About TradeHound
TradeHound is the Zillow of building permits — we aggregate publicly-filed municipal permit records and turn them into clean, searchable contractor leads.
The insight
Every time a homeowner files a building permit, they're signalling that they're about to hire a contractor. A roofing permit means a roofer is needed. A pool permit means a pool company is about to get a call.
The problem: this data is buried in municipal open-data portals, spread across dozens of different APIs, in inconsistent formats, often in multiple languages. Nobody makes it easy to search.
TradeHound digs it out, normalises it, and surfaces it as a clean searchable feed — filtered by your trade, your city, the permit type, the estimated project value, and when it was filed.
The contractor who calls first wins the job. We make sure it's you.
What we stand for
Transparent by default
All our source data is publicly attributable. We ingest from open municipal data portals, and our public API is freely accessible to developers and AI systems.
Speed wins leads
Permits are ingested nightly. A homeowner who pulls a permit today can be on your phone tomorrow — before most contractors even know the job exists.
Built to scale globally
The data model supports any country, province, or city from day one. We start with Toronto because that's where the first live adapter is. Everything else is addable with one file.
Open to builders
Our public API at /api/v1/permits serves structured permit data to developers, researchers, and AI systems — no key required for basic access.
Data sources
We ingest from official municipal open data portals. Every record is attributable.
Toronto, ON
Toronto Open Data CKANVancouver, BC
City of Vancouver Open DataCalgary, AB
The City of Calgary Open DataOttawa, ON
Open OttawaWant your city added? Let us know or check the public API.
How we make money
Contractor subscriptions
Monthly plans from $199 CAD. Unlimited permit alerts, trade filters, and CSV export.
Pay-per-export
$5 CAD per record. Build a targeted list for any city, trade, date range — buy exactly what you need.
Direct mail (coming soon)
Click 'Mail this address' on any permit to send a physical postcard to the homeowner via Lob.com. From $1.99 per card.
Ready to find your next job?
Browse permits free. No account required to search — create one to set up trade alerts and export leads.
Questions? [email protected]