What PermitProof can and cannot tell you.
The 10 questions insurance professionals ask most, answered plainly, including the ones where the honest answer is no.
Is PermitProof really free?
Yes. Unlimited address searches, source-linked PDF reports, and saved search history are all free. There is no trial that expires, no payment method to enter, no monthly search limit, and no better version held back behind a paywall. There is no subscription revenue behind it either: PermitProof is meant to be paid for by advertising, and the Google AdSense library loads on the public marketing pages of the site, though no ad unit is displayed anywhere on it today. The privacy policy describes what loading that library means for cookies and tracking.
What does PermitProof actually do?
You enter a property address, and PermitProof searches the permit records published by the authority that issues permits there: roofing, electrical, plumbing, HVAC, solar, pools, additions, and the other work that appears in a building department's files. Each record is published with whatever the government source actually carried for it - the original description, the permit number, the status, and a link back to the official source it was read from. Where the description, permit number, or status was not retrieved by this search, the on-screen report marks that in the row itself rather than leaving a blank or filling one in. The finished report downloads as a PDF for a client or underwriting file.
Which California cities are covered?
PermitProof catalogs and routes 539 California permitting authorities - 483 incorporated cities, plus 56 county authorities for unincorporated areas. 170 of the 539 are fully automated, meaning the connector ships as live coverage or has passed live acceptance tests against the official source; an address search there queries that source directly unless a stored result of an identical search is still current - stored results expire after at most 30 days, sooner for no-record or incomplete reads. For the remaining 369, the report says what actually happened instead - a confirmed barrier, an uncertified automated attempt and what it found, or that no automated search is configured - and links the official source where the catalog holds one, rather than coming back empty. The coverage page lists each jurisdiction by county with its current state.
What happens when a jurisdiction is not automated?
Some portals require an account and sign-in, some run public portals that automated searches have not worked against, some jurisdictions are recorded as taking records requests rather than publishing a search, and some sources are simply unavailable when you search. In every one of those cases the report tells you which of those happened, and links the official source where the catalog holds one so you can check it directly. The point is what it prevents: a source PermitProof could not read is reported as exactly that. It is never reported as “no permits found.”
If no permit comes back, does that mean the work was unpermitted?
No. The absence of an online permit record does not establish that work was not completed, and it does not establish that the work was never permitted. Public portals are routinely incomplete: many jurisdictions publish records only from the year their current system went live, older paper files are frequently not digitized, and some departments publish only certain permit types. A permit history describes what a source publishes today. It is not proof of what was or was not built.
Where does the permit data come from?
Official government sources only: documented public permit APIs, official ArcGIS feature services, and public city or county permit portals where the portal itself permits automated access. Sources that would require bypassing a CAPTCHA, circumventing a login, or evading a rate limit are not automated at all. Records are never invented, estimated, or filled in from a third-party data broker. Where PermitProof adds a plain-language summary of a record, the original government description sits next to it and that original record controls.
How current are the results?
PermitProof queries the official source at the moment you run the search rather than serving a periodically refreshed copy of somebody else's database, and every report records the date the records were retrieved. Repeating an identical search can return a recent cached copy of that same result instead of re-querying the portal. The real limit is the jurisdiction's own publishing lag: a permit issued this week may not appear in a public portal for days or weeks, whatever tool you use to look for it.
Can I use a PermitProof report to make an insurance decision?
No. PermitProof is a research tool, not an underwriting, engineering, inspection, legal, or code-compliance service. It does not determine construction quality, code compliance, insurability, eligibility, premium, or coverage. What it does is put the public permit record and its official source link in front of a licensed professional, who makes those determinations.
Do I need to install anything or connect it to my AMS or CRM?
No. PermitProof runs entirely in a browser. There is no download, no desktop client, no plugin, and no browser extension, and it does not connect to an agency management system or CRM. Nothing on your side needs to be configured before the first search.
Do I need an account, and is it per person or per office?
You need a free account with an email address and a password, because the account is what stores your search history and saved reports so a report can be reopened later. There is no payment method, no company verification, and no sales call. Accounts are individual: PermitProof has no team seats, shared workspaces, or per-office administration.
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