Three steps, sixty seconds.
Address-level research, then an optional $14.99 Filing Kit with your city's actual forms.
Pick your project
Search 175+ residential project types — decks, fences, kitchen remodels, solar, additions, everything.
Answer a few questions
Project size, scope, address. Enough for our research to pull your city's exact code and fees.
Get your answer
Audit with the verdict — yes/no/maybe. Optional $14.99 Filing Kit with your city’s forms and your answers — typed onto the form where we’ve checked that city’s form box by box, written out to copy across where we haven’t. Delivered by email in 60 seconds.
Built for the moment you stop Googling.
You're planning a deck, an addition, or a remodel. You want to know if you need a permit, what it costs, and what's involved — before you commit.
You're buying a property and need to know whether the work on record was permitted, what unpermitted work means for your ROI, and what disclosure law applies in the state.
You need a fast sanity check on a city you've never worked in. Fees, review timelines, what the local inspectors actually look at first.
You're advising a client on renovation ROI or disclosing work at sale. You need source-cited facts and the right filing path.
We are not lawyers, contractors, or a permit expediter.
DoINeedAPermit is a research tool. We pull from the International Residential Code, the International Building Code, and the public code databases of 4,901 US municipalities. Our job is to give you accurate, source-cited facts so you can decide what to do next. Final authority on any permit question rests with your local building department.
All 50 states plus D.C.
4,900 cities indexed with local code, fee schedules, and filing portals.