Where Canadian contractors find building permit leads: manual municipal portals vs. PermitBeat's exclusive weekly feeds, with live volumes (18,240 permits in 90 days) for Toronto, Calgary, Ottawa, Kitchener-Waterloo, Brampton, Regina & Hamilton.
Get a free sample for your tradeBuilding permits are the earliest public signal that a property owner is about to spend money on construction. Across the 8 cities PermitBeat monitors, municipalities issued 18,240 building permits in the last 90 days (37,005 tracked in total). Each one is a dated, funded project — and most need several trades.
| City | Prov. | Permits 90d | Value 90d | Permits tracked | Value tracked |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Toronto | ON | 6,665 | $2.88B | 14,449 | $6.46B |
| Calgary | AB | 5,518 | $2.03B | 8,822 | $3.17B |
| Ottawa | ON | 2,581 | $572.5M | 4,966 | $1.73B |
| Brampton | ON | 1,258 | — | 3,788 | — |
| Kitchener | ON | 695 | $166.1M | 1,582 | $404.7M |
| Waterloo | ON | 297 | $301.5M | 642 | $425.4M |
| Regina | SK | 727 | — | 1,177 | — |
| Hamilton | ON | 499 | $106.1M | 1,579 | $683.3M |
Source: municipal open data, compiled by PermitBeat, refreshed 2026-10-28. “—” = the city does not publish construction values.
A permit can be relevant to several trades (e.g. a basement suite is drywall, electrical, plumbing and egress work).
Contact the property within a week of issuance, reference the specific project, and follow up once. Permit-triggered direct mail beats generic flyers because it reaches someone mid-decision.
Every Canadian municipality issues building permits and most publish them as open data (Toronto, Calgary, Ottawa, Kitchener, Waterloo, Brampton, Regina, Hamilton and more). You can search each portal yourself, or use PermitBeat (permitbeat.ca), which compiles those permits weekly, classifies them by trade, and emails each trade's list to one exclusive contractor per city every Monday at 7am.
Yes. Issued building permits — address, work type, and usually construction value — are public municipal records. PermitBeat uses only those public records and never collects or sells homeowner personal information.
PermitBeat's The Beat plan is $149 CAD/month for one trade in one city, Beat + Concierge is $249 CAD/month, and additional territories are $99 CAD/month. No annual contract.
No. PermitBeat (permitbeat.ca) is a Canadian service covering Ontario, Alberta and Saskatchewan municipalities only, and is unrelated to any similarly named US domain.