Free building permit checker

The free permit checker runs Permit Advisor, the same tool that suggests permits inside Permitful, without an account. Enter a US project's address and type, and optionally its size and a description of the work, and it lists the permits the project needs or likely needs, the agency that issues each one, and the official city, county and state pages it found them on. Save the check as a free project to see every permit it found, including ones that might apply, and to track each one to approval.

It searches only official government sites for the project's city and county, so its answers come from the agencies themselves, and it links the pages behind each permit so you can check them. Requirements still depend on details only the agency can confirm, like the site's zoning or the final design, so treat the list as a starting point and confirm it with the agency before you apply. A description of the work gives better results: details like a new kitchen, demolition or a historic district change which permits apply.

A general AI chatbot answers from what it remembers, or from whatever it finds on the open web, including permit services and blogs. Permit Advisor searches only official government sites for your project's city and county, picks each permit from Permitful's catalog of permit types instead of inventing names (anything else it spots is listed separately, for you to check with the agency), tells you which agency issues it, and links the official pages it's based on. That matters most outside big cities: in our tests, the same AI answering from memory alone missed the main permit or named agencies that don't exist for small towns and county areas, and searching official sites found them. The permits you choose go straight into your project to track, with their standard milestones if you leave that option on. As with any research, confirm them with the agency before you apply.

Yes. Anyone can run 3 checks a day without an account. A free Permitful account adds 3 Permit Advisor runs a day of its own, saved straight into your projects, and Pro runs it as often as you like.

The details you enter are sent to our search provider and to OpenAI to find the permits; searches use only the city, state and county, never the street address or your description's own words. We keep the check for 30 days so you can save it to an account, with a one-way hash of your IP address (never the address itself) that limits how many checks you can run, and then delete it. Leave names and contact details out of the description.