PermitPipeline vs Shovels.ai

Side by side

Comparison last verified August 1, 2026 from public information. Products and pricing change; check the other provider's site for current details.

Shovels pricing

Shovels publishes its pricing structure in its own documentation, which is more than most of this category does. As of August 1, 2026 it reads: a free tier to start, then Shovels Online and the Shovels API both beginning at $599 per month, then an Enterprise Data License priced by quote through their sales team.

Read from Shovels' published documentation on August 1, 2026. Check their site for current figures.

The number worth noticing: Shovels starts at $599 a month, and $599 a month is PermitPipeline's top tier. Same figure, different purchase. At $599, Shovels sells nationwide data access. At $599, PermitPipeline sells a Team plan for one metro with scoring, tracking, and contact research included. If you need national data, $599 to Shovels is good value and PermitPipeline cannot do it at any price. If you need four people working one city's filings on Monday morning, the comparison runs the other way.

PermitPipeline's entry tier is $149 a month, which is under a quarter of the listed Shovels entry. That gap is not a claim about quality. It reflects that one product covers a country and the other covers four metros.

The Shovels API

The API is the product most people mean when they search for Shovels. It gives programmatic access to permit and contractor records, with real-time queries and a listed allowance of 10,000 or more calls a month at the entry tier. Around it sit a CLI, a GIS product, a data dictionary, and a public coverage dashboard. The documentation is thorough and the coverage dashboard tells you what you are getting before you pay, which is unusual and worth crediting.

PermitPipeline has no public API. That is a real gap and worth saying plainly rather than working around. If your requirement is to pull permit records into your own system, your own model, or your own product, PermitPipeline is the wrong tool and Shovels is a straightforward answer. Searching for an API and landing on a lead product is a mismatch, and the honest thing is to say so on the page rather than after you have paid.

The Shovels database

Nationwide permit records with historical depth, joined to contractor and license data. Their own July 2026 case study describes standardized contractor license data across 37 states used for license verification at scale. The customers they publish tend to be marketplaces, lenders, suppliers, and energy companies, which tells you the shape of the thing: it is infrastructure other products get built on.

PermitPipeline is not a database and does not try to be. It reads public filings in four jurisdictions, grades each one for contractor fit, and presents the result as a working list. There is no query language and nothing to integrate. The overlap between the two products is the raw material, not the job.

Where Shovels.ai is stronger

Breadth and programmability. If you need permit history across the whole country, want to join permit data to your own models, or are building a product on top of permits, Shovels.ai's dataset and API are the right shape. Its coverage dashboard and data dictionary are genuinely good resources.

Where PermitPipeline is different

PermitPipeline compresses the same raw material — public permit filings — into a decision: which projects filed in your market are worth pursuing this week. Grading runs daily per metro, tuned to contractor fit rather than generic activity, and the app carries the follow-through. No integration, no queries, no sales call: public pricing and a trial.

How to choose

Want leads, not a dataset: start with construction leads from permit filings. Building something with permit data, or working far outside our four metros: Shovels.ai. The products overlap less than they appear to.

Related: PermitPipeline vs Construction Monitor · PermitPipeline vs Dodge · coverage & data dictionary.

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