Data sources
PermitIndex is built entirely on free, publicly available data from the City of Toronto. This page describes what we use, how we transform it, and what the licence terms are.
Primary dataset
- Dataset
- Building Permits — Active
- Publisher
- City of Toronto Open Data
- Refresh cadence
- Daily (pulled via CKAN datastore_search API, no API key required)
- Backfill
- Active permits (~213k records as of v1 launch)
What we store and display
- Street address (used for geocoding to lat/long; the geocoded coordinates are stored and cached)
- Estimated construction value (numeric only — sentinel values are stripped to null and shown as "Value not disclosed")
- Work type and description (used to classify permits by trade)
- Permit type and status
- Issue date, application date
- Geocoded lat/long (derived; cached; never re-geocoded)
- Trade classification (derived by us from the work-type fields)
What we do not store or display
- Contractor or builder names (dropped at ingest; Toronto’s BUILDER_NAME field is ~95% blank)
- Owner or applicant names
- The raw sentinel string “DO NOT UPDATE OR DELETE THIS INFO FIELD” — stripped to null
Licence
The Toronto Building Permits dataset is published under the Open Government Licence – Toronto, which grants a worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, non-exclusive licence to use, copy, modify, publish, adapt, distribute, and commercially exploit the information — conditional on attribution.
Required attribution
Contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence – Toronto.
Geocoding
Toronto permit records contain street addresses but no coordinates. We geocode each address to lat/long using the Google Geocoding API. Results are cached permanently — an address is never re-geocoded once resolved. Permits that cannot be geocoded appear in list view but not on the map.
Data freshness
The pipeline runs daily (GitHub Actions cron). Free accounts see permits filed 7 or more days ago. Pro and Business accounts see permits as soon as they are ingested (typically same-day as the City portal update).
Takedown requests
If you believe a specific address should be suppressed from our index, email privacy@permitindex.ca with the address and your reason. We will review and respond within 10 business days.