PermitBriefly vs Shovels
Fast answer: Shovels sells nationwide building permit data at $599/mo (Basic) and $999/mo (Pro), priced as published on its own comparison page. PermitBriefly covers one county, Santa Clara County, at a flat $149/mo Weekly Brief, $299/mo Exclusive Seat, or $750/mo Supplier tier, with 7,134 permits across 7 cities refreshed weekly. If your work is in this county, the local product costs a quarter of the national one and shows its counts in public. If you work nationally, Shovels is the tool built for that.
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
Shovels is a national permit and contractor data platform: nationwide building permits delivered through an API, a web app, a command line tool, and warehouse shares, with contractor profiles and planning data attached. It is not a local brief; it sells breadth across the whole country.
PermitBriefly is Santa Clara County permit intelligence for contractors and suppliers who work here: 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 national data, and it publishes nothing outside the seven cities it covers.
The side by side
| PermitBriefly | Shovels | |
|---|---|---|
| Published price | $149/mo Weekly Brief; $299/mo Exclusive Seat; $750/mo Supplier | Free plan; Basic $599/mo; Pro $999/mo; Enterprise by agreement |
| Pricing model | Flat monthly price for the county, no per-record charges | Monthly plans with one shared usage balance; one usage unit is one record retrieved or exported |
| Coverage | 7 cities in Santa Clara County, CA | Nationwide |
| Records in the current snapshot | 7,134 permits, collected November 2, 2026 | Not published as a single county count |
| Refresh | Weekly, every Monday | Per its published product materials |
| Delivery | Weekly brief, searchable dashboard, CSV export, one-off $450 Permit Pre-Check | API, web app, CLI, warehouse shares (Snowflake, BigQuery, Databricks) |
| Best for | Contractors and suppliers whose work is in Santa Clara County | Data teams and multi-state operators who need permits everywhere |
| Not for | Anyone who needs permits outside the seven covered cities | A one-county shop paying for 49 states it never works in |
Prices checked November 3 to 4, 2026. Shovels prices are as published on Shovels own comparison page, dated September 2, 2026.
Our own numbers, in public
This is the part a national platform cannot copy at county depth: the actual count, by city, from the snapshot collected November 2, 2026.
| 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. The Weekly Brief at $149/mo covers your territory for a quarter of the Shovels Basic price, and the public city pages let you check the depth before you pay anything.
You sell into many states, or your team pipes permits into a warehouse. Shovels. Nationwide coverage, an API, and warehouse shares are what its $599 and $999 tiers buy, and PermitBriefly does not offer them.
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. Compare that against a national Pro seat at $999/mo bought for one county's worth of use.
The obvious objection: Shovels has a free plan
It does, and if a free look at national data answers your question, take it. The real choice starts when the free plan runs out: $599/mo for nationwide data, or $149/mo for the one county where your crews actually work. Breadth is worth paying for when you use it. When you do not, it is the most expensive line on the page. Judge both by the same test: pull the permits for your own market and count what you get. Our counts are published above, city by city, so you can run that test on us without signing up.
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. Shovels prices are quoted exactly as published on the Shovels comparison page (shovels.ai/compare/construction-monitor, page dated September 2, 2026), fetched November 3 to 4, 2026. 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, coverage, and delivery as of the dates above. It does not test either product's data accuracy against the other; the city pages on this site are the checkable evidence for ours.
Questions
Is PermitBriefly cheaper than Shovels?
For Santa Clara County coverage, yes: the Weekly Brief is $149/mo against Shovels Basic at $599/mo as published. Shovels covers the whole country for that price, so the honest comparison is price against the territory you actually work.
Does PermitBriefly have an API like Shovels?
No. PermitBriefly delivers a weekly brief, a searchable dashboard, and CSV exports. If your team needs permits piped through an API or into a data warehouse, that is Shovels territory and this page will not pretend otherwise.
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.
What does the Permit Pre-Check add?
It is a separate one-off service: a planned project checked against the city's current permit requirements for a flat $450 before you file. It is not a subscription and it is not part of the Weekly Brief.
Keep exploring
PermitBriefly vs Construction Monitor · 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, shovels.ai/compare/construction-monitor (dated September 2, 2026, fetched November 3 to 4, 2026). PermitBriefly snapshot of public city permit records, collected November 2, 2026.