How do I find contractors who pulled permits?

Search a public permit database by city or address. Every permit lists the licensed contractor of record. Three methods: free city portal lookups, state licensing database cross-reference, or paid aggregators like PermitGrab ($149/mo, 1061 cities) and Shovels (API tiered).

Why are permit-based contractor leads better than directories?

Permits prove activity. A directory listing tells you a contractor exists. A permit tells you they pulled paper on a real project last week. 154,583 contractors in our database have pulled at least one permit in the last 180 days — that's 154,583 actively-working leads vs millions of stale directory listings.

What filters matter most for contractor search?

Three: (1) Permit type, matched to your trade. (2) Location, matched to your service area. (3) Recency, typically 30-90 days. Beyond that, rank by frequency — a contractor pulling 12 permits in 30 days is a real shop; 12 contractors each pulling one is mostly owner-builders.

Can I get contractor phone numbers from public permits?

Often yes, via cross-reference to state licensing databases. Florida (DBPR), Minnesota (DLI), New York (DOL), and Washington (L&I) publish phones in their bulk licensee files. California (CSLB) and Arizona (ROC) publish names but not phones — though some Arizona permits include phones inline. PermitGrab has 20,856 contractor phones across these sources.

How is PermitGrab different from Shovels, BuildZoom, and Construction Monitor?

PermitGrab is $149/mo flat, optimized for active outbound prospecting with daily email digests and phone enrichment. Shovels is API-first for developers. BuildZoom is a homeowner marketplace (pay 2.5% on hire). Construction Monitor is custom-quote daily PDFs for industrial suppliers. Pick by buyer profile — we go deeper in our full comparison .

What pitch works best for permit-based contractor outreach?

Specific beats generic. A supplier pitch should reference the actual permit ("I noticed you filed the $80K kitchen addition at 123 Main..."). A subcontractor pitch should reference permit volume ("You've pulled 14 roofing permits in Phoenix this month..."). Generic "do you want more leads" pitches under-perform 3-5x.

Is there a free way to do this?

Yes — manually, city by city. Plan 10-20 minutes per city to learn the portal's search syntax (Socrata, ArcGIS, CKAN, and Accela each behave differently). For multi-city operations, the paid aggregator usually pays for itself in time saved. PermitGrab offers a free trial with 10 phone reveals (no credit card) .

How to Find Contractors Who Pulled Building Permits

By Marcus Reeves, Head of Permit Research at PermitGrab · Updated daily from official city records · Last permit filed: today

154,583

Active Contractors

20,856

Phone Numbers

271,357

Code Violations

11,863,412

Property Owners

Live totals across 1061 cities · Browse all cities →

The fastest way to find contractors who pulled permits is to search a public permit database by city or address. Every permit lists the licensed contractor of record. Across PermitGrab's 1061 cities, 154,583 active contractors have pulled at least one permit in the last six months — and 20,856 of those have verified phone numbers ready for outreach.

This is one of the highest-ROI lead-gen plays in home services and construction: a permit is the only public signal that confirms a contractor is actively working, the value of the job, and where they're working. It's better than a directory listing (which can be 5 years stale) and better than a license database (which has no project signal). Here's how to do it.

Why search for contractors by permit?

Three reasons. (1) Recency. A contractor who pulled a permit last week is actively working. A contractor in a Yelp directory who hasn't updated their profile since 2022 may be retired, busy, or out of business. (2) Activity signal. The volume of permits a contractor pulls is the single best proxy for their workload — somebody pulling 15 permits per month is running a real shop. (3) Trade fit. Permit type tells you exactly what they do. Searching "roofing permits in Phoenix issued in the last 30 days" is more precise than any keyword search you can do on a directory.

Step 1 — Choose your search method

Three working options:

City permit portal (free, slow). Each city's open-data portal exposes some search. You'll need to learn each portal's quirks — Socrata, ArcGIS, CKAN, and Accela have different filter syntax. Budget 10-20 minutes per city to learn the schema. Good if you only care about one city.
State licensing database (free, partial). California's CSLB, Florida's DBPR, New York's DOL all publish licensed contractors. Useful for verifying license status but doesn't tell you which contractors are actively working.
Multi-city aggregator (paid, fast). Tools like PermitGrab, Shovels, BuildZoom, and Construction Monitor cover hundreds to thousands of cities in one search. PermitGrab is $149/month flat (free trial available), Shovels has tiered API pricing, Construction Monitor quotes per metro.

For most prospecting use-cases, an aggregator pays for itself the moment you need more than two cities or want phone numbers attached.

Step 2 — Filter by trade, location, and recency

Whatever tool you use, three filters matter most:

Permit type — match to your trade. Roofers want roofing + new construction permits. HVAC wants mechanical permits. Solar wants electrical + roofing pairs. Plumbing and electrical have direct permit types.
Location — your service radius. PermitGrab's city pages let you filter by ZIP, county, or city slug.
Recency — typically the last 30-90 days for active prospecting. Older than 90 days, the job has usually closed and the contractor's already moved on.

Step 3 — Rank contractors by frequency, not just presence

A contractor who pulled 12 permits in 30 days represents a very different opportunity than 12 contractors who each pulled one. The first is a real shop with crews — worth a real sales conversation. The latter are mostly one-off owner-builders or licensed individuals who pull a permit per year.

PermitGrab's contractor profiles aggregate every permit by business name and surface the top permit-pullers per city on each city page (e.g., Chicago top contractors, Phoenix top contractors). For each top contractor we show total recent permits, trade breakdown, and phone numbers where available.

Step 4 — Cross-reference with state license data

A permit lists the license number of the contractor of record, but doesn't always show whether the license is currently active, what trades it's qualified for, or what the registered phone is. Cross-referencing with state licensing databases fills the gap. PermitGrab does this automatically: when a Florida permit shows a DBPR license number, we join to the DBPR licensee table and pull the active phone, business address, and trade qualifications. Same for California (CSLB), New York (DOL), Washington (L&I), and Minnesota (DLI).

Step 5 — Pitch the right contractor about the right job

This is the part most people fumble. The pitch isn't "do you want more leads?" — it's specific to the permit signal. Examples:

Supplier pitch to a GC who just pulled a kitchen addition permit: "I noticed you filed for the addition at 123 Main on April 28. We stock Wolf and Sub-Zero with 2-day delivery anywhere in Cook County."
Subcontractor pitch to a roofing GC: "Saw you've pulled 14 roofing permits in Phoenix in the last 30 days. We're an insured gutter crew with same-week scheduling — happy to be on your list when you need a fast install."
Insurance audit pitch to a homeowner whose contractor just finished a renovation: "Your home's replacement cost just went up with the $80K renovation that closed last month. Most homeowners are underinsured after major projects."

How does PermitGrab compare to BuildZoom, Shovels, and Construction Monitor?

Quick rundown:

PermitGrab — $149/month flat, 14-day free trial, daily email digest, 1061-city coverage, focus on contractor phone enrichment.
Shovels — tiered API + enterprise pricing, 1,800+ jurisdictions, strongest for developers wanting raw permits.
BuildZoom — pay-on-hire (2.5% of project), homeowner-side marketplace, 25 years of historical data — best for homeowners, less optimized for contractor outreach.
Construction Monitor — custom per-metro pricing, daily permit reports, the old guard (since 1992), strongest for industrial suppliers.

We wrote a deeper comparison at BuildZoom vs Shovels vs PermitGrab.

Can I find contractor phone numbers from public permits?

Often yes, indirectly. Permits list license numbers; license numbers in 4 states (FL, MN, NY, WA) come with phone numbers in the bulk-download licensee files. In California, the CSLB publishes business names without phones — you have to cross-reference with secondary directories. Some Arizona permits include the contractor's phone inline ("Sample, JOHN SMITH ROOFING LLC (602) 555-0143"). PermitGrab does this enrichment automatically, which is how we have 20,856 contractor phones on file.

The free path: get the contractor's license number from a permit, then look it up on the state licensing board's website. The paid path: PermitGrab at $149/month or start with 14-day Pro trial.

What's the catch?

Two real ones. (1) Not every permit has a contractor field — Washington DC, Boston, and a few others only capture the licensed individual's name, not the business. The PermitGrab city pages flag which cities have contractor coverage. (2) Some jurisdictions still aren't digitized — Tampa's Accela portal requires a per-permit detail-page scrape; older Memphis permits aren't online at all. About 85% of US population is covered by digital permit feeds today; the other 15% is paper-only.

If you're doing meaningful contractor outreach across multiple cities, the tradeoff is clear: 10-20 hours of portal-hunting per month to do it yourself, or $149/month to have it pre-cleaned and updated daily.

Get the Full Contractor Search Database

Every contractor. Every permit. Every violation. Every property owner. Updated daily.

Start Free Trial — $149/mo Browse all cities →