PermitBriefly vs ConstructConnect
Fast answer: These two sell different jobs. ConstructConnect sells commercial project intelligence for bidding: researched public and private projects, bid documents, and bidder lists, with plans starting at $129/mo for Starter and from $199/mo for Professional, as published on the vendor's own blog. PermitBriefly sells filed building permits in one county: 7,134 permits across 7 Santa Clara County cities, refreshed weekly, at $149/mo Weekly Brief, $299/mo Exclusive Seat, or $750/mo Supplier. If you bid commercial projects, that is ConstructConnect's job. If you need to see what actually got filed in your county this week, that is this one.
Get the free Santa Clara County permit sample
One email with five recent permits from this week's county snapshot, with company names and reported values where the city published them. It is a worked sample of the data behind this comparison.
Form not loading? Email support@permitbriefly.com and ask for it by name.
What each product is, and is not
ConstructConnect Project Intelligence is a platform for finding and bidding commercial work: researched public and private projects, bid documents, bidder lists and contacts, and bundled bidding tools such as takeoff and bid management software. It is not a feed of filed residential and trade permits for one county, and it does not sell itself as one.
PermitBriefly is Santa Clara County permit intelligence: the filed building permits of seven cities, collected and cleaned every week, sold as a brief, a dashboard, and a one-off Permit Pre-Check. It is not a bidding platform: there are no bid documents, no plan rooms, and no coverage outside the seven cities.
The side by side
| PermitBriefly | ConstructConnect | |
|---|---|---|
| Published price | $149/mo Weekly Brief; $299/mo Exclusive Seat; $750/mo Supplier | Starter from $129/mo; Professional from $199/mo, as published on the vendor's blog |
| The job it sells | What got filed: local permit activity, refreshed weekly | What to bid: commercial project pipeline and bid management |
| Coverage | 7 cities in Santa Clara County, CA | Researched projects across its covered markets |
| Records in the current snapshot | 7,134 filed permits, collected November 2, 2026 | Project database; no county-level filed-permit count published |
| Refresh | Weekly, every Monday | Ongoing project research, per the vendor |
| Delivery | Weekly brief, searchable dashboard, CSV export, one-off $450 Permit Pre-Check | Project search, bid documents, bidder lists, takeoff and bid tools |
| Best for | Local contractors and suppliers tracking filed work in this county | General contractors and subs building a commercial bid pipeline |
| Not for | Estimators who need bid documents and plan rooms | A local trade contractor who needs this week's filed permits, not a bid pipeline |
Prices checked November 3 to 4, 2026, against the vendor's own published pages named in Methodology.
Our own numbers, in public
Filed permits, by city, from the snapshot collected November 2, 2026. This is the dataset the Weekly Brief and the dashboard are built on.
| City | Permits in snapshot |
|---|---|
| San Jose | 5,403 |
| Saratoga | 440 |
| Morgan Hill | 388 |
| Milpitas | 292 |
| Los Altos Hills | 269 |
| Cupertino | 176 |
| Los Gatos | 166 |
| All seven cities | 7,134 |
How to choose
You bid commercial projects and need documents, deadlines, and bidder lists. ConstructConnect. That pipeline is its product, and its Starter plan begins at $129/mo as published.
You work this county and need to know what got filed, by whom, this week. PermitBriefly. The Weekly Brief at $149/mo is a feed of filed permits across seven cities, not a bid pipeline, and the counts above are public so you can judge the depth first.
You are a supplier watching every trade in the county. The PermitBriefly Supplier tier at $750/mo covers all seven cities and every tracked trade, with the archive of past weekly snapshots.
The obvious objection: ConstructConnect Starter costs less than the Weekly Brief
On the sticker, yes: $129/mo against $149/mo. The $20 gap buys two different things. Starter buys entry into a commercial project and bidding platform, priced and built for estimators chasing bid work. The Weekly Brief buys the filed permit record of one county, refreshed every Monday, for the contractors and suppliers who sell into work that has already been permitted. If your week is spent pricing bid invitations, the cheaper sticker is the right buy. If your week is spent finding who just pulled a permit in San Jose, the sticker is not the comparison; the dataset is.
See the county data the way a subscriber does
The Weekly Brief is $149/mo and the Exclusive Seat is $299/mo, both for the seven covered cities, refreshed every Monday.
Open the dashboardPlanning one project? Get a Permit Pre-Check.
A one-off, flat-fee check of a planned project against the city's current permit requirements: $450, paid once, no subscription.
Start a Permit Pre-Check ($450)Methodology
- Prices. ConstructConnect prices are as published on the vendor's own blog (constructconnect.com/blog, January 2026 posts on Project Intelligence plans: Starter from $129/mo, Professional from $199/mo), fetched November 3 to 4, 2026. Higher ConstructConnect tiers are not priced in this page; check the vendor's pricing page for those. PermitBriefly prices are the live prices on this site.
- Counts. Permit counts are from PermitBriefly's own snapshot of public city permit records, collected November 2, 2026 and refreshed weekly. Records are deduplicated on city and permit number before counting.
- What is never published. Street addresses, property owner names, and individual permit rows stay off these public pages. They are the working data behind the subscriber dashboard.
- Scope. This page compares the job each product sells, published prices, coverage, and delivery as of the dates above. It does not score either product's data quality; the city pages on this site are the checkable evidence for ours.
Questions
Is ConstructConnect a permit data service?
It is a project intelligence and bidding platform: researched commercial projects, bid documents, and bidder lists. Filed building permits for a single county, refreshed weekly, are a different product, and that difference is the whole comparison.
Which is cheaper, PermitBriefly or ConstructConnect?
ConstructConnect Starter starts at $129/mo as published, and the PermitBriefly Weekly Brief is $149/mo. They buy different datasets, so the cheaper sticker only decides it if both products do your job, and for most buyers they do not overlap.
How many permits does PermitBriefly track?
The snapshot collected November 2, 2026 holds 7,134 permits across seven Santa Clara County cities, San Jose alone accounting for 5,403. A new snapshot lands every Monday, and the per-city counts are published on this page and the city pages.
Does PermitBriefly offer bid documents or takeoff tools?
No. There are no bid documents, plan rooms, or takeoff tools here. If that is the work, ConstructConnect is built for it; PermitBriefly covers what has been filed with the seven cities.
Keep exploring
PermitBriefly vs Shovels · PermitBriefly vs Construction Monitor · PermitBriefly vs PermitFlow · San Jose building permits · San Jose Reroof permits · Santa Clara County Building Permits: October 2026
Sources: ConstructConnect blog, constructconnect.com/blog (January 2026, fetched November 3 to 4, 2026). PermitBriefly snapshot of public city permit records, collected November 2, 2026.