Shovels

Everything built starts with a permit.

Shovels captures that first signal—using AI to clean, enrich, and unify permit, contractor, and property data from over 2,000 jurisdictions nationwide.

Delivered through our API, web app, or data warehouse, we turn messy public records into standardized, Shovel-ready intelligence that helps industries anticipate growth and make smarter decisions. From construction companies to electric utilities, real estate firms to government agencies, our customers use Shovel-ready data to anticipate market shifts, identify opportunities, and make decisions ahead of the competition.

We hope you'll join us for the ride.

Shovels team hike
Shovels team paddel
Shovels team Golden Gate Bridge
Shovels team dinner 1
Shovels team dinner 2

Our mission

We started in 2022 with a focused mission: make building permit data accessible and usable. That mission has expanded to include contractor intelligence, geospatial analysis, and property attributes—but the core principle remains the same: turn complex, messy public records into standardized intelligence that's ready for analysis.

Fundamentally, we believe in making complex data accessible and ready for analysis. We want to delight data scientists and account executives alike. This is a massive market and we're just getting started.

Building permits in our database
185+ million
Properties with permit history
33+ million
Contractors tracked
3.3 million

Expanding our intelligence

Shovels acquires ReZone

In 2026, Shovels acquired ReZone to expand our real estate intelligence capabilities. ReZone tracks all CRE-related city council and planning department decisions nationwide—analyzing zoning changes, development approvals, and regulatory shifts before they hit the market.

This acquisition brings together permit data intelligence with zoning and regulatory intelligence, giving our customers the most complete picture of what's being built and what's about to change.

Some of the people behind Shovels

We're a venture-backed team of AI engineers, data scientists, and go-to-market specialists with offices in California and Europe. Here are a few of the people building the intelligence layer for the built world.

Pearl Schneider Electric TopBuild Angi Beam Rewiring America PaintJet