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Search business licences

GET/licence

Parameters

ParameterTypeDescription
municipalitystringoptionalFilter to one city by its slug, e.g. 'new_westminster', 'toronto', 'north_vancouver_city'.Exact match. The dataset's /coverage endpoint lists the valid slugs. 'city' is accepted as an alias.
qstringoptionalFull-text search across the indexed fields of the record, e.g. q=roofing or q="Iron Hill".Matches business, contractor and project names, the address, the city and the permit or licence number, on every plan including free. It does not match a person's name: these datasets carry business records only. Space-separated words require all terms ("deck addition"). Use OR to match any term ("pool OR spa"), quotes for an exact phrase ("secondary suite"), and a leading minus to exclude ("renovation -interior").
contractorstringoptionalFilter permits by the firm that pulled them.A whole name is matched exactly against the normalized contractor name and is indexed; a fragment falls back to a substring across the contractor, company and builder fields. Cities file the same firm under several spellings, so the normalized form is the one that groups them.
neighbourhoodstringoptionalFilter by neighbourhood (partial match).Matches whichever of neighborhood, neighbourhood or community the city publishes; Calgary calls it community.
statusstringoptionalPermits: the normalized status (issued, in_review, completed, expired, cancelled, unknown), same as status_canonical.Major projects: proposed, under_construction, complete, on_hold, cancelled. Business licences: the status the city publishes, e.g. APPROVED, case-insensitive. Other datasets: the status as the city publishes it.
is_activebooleanoptionalBusiness licences: true returns only currently active licences, false only inactive ones.Most licence records are historical, so this is usually what you want.
is_openingbooleanoptionalBusiness licences: true returns only business openings, meaning the first licence this business ever held in this city.Renewals reuse the name and are excluded. Pair with opened_from to get the businesses that opened in a period.
preceded_by_permitbooleanoptionalBusiness licences: true returns only openings that had a building permit at the same address in the two years before they opened, meaning the fit-out is on record. false returns openings that took space needing no work.
opened_fromstringoptionalBusiness licences: earliest opening date, YYYY-MM-DD.Filters on when the business was first licensed here, not on when this particular licence was issued.
opened_tostringoptionalBusiness licences: latest opening date, YYYY-MM-DD.
citystringoptionalAlias for municipality.
issued_afterstringoptionalFilter by date >= YYYY-MM-DD (issued_date).Aliases: date_from, date_after
issued_beforestringoptionalFilter by date <= YYYY-MM-DD.Aliases: date_to, date_before
latnumberoptionalLatitude for proximity search.Send with lng.
lngnumberoptionalLongitude for proximity search.Send with lat.
radius_kmnumberoptionalRadius in km, 0.1 to 25.Optional: lat and lng with no radius search 1 km around the point. The radius actually applied is returned as radius_km in the response, so a default is never silent. For every record at one street address rather than everything near it, use /property.
sort_bystringoptionalSort field: date (the record's own date, e.g. issued_date for permits) or value (the field value_min reads).
sort_orderstringoptionalSort order: asc or desc
limitintegeroptionalRecords per page, 1 to 500.Free-tier keys are capped lower; the cap applied is the `count` in the response.
offsetintegeroptionalRecords to skip. Fine for jumping to a known page;use `cursor` to walk a whole result set, because offset re-reads everything it skips and shifts when new records arrive.
cursorstringoptionalPagination cursor from next_cursor in a previous response.Use instead of offset for deep pagination.

Request

curl --request GET \
  --url 'https://api.builddata.ca/licence' \
  --header 'X-API-Key: YOUR_API_KEY'
import requests

url = "https://api.builddata.ca/licence"
headers = {"X-API-Key": "YOUR_API_KEY"}
resp = requests.get(url, headers=headers)
print(resp.json())
const res = await fetch("https://api.builddata.ca/licence", {
  headers: {
    "X-API-Key": "YOUR_API_KEY",
  },
});
const data = await res.json();
console.log(data);
<?php
$ch = curl_init("https://api.builddata.ca/licence");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, [
    "X-API-Key: YOUR_API_KEY",
]);
echo curl_exec($ch);
require "net/http"
require "uri"

uri = URI("https://api.builddata.ca/licence")
req = Net::HTTP::Get.new(uri)
req["X-API-Key"] = "YOUR_API_KEY"
res = Net::HTTP.start(uri.hostname, uri.port, use_ssl: true) { |h| h.request(req) }
puts res.body
package main

import (
    "fmt"
    "io"
    "net/http"
)

func main() {
    req, _ := http.NewRequest("GET", "https://api.builddata.ca/licence", nil)
    req.Header.Add("X-API-Key", "YOUR_API_KEY")
    res, _ := http.DefaultClient.Do(req)
    defer res.Body.Close()
    body, _ := io.ReadAll(res.Body)
    fmt.Println(string(body))
}
import java.net.URI;
import java.net.http.*;

HttpRequest req = HttpRequest.newBuilder()
    .uri(URI.create("https://api.builddata.ca/licence"))
    .header("X-API-Key", "YOUR_API_KEY")
    .build();
HttpResponse<String> res = HttpClient.newHttpClient()
    .send(req, HttpResponse.BodyHandlers.ofString());
System.out.println(res.body());

Example response

{
  "entity_type": "permit",
  "count": 1,
  "offset": 0,
  "results": [
    {
      "record_id": "24 223023 PLB:00",
      "municipality": "toronto",
      "lat": 43.65401,
      "lng": -79.42376,
      "work": "Building Permit Related(PS)",
      "status": "Permit Issued",
      "address": "865 COLLEGE ST",
      "description": "Plumbing - INTERIOR ALTERNATION OF 3RD FLOOR SUITE",
      "issued_date": "2025-01-29",
      "permit_type": "Plumbing(PS)",
      "application_date": "2024-10-07",
      "construction_value": null
    }
  ]
}

Response fields

One licence record. Measured over 6,000 live records sampled across municipalities. Percentages say how often each field is populated: sources publish different columns, so a field missing from a given record is normal rather than an error.

FieldTypeDescription
addressstringPopulated in 90% of sampled records.
business_namestringPopulated in 94% of sampled records.
categorystringPopulated in 99% of sampled records.
category_canonicalstringLicence category mapped onto a shared vocabulary. Always present.
citystringAlways present.
expiry_datestringPopulated in 28% of sampled records.
fetched_atstringWhen Nimbus last ingested this record. Bookkeeping, not source data. Always present.
first_licensed_atstringPopulated in 94% of sampled records.
geocode_failedbooleanPopulated in 13% of sampled records.
is_activebooleanAlways present.
is_contractorbooleanAlways present.
issued_datestringPopulated in 60% of sampled records.
last_updatedstringPopulated in 17% of sampled records.
latnumberPopulated in 40% of sampled records.
legal_namestringPopulated in 21% of sampled records.
licence_numberstringPopulated in 87% of sampled records.
licence_typestringPopulated in 87% of sampled records.
lngnumberPopulated in 40% of sampled records.
municipalitystringCity slug. Call /{entity_type}/coverage for every slug in this dataset. Always present.
neighbourhoodstringPopulated in 50% of sampled records.
normalized_addressstringAddress normalized for joining the same property across datasets. Populated in 89% of sampled records.
normalized_business_namestringBusiness name normalized for joining the same business across datasets. Populated in 94% of sampled records.
opened_onstringPopulated in 54% of sampled records.
opened_on_precisionstringPopulated in 54% of sampled records.
phonestringPopulated in 27% of sampled records.
postal_codestringPopulated in 43% of sampled records.
preceded_by_permitbooleanTrue when a building permit at this address preceded the licence. Populated in 50% of sampled records.
provincestringPopulated in 97% of sampled records.
record_idstringStable identifier for this record. Pass it to the /{entity_type}/{record_id} endpoint. Always present.
statusstringAlways present.
16 more fields published by only one or two cities

Present on under 10% of records. Useful when you are working with a specific city, not something to rely on across the dataset.

FieldTypePopulated
area_m2string3.3%
cancel_datestring0.0%
descriptionstring3.3%
emailstring3.1%
is_openingboolean6.4%
licence_yearstring3.3%
months_permit_to_opennumber8.6%
naics_codestring3.3%
num_employeesstring3.3%
number_of_employeesnumber3.3%
operation_start_datestring3.3%
permit_lookback_datestring8.6%
permit_lookback_typestring8.6%
permit_lookback_valuestring4.8%
wardstring3.2%
zonestring3.3%

Errors

Every error returns {"detail": "…"}, a sentence naming what was wrong and, where there is one, the fix.

StatusWhen
400The request is understood but cannot be served as asked, e.g. offset above 9500, or cursor combined with sort_by=value. The message names the fix.
403Missing or invalid API key.
404No such endpoint, or no record with that id.
422A parameter is invalid: an unknown city slug, an impossible date, a limit above 500, an unrecognised sort field, or a misspelled parameter name. The message names the parameter and, where there is one, the nearest valid value.
429Rate limit or plan quota exceeded.
500Unexpected server error.
504The query took too long. Narrow it with a municipality or a date range.
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