Montana building permit data
Markets on record
2Permits on record
6,116Available
2Buy a market
Weekly feed. Every permit in the market, every week. The first delivery carries the last 13 weeks, then it arrives every Sunday.
Full history. Everything we hold for the market in one file, bought once.
Files include every trade and work type. Filter to yours in one click.
Every file carries the same 9 columns on every row: the market, the permit number, the issue date, the work type and trade, the source feed's own class, and where the row came from.
Helena, MT
Available3,434
permits on record, through 2026-08-09
Weekly feed available when this market clears our completeness bar.
Plus addresses on 98.7%, contractor names on 95.0%, declared values on 24.7%, ZIPs on 98.7%, measured across every row we hold.
Declared value is on 27% of recent rows.
History runs to 2026-08-09 and stops there, so that is what the file holds.
Great Falls, MT
Available2,682
permits on record, through 2026-08-07
Weekly feed available when this market clears our completeness bar.
Plus addresses on 99.8%, contractor names on 84.7%, declared values on 15.5%, ZIPs on 99.8%, measured across every row we hold.
Declared value is on 16% of recent rows.
History runs to 2026-08-07 and stops there, so that is what the file holds.
Get a Montana sample
Pick the markets you want to see, and we will email you real rows from them. Markets below our completeness bar can still be sampled; they are marked so you know before you look.
Every number here is computed from what we hold. See exactly what we cover.
Markets and completeness
None of these markets clears our completeness bar yet, so all of them are sample only. What each one is short of is on its row below.
Every figure is computed from what we actually hold. A market with no permits on record is not listed.
| Market | Permits | Recent | Availability |
|---|---|---|---|
Helena, MT
CompletenessAddress 98.7% all timeContractor 95.0% all timeDeclared value 24.7% all timeZIP 98.7% all timeData since 2025-07
|
3,434 | through 2026-08-09 | Available |
Great Falls, MT
CompletenessAddress 99.8% all timeContractor 84.7% all timeDeclared value 15.5% all timeZIP 99.8% all timeData since 2025-07
|
2,682 | through 2026-08-07 | Available |
Reference
What a feed includes, the exact columns, where the rows come from, and what we will not claim. Open what you need.
What a feed includes
A feed is the underlying permit records for the markets you name, delivered on a schedule you set, as one row per permit with the columns listed below. It is the same data behind every number on this page, without the product wrapped around it: you get the file and use it inside the terms you agree to. For Montana that means every market listed above, or any subset of them, with the completeness shown per market rather than promised in general.
What every file includes, 18 columns
| Column | Type | What it holds |
|---|---|---|
| city_slug | text | Our stable identifier for the jurisdiction that issued the permit. |
| city_name | text | Display name of that jurisdiction. |
| permit_number | text | The issuing authority's own permit identifier, verbatim. |
| issue_date | date | Date the permit was issued, as published by the source. |
| address | text | Site address of the work, as published. |
| zip | text | Site ZIP. Published by the feed where available, otherwise derived from the address by the Census geocoder. zip_source records which. |
| latitude | text | Census geocoder latitude, present only for confident address matches. |
| longitude | text | Census geocoder longitude, present only for confident address matches. |
| permit_type | text | Work type axis: RENOVATION, REMODEL, ADDITION or REPAIR. Null when the row is a specialty trade instead. |
| trade | text | Trade axis: ROOFING, ELECTRICAL, HVAC, PLUMBING, SOLAR or POOL. Null when the row is a work type instead. |
| source_class | text | The source feed's own work class, verbatim and upper cased. The closest thing in the row to the issuing authority's own taxonomy. |
| category | text | TRADE when a specialty trade was detected, RESIDENTIAL when a work type was detected. Not a building occupancy flag. |
| declared_cost | integer | Applicant declared job value in whole dollars. An estimate supplied at application, never an actual cost. |
| contractor | text | Contractor of record, as published. |
| contractor_license | text | Contractor licence or registration number where the source publishes one. |
| owner | text | Owner of record, as published. In the files you buy only, never shown on a page, in an email, or in the dashboard. |
| ward | text | Ward or council district where the source publishes one. |
| source | text | Where the row came from: straight from the city, the city's open data, or an aggregated feed. |
Where these rows come from
Direct. We pull the issuing authority's own publication ourselves, on our own schedule. Fastest to reflect a change at the source, and the shape of the file is whatever that authority publishes.
City open data. The jurisdiction publishes its permits as an open dataset under terms that grant reuse, and we ingest it under those terms. Every one of these was read by a person before it was switched on, and the licence is recorded per city.
Aggregated feed. The records reach us through a permit data aggregator that has already gathered them from the issuing authority. Broadest reach and the most normalisation applied before we see it, which is why the source column tells you which rows came this way.
One row per permit, not one row per update. A permit that is amended, re-inspected or re-issued does not become a second record: rows are collapsed on the issuing authority's own permit number within a jurisdiction, and where two sources both describe the same permit we keep one and compare the rest. What that means for you is that a count of rows is a count of permits, so you can bill, forecast and prospect off it without deduplicating anything yourself.
The honest part
Building permits carry no phone numbers and no email addresses, so no honest permit feed includes them. How complete each field is varies by jurisdiction because publication varies by jurisdiction: some authorities publish contractor names and some do not, and where one does not you get an explicit note rather than an empty column you might mistake for a bad extraction. Every completeness figure on this page is computed from what we actually hold.
Why is a market sample only?
We only sell markets with complete data. Every figure on this page is computed from what we actually hold, and you see exactly what a market carries before you pay. Anything short of complete is sample only until it clears the bar.
Custom feeds and embedded use are quoted per deal. Email us and a person will answer.
Our coverage and field fill, every city / All permit data feeds