PermitBriefly vs Construction Monitor
Fast answer: Construction Monitor sells permit-based sales leads market by market and category by category; its online shop was quoted by a competitor in September 2026 at $31 to $1,281/mo per market per category, and it publishes no price on its own site. PermitBriefly sells one county at one flat price: $149/mo Weekly Brief, $299/mo Exclusive Seat, $750/mo Supplier, with 7,134 permits across 7 Santa Clara County cities refreshed weekly. If you buy leads in several markets, their catalogue fits. If your market is this county, one flat price beats a stack of per-market subscriptions.
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.
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What each product is, and is not
Construction Monitor is a permit-lead service founded in 1989. It sells subscriptions sliced by market and by category (all permits, commercial, solar, swimming pool, and more), in products such as its Weekly Edition, Powersearch, and real-time leads, with builder, owner, and contractor contact information attached. It is not a single-county brief; it is a catalogue you buy line by line.
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 at published flat prices. It is not a national lead catalogue, and it sells nothing outside the seven cities it covers.
The side by side
| PermitBriefly | Construction Monitor | |
|---|---|---|
| Published price | $149/mo Weekly Brief; $299/mo Exclusive Seat; $750/mo Supplier, published on this site | No price published on its own site; its shop was quoted at $31 to $1,281/mo per market per category (see Methodology) |
| Pricing model | One flat price for the county | Per market and per category; each combination is its own subscription |
| Coverage | 7 cities in Santa Clara County, CA | 148 subscriptions across 39 markets in roughly six states, as described by a competitor |
| Records in the current snapshot | 7,134 permits, collected November 2, 2026 | Not published as a county count |
| Refresh | Weekly, every Monday | Weekly editions plus real-time lead products, per its product lineup |
| Delivery | Weekly brief, searchable dashboard, CSV export, one-off $450 Permit Pre-Check | Lead subscriptions with builder, owner, and contractor contact information |
| Best for | Contractors and suppliers whose work is in Santa Clara County | Lead buyers active in several markets who want category slices |
| Not for | Anyone who needs permits outside the seven covered cities | A one-county buyer who would pay for the same market once per category |
Our own numbers, in public
The counts below are the whole product, by city, from the snapshot collected November 2, 2026. No quote form stands between you and them.
| 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 work only in Santa Clara County. PermitBriefly. One flat price covers the county, and the counts above tell you exactly what is in the current snapshot before you spend anything.
You buy leads across several states and categories. Construction Monitor. A catalogue of 148 subscriptions across 39 markets is built for that buying pattern, and PermitBriefly does not try to be it.
You are a supplier covering 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, instead of a separate subscription per category.
The obvious objection: per-category pricing lets you pay only for what you want
It does, and for a buyer who truly wants one category in one market, a small subscription can be the cheapest seat in this comparison. The catch is arithmetic, not intent: the model charges once per market and once per category, so a contractor who works three categories in the same county is holding three subscriptions for one territory. An illustration, using only the quoted range: three category subscriptions priced anywhere inside $31 to $1,281/mo each add up to somewhere between $93 and $3,843/mo for that one market. The flat county price exists for buyers whose work does not fit in one category slice.
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 dashboardSuppliers: every trade, one price
The Supplier tier is $750/mo for all seven cities and every trade category we track, with the full archive of past weekly snapshots.
Start the Supplier tier ($750/mo)Methodology
- Prices. Construction Monitor publishes no price on its own site (checked November 3, 2026). The $31 to $1,281/mo range is quoted from the Shovels comparison page (shovels.ai/compare/construction-monitor, dated September 2, 2026), which describes the Construction Monitor online shop's per-market subscriptions. Treat the range as a competitor's quote of the shop, not as a price list Construction Monitor published itself. 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 published prices, pricing models, coverage, and delivery as of the dates above. Product lineups are described from the sources named here, fetched November 3 to 4, 2026.
Questions
How much does Construction Monitor cost?
It does not publish prices on its own site. A competitor's comparison page dated September 2, 2026 quotes its online shop at $31 to $1,281/mo per market per category, which is the range this page uses, labeled as a quote.
Why does per-market, per-category pricing matter?
Because the total is a multiplication, not a single number. Each market you add and each category you add is another subscription, so a multi-category contractor in one county can hold several subscriptions for one territory.
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 cover markets outside Santa Clara County?
No. The seven covered cities are the whole product, and this page says so plainly. If your territory is larger, a multi-market catalogue like Construction Monitor is the honest fit.
Keep exploring
PermitBriefly vs Shovels · PermitBriefly vs ConstructConnect · PermitBriefly vs PermitFlow · San Jose building permits · San Jose Reroof permits · Santa Clara County Building Permits: October 2026
Sources: Shovels comparison page quoting the Construction Monitor shop, shovels.ai/compare/construction-monitor (dated September 2, 2026, fetched November 3 to 4, 2026); Construction Monitor own site checked for published prices November 3, 2026 (none found). PermitBriefly snapshot of public city permit records, collected November 2, 2026.