByCounty. Domain: permitsbycounty.com. What we track: building permits issued by U.S. counties and cities. Coverage: Wave 1 onboarding — Texas metros, Florida metros, Maricopa County (AZ), North Carolina metros, Cook County (IL) — expanding by demand. Cadence: sources refresh daily to monthly depending on the jurisdiction; every report shows its own dates.
Who runs it
PermitsByCounty is an independent service built and operated by the small team behind Apex Locals, a local-business growth practice. It is not affiliated with any government agency. Questions, corrections, and partnership inquiries are welcome on the contact page.