Privacy Policy
Effective . PermitFees.org (the "site") is a free reference tool. It has no accounts, no logins, and no paywall, and it collects as little as it can. This page describes what the site does collect, where it goes, and why.
What we collect
Browsing the site and using the calculator requires no personal information. The site asks for information in exactly two places, both optional:
- Coverage requests. When you search for a city or county we do not cover yet, you can leave an email address to be notified when it is added. We log the place you asked for either way, since those requests decide which fee schedules we add next; the email is stored only if you enter it.
- Sponsorship inquiries. The advertising form on the sponsor page asks for your name, company, email, the jurisdiction and trade you want, and a message.
Form submissions are stored securely and used only to reply to you and to prioritize coverage. We do not sell, rent, or share them with anyone else.
Location and address lookups
The homepage calculator can find your jurisdiction from an address you type or from your device's location if you press the location button and your browser allows it. To do that, the address or coordinates are sent from your browser to OpenStreetMap's Nominatim geocoding service, which returns the matching city or county. We do not store the address or coordinates. Nominatim is run by the OpenStreetMap Foundation under its own privacy policy. If you would rather not use it, search by city or county name instead; name searches are matched entirely in your browser and never leave it.
Analytics
The site uses Google Analytics 4 to see which pages are visited and how the calculator is used, in aggregate. Google Analytics sets cookies and collects information such as pages viewed, approximate location derived from your IP address, browser and device type, and how you arrived at the site. Google's handling of that data is described in its privacy policy, and you can block it with the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on or by blocking third-party scripts. We do not run advertising trackers or sell analytics data.
Data stored in your browser
The calculator remembers your last selections (jurisdiction, permit type, project type, and job value) in your browser's session storage so they carry over between the homepage and a jurisdiction page. That data stays on your device and is cleared when you close the tab. Estimate links you copy contain only the inputs you chose, never anything about you.
Sponsors
Sponsored placements on jurisdiction pages are labeled as sponsored. Sponsors receive no information about visitors from us; if you click through to a sponsor's website, that site's own privacy policy applies.
Outbound links
Every fee schedule on the site links to the official city or county document it was sourced from. Those government sites, and the sponsor sites above, are not covered by this policy.
Children
The site is intended for contractors, homeowners, and other adults planning permitted work. We do not knowingly collect information from children under 13.
Changes and contact
We will update this page when the site starts collecting something new or changes how it handles what it already collects, and change the effective date above. Questions about this policy or a request to delete an email you submitted can be sent through the inquiry form; mention "privacy" in the message and we will handle it. See also our Terms of Use.