Plumb Intelligence vs Shovels
Arizona depth, refreshed daily — not on a periodic national batch.
Shovels built an impressive national permit dataset. We built a daily selling machine for one state. Here is the honest comparison — including where they beat us.
Freshest permit in our data: issued today · Buckeyemeasured 2026-09-09
If you need many states of permit data as data — API, warehouse, analyst workflows — Shovels is the stronger choice, and their raw Arizona volume exceeds ours today. If you sell into Arizona and want this morning’s permits as ranked calls — refreshed daily instead of twice a month, fused with the ROC roster, parcels, and sales, self-serve from $89 — that’s what Plumb Intelligence is built for.
Last verified: 2026-08-12 · their figures from their public docs & coverage data · ours measured nightly
See our live coverage & freshness →Shovels aggregates building permits and contractor records across the country and exposes them through search, dashboards, warehouse shares, and an API — if you need many states of permit data as data, it’s a strong choice, and by their own published coverage they collect more raw Arizona permit volume than we do today. Plumb Intelligence makes the opposite trade: one state, pulled daily, fused with the AZ ROC roster, county assessor records, and property sales, and delivered as plays — who to call, why now, and the number — with alerts and digests that reach you instead of a dataset waiting to be queried.
Choose Shovels if
You operate in many states, need permit data as an API, warehouse share, or bulk dataset, or your team has analysts who build their own workflows on top of raw records.
Choose Plumb Intelligence if
You sell into Arizona construction — supplier rep, trade contractor, or local service business — and you want this morning’s changes turned into calls, account health, and a Friday report without touching a spreadsheet.
WHEN NEW PERMITS CAN SURFACE · A TYPICAL 30-DAY MONTH
Their cadence from their public docs (updates the 1st and 15th; processing “can take a few days, up to a week”), as of August 2026. Cells are illustrative of that stated schedule — the claim is the sourced text, not the graphic.
Shovels figures from their public documentation, data terms, and published coverage data as of August 2026 — cadence, processing window, export cap, and pricing are stated in their own docs; Arizona county permit counts are from their published coverage dataset. Our figures are measured against our production database (the freshest-permit line updates nightly). If any of their numbers change, we’ll update this page — tell us if we’re stale.
Contractor-of-record is resolved on about 39% of all permits and about 62% of the permits that name a contractor — every link carries a match-confidence badge, so you see how sure we are, not just a name.
Switching from Shovels?
The honest picture of what maps over, what you gain, and what you give up.
Your Shovels saved searches translate directly — same filters by trade, place, and value, except each one also emails a ranked 7 AM digest and tracks outcomes.
Daily refresh instead of twice monthly, the full AZ ROC roster with discipline history, parcels + sales joined county-scoped, and a morning call list instead of a query box.
Honestly: their 50-state dataset, API and warehouse shares, and raw AZ volume exceed ours. If your workflow is analysts on bulk data across states, staying is the right call.
The difference, in one screen
This is what a Plumb Intelligence morning looks like: not a query interface — a ranked list of reasons to pick up the phone, each with the why, the talking point, and the number. (Example data shown.)
See the full product →Permit volume down ~57% vs. their 12-month pace (27 last 90d, ~63 expected).
Quieter quarter than usual — worth a check-in before they drift.
9 permits on one site — an active project, not a one-off job.
Sold 9 days ago, no permit pulled yet — reach the new owner before the work starts.
Shovels vs Plumb Intelligence — common questions
Is there an Arizona-specific alternative to Shovels?+
Yes. Plumb Intelligence covers Arizona building permits daily and fuses the Arizona ROC license roster, county assessor records (Maricopa, Pima, Yuma), and property sales — delivered as ranked plays (who to call, why now, the number) plus daily digests and account alerts, rather than a national dataset you query.
Does Shovels have more Arizona permits than Plumb Intelligence?+
By raw trailing-12-month volume, yes — their published coverage data shows about 142,600 Arizona permits to our roughly 106,900, including three northern counties we don’t cover yet. Depth is a different story: in Mohave County their same dataset lists 3 permits to our 769, and our records are refreshed daily rather than twice monthly. We publish per-jurisdiction coverage, freshness, and contractor-linkage numbers openly on our permits page.
How often does Shovels update vs Plumb Intelligence?+
Shovels’ docs state data refreshes on the 1st and 15th of each month, with processing that can take up to a week — so a permit can take roughly three weeks to surface. Plumb Intelligence pulls every covered Arizona jurisdiction daily; a new permit shows in your plays the next morning, and the freshest-permit date on this page is measured nightly.
Does Shovels send lead alerts or digest emails?+
Their public documentation describes search, dashboards, exports, and an API, with no alerting or digest features listed — saved searches are re-run manually. Plumb Intelligence sends a 7 AM daily digest per saved search and per-account alerts for new permits, disciplinary actions, license expiry, and activity drops.
How does Plumb Intelligence pricing compare to Shovels?+
Plumb Intelligence is self-serve from $89/month (GC tier) to $199 per seat per month ($179 at 3+ seats), with a 14-day free trial and no card up-front. Shovels has no public pricing page; their documentation lists introductory plans starting at $599/month, sold through a sales process with annual contracts.
Selling into Arizona construction? See your territory today.
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