
FirstDig
100 Contractor
Buildzoom
BuildStar
Building Radar
BuildKeeper
BuildPass
Source-dated public building-permit records for construction research.

Sublime Text
VS Code
Notepad++
GNU Emacs
Microsoft Visual Studio
Netbeans
IntelliJ IDEA
Highly configurable text editor built to enable efficient text editing
Which is more popular?
Based on our record, Vim seems to be more popular. It has been mentioned 10 times since March 2021.
Website, pricing, platforms and company facts side by side.
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| Website | permitgrab.com | vim.org |
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| Platforms | — | |
| Company | Startup from the United States · 1 - 9 employees · 2026 | — |
| Listed in |
In their own words, as submitted to SaaSHub.


PermitGrab organizes source-dated building-permit records from covered U.S. jurisdictions. Available fields and update schedules vary by city; each city page shows its source date, scope, and published record roles. Subscribers can monitor public project activity in selected markets and decide...
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What each product offers, as listed by its team.


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Vim is recommended for programmers, developers, and system administrators who require a highly efficient and customizable text editing experience. It is especially useful for those who work extensively in terminal environments or need a quick, resource-light text editor for remote systems.
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As answered by people managing PermitGrab and Vim.
PermitGrab's answer
Building permits are public record everywhere in the United States. Anyone can go and read them. In practice almost nobody does, because there is no such thing as 'the permit database' - there are hundreds of separate municipal and county systems, each on different software, each with a different schema, and most with no way to ask the only question a contractor actually cares about: what is new since yesterday?
So the information sits there, free and public, and the contractor who could use it finds out about the job weeks later, if at all.
PermitGrab exists to close that gap. The hard part was never getting a permit record. It was doing it every day, across hundreds of jurisdictions that change their endpoints without warning, and turning inconsistent municipal records into something a roofer can act on before breakfast.
PermitGrab's answer
PermitGrab combines three public records that are normally sold separately, or not sold at all: building permits, code-enforcement violations, and property-owner contacts. Most permit tools stop at the permit. Pairing a filing with the violation history on that property and the owner of record is what turns an address into a conversation.
The other difference is the delivery model. It is one ranked email each morning rather than a dashboard you have to remember to check, and it is a flat monthly rate rather than per-lead pricing. Leads are not resold, so you are not calling a homeowner who just heard from seven other contractors.
PermitGrab's answer
It depends what you are comparing against.
Against lead-generation marketplaces such as Thumbtack, HomeAdvisor or Angi: those sell you a shared lead that several contractors receive at once, priced per lead. PermitGrab is a flat monthly rate and the records are not resold, because they are public filings rather than a homeowner form submission. You are reaching out first instead of competing on response time.
Against construction data platforms such as BuildZoom, Shovels or ConstructConnect: those are generally built for enterprise research, analytics or commercial project intelligence, and are priced accordingly. PermitGrab is aimed at the individual contractor who wants to know what got filed in their city this morning, and it adds code violations and property-owner contacts alongside the permit rather than the permit alone.
Against checking the county portal yourself: the data is genuinely free and public. The work is that it is spread across hundreds of separate municipal systems with different formats, and none of them tell you what changed today.
PermitGrab's answer
Small and mid-sized contractors who sell into residential and light commercial work, and who do their own prospecting.
The clearest fits are roofing, HVAC, plumbing, electrical, general contracting, remodeling, restoration, solar, fencing, concrete and landscaping. A new-construction permit means every one of those trades has work coming. A re-roof permit means a solar installer has a fresh roof to quote.
It also works for building-material suppliers and manufacturer reps who want to know which builders are active in a territory, and for investors and agents who use code-enforcement records to find owners with a reason to sell.
It is a poor fit for anyone who needs national enterprise coverage with an SLA, or who wants commercial project intelligence at the pre-bid stage. That is a different product category.
PermitGrab's answer
On the ingestion side the work is mostly adapters rather than a single framework. Municipal data arrives through ArcGIS FeatureServer and MapServer endpoints, Socrata, CKAN, Accela ACA portals, Tyler EnerGov self-service, OpenGov and a handful of one-off formats, so each source gets its own field mapping and freshness check.
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Vim offers a variety of features like split windows, macros, and extensive customization options. It has a steep learning curve, but once you master it, you’ll be amazed at the speed and productivity it brings to your...
It’s tough to say which developers would enjoy Vim as a text editor. It’s an old system with an outdated interface. Yet, it still has the charm and powerful feature-set that the average developer needs. I would...
The entire installation process is perfectly documented on their Sourceforge page, which you must definitely pay a visit. There is another standalone Vim software, known as the gVim that brings a GUI-based interface...
Recommendations tracked on public social media and blogs since March 2021.


Tracking PermitGrab since Jul 2026.
Lua is quite small, encouraging distros to include it. The ubuntu gvim has, and the gvim AppImage linked from vim.org does. The default Makefile from github is set up to not include it, but you can uncomment one line there to get it. Source: over 3 years ago
I've not used vimwiki locally (tho I'm old enough to remember the Vim wiki on vim.org :), but I think what you are wanting to do is extend vimwiki's syntax file. I presume it installs one at $VIMRUNTIM/syntax or or ~/.vim/syntax. If... Source: almost 4 years ago
Vim.org has 242k total visitors, tailwindcss.com has 4.4m, planetscale.com has 412k, jpl.nasa.gov has 2.6m, all built with Tailwind, all several years younger than Vim's website. Unnecessary comparison, unnecessary defence. It's a... Source: about 4 years ago
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