Introducing BuildData — A Unified API for Canadian Building Permits

Canadian building permit data is scattered across dozens of municipal open data portals, each with its own schema, format, and API. Toronto uses CKAN. Calgary and Edmonton use Socrata. Vancouver, Ottawa, Mississauga, and Halifax use ArcGIS. Some cities publish Excel files. None of them agree on field names, date formats, or permit classifications.

If you're building software that needs permit data from more than one city, you're writing a custom integration for each one. That's what we set out to fix.

What BuildData does

BuildData is a REST API that normalizes building permit data from 17 Canadian cities into a single, consistent schema. Every record has the same fields regardless of which city it came from: permit type, work description, address, issued date, status, and municipality.

On top of normalization, every record is geocoded with latitude and longitude coordinates using Statistics Canada's Open Database of Addresses. You can search by proximity — find all permits within 5 km of a given point.

Coverage

We currently cover 17 cities across 8 provinces, totalling over 2 million building permit records:

• Ontario: Toronto, Ottawa, Mississauga, Brampton, Hamilton, Kitchener
• Quebec: Montreal, Quebec City, Laval
• Alberta: Calgary, Edmonton
• British Columbia: Vancouver, Victoria
• Manitoba: Winnipeg
• Nova Scotia: Halifax
• Saskatchewan: Regina
• New Brunswick: Saint John

Data is refreshed daily from each city's open data portal.

Key features

• Normalized schema: canonical permit_type and status fields across all cities
• Geocoded: lat/lng on every record via Statistics Canada's address database
• Full-text search: search across work descriptions, addresses, and permit types
• Proximity search: find permits within a radius of any lat/lng point
• Stats endpoint: aggregate permit volumes by type, city, or time period
• Daily updates: automated pipelines pull from each portal every 24 hours

Who it's for

BuildData is built for developers and companies working in:

• Proptech and real estate: track new construction, renovation trends, and development pipelines
• Construction intelligence: monitor competitor activity, identify upcoming projects
• Mortgage and insurance: verify renovations, assess property condition, flag unpermitted work
• Urban planning and research: analyse construction patterns, density trends, and housing supply

Get started

BuildData is available on RapidAPI with a free tier (100 requests/day). No credit card required.