Shovels | The API for building permits and building contractors

Read our case studies

How we're different

Our data is Shovel-ready

We make building permits easy to understand and use for market research, go-to-market, and sales. No data engineering required.

Fanatical customer service: We're a small company with a big heart. We're here to help you succeed.
Constant innovation: We ship fast. We ship often. We ship quality. We use the latest technology to make your life easier.
Transparency: We're not afraid to show you exactly where our coverage gaps are. We're the only company that's fully transparent about our data.
Residents and employees: We go beyond just the properties and contractors. We also include residents and employees with contact information.
Helpful documentation: Our documentation is comprehensive and easy to understand. We keep our API documentation and data dictionary up to date.
AI-powered from the start: We run hundreds of millions of records through our AI to make sure our data is accurate.
Pricing for everyone: We work with all budgets. Our customers range from climate and proptech startups to publicly-traded companies.
Multiple interfaces: We're more than just a data provider. We're both a data platform and a software company.

From the blog

We write about building permits, contractors, and the future of the built environment.

Jun 23, 2025 Company

Integrating Parcel and Permit Data in Partnership with Regrid

Shovels announces a strategic partnership with Regrid to integrate parcel data with building permit information. This collaboration adds Regrid's unique parcel identifiers to Shovels' nationwide permit database, enabling customers to seamlessly join parcel and permit datasets for enhanced site selection, market analysis, and risk assessment. The partnership enhances location intelligence capabilities for mutual customers like ParGo AI, providing comprehensive property development insights.

Betty Wan

VP of Growth

Jun 10, 2025 Company

June 2025 Newsletter

Shovels June 25 Newsletter: Announcing our $5M raise led by Base10 and the launch of Project Wolverine, our self-healing scraper infrastructure for nationwide daily permit updates.

Ryan Buckley

CEO

Jun 10, 2025 Company

Shovels Raises $5M Seed Round to Scale AI-Powered Building Permit Platform

Shovels announces a $5M seed round led by Base10 Partners, bringing total funding to $6.5M. The company has built an AI-powered platform that processes 170M+ building permits across thousands of jurisdictions, serving customers from startups to public companies. The funding will accelerate expansion of their government data infrastructure, enhance AI capabilities, and extend coverage into additional datasets beyond building permits.