Privacy Policy

The short version

PermitBase is a free, informational guide to building-permit requirements, operated by Elevated Technologies LLC, a Utah limited liability company. We don't sell your data, we don't run advertising trackers, and we collect the bare minimum needed to run the site and send the updates you ask for.

What we collect

• Your email address — only if you submit it through one of our “Notify me” forms. We use it solely to send permit-related updates. We never sell or rent it.
• Checklist tool account data — if you sign in to save a permit checklist, we store your email address, a securely hashed password (we never store or see it in plain text), a session token, the jurisdiction/permit types you selected, and the checklist we generated for you. Checklists are free. If you subscribe to Property Access, Stripe handles your payment directly — we store only the Stripe customer and subscription IDs needed to know your plan is active, never your card number. If you describe your project in your own words to help us suggest permit types, that description is sent to Cloudflare's AI service to classify it; we don't store the text of your description ourselves afterward.
• Support chat messages — the in-app support chat was removed on 17 August 2026 and no longer collects anything. Messages logged while it was running (tied to a chat session identifier, not your account) are still being deleted on the 90-day schedule we committed to, so the last of them clear by 15 November 2026.
• Anonymous usage analytics — we use two privacy-first tools, Umami and Vercel Web Analytics. Neither uses cookies nor collects personally identifiable information. They tell us which pages are useful, not who you are.
• Standard server logs — our host (Vercel) keeps routine request logs (such as IP address and browser type) to operate and secure the site.

Property Access data

We collect and make searchable property-level permit history through Property Access (a separate paid product, see Property Access Data Terms): street address, permit number, permit type, work description, status, issue date, and project valuation — all published by the issuing jurisdiction's own public permit portal. A small share of records (about 3%) also carry an applicant name where the portal publishes one. This data is shared only with paying Property Access subscribers and never sold to data brokers or used for advertising on this site.

If your information appears in this data, you can request it be removed by contacting contact@permitbase.app with your name, the affected jurisdiction, and the permit number involved, or via the opt-out process described in our Property Access Data Terms. Removal takes effect immediately and retroactively across all past and future access to Property Access. One exception, stated because the previous wording did not survive checking: the original records-request responses we obtain from each jurisdiction — the spreadsheets and PDFs they send us — are kept in internal version control, where a removal cannot be applied by simply deleting a value. Those files are not published, not part of Property Access, and not served to anyone; removing your data from them is a manual process we will carry out on request, and it is slower than the automatic removal above. The same records remain public at the issuing jurisdiction either way, since that is where we obtained them. To keep a removal in force we must remember that it was requested: we retain the name, jurisdiction and permit number you give us in a suppression list, and re-apply it automatically after every data refresh. Without that record, the next time we re-import from the jurisdiction your details would simply come back. That list is not published, not part of Property Access, and used for nothing else. We also keep a log of removal requests — the details you submit, the outcome, and the IP address the request came from — so that misuse of the removal form can be detected and undone. The form needs no account and asks for no proof of identity, which is deliberate, and that log is what makes it safe to leave open.

Service providers

We rely on a few third parties to deliver the site. Each only receives the data needed for its function:

• Buttondown — email list management. If you subscribe, it stores your email, which form you used, and the IP address you submitted from, which Buttondown uses to screen the list for bots. The “get an expediter” form also sends the jurisdiction and permit type of the page you were on, and whatever you typed in the project box.
• Umami — anonymous, cookieless analytics.
• Vercel — website hosting and delivery, and anonymous cookieless analytics.
• Stripe — payment processing for Property Access subscriptions (handles your card details directly; we never see them).
• Cloudflare — hosts our checklist tool's backend and database. Its Workers AI service classifies a project description you enter into likely permit types.
• Resend — sends account emails (email verification, password reset).

Your choices

Every email we send includes a one-click unsubscribe link, and you can unsubscribe at any time. To ask what data we hold about you, or to have it deleted, email us at contact@permitbase.app and we'll take care of it.

Changes to this policy

If we change how we handle data, we'll update this page and the “last updated” date above.