Terms of Service

These terms are a starting point written for a V1 product. They have not been reviewed by counsel. Have a lawyer review them before relying on them commercially.

1. The service

PermitChime monitors publicly available government permit records for jurisdictions we support, normalizes them into a consistent format, detects changes, and notifies you. That is the whole of the service.

PermitChime is not a government agency and is not affiliated with any permitting authority. The issuing authority remains the authoritative record for every permit. See our Disclaimer.

2. Accounts and organizations

You must provide accurate registration information and keep your credentials secure. You are responsible for activity under your account.

Work in PermitChime belongs to an organization. An organization owner controls billing, membership, and settings. Members you invite can see the permits and projects in that organization according to their role. If you invite someone, you are representing that you are entitled to share that organization's data with them.

You must be at least 18 and able to enter a binding contract.

3. Acceptable use

You may not:

• attempt to access another organization's data
• probe, scan, or test the security of the service, except under a written agreement with us
• use the service to overload, evade, or interfere with any government system
• resell or redistribute bulk permit data obtained through the service as a standalone product
• use the service to build a database about individuals, or for any people-search purpose
• automate the service in a way that materially exceeds normal interactive use, without our written agreement

We may suspend an account that is causing harm to the service, to a government source, or to another customer.

4. Plans, limits, and billing

Paid plans are billed monthly in advance through Stripe. Prices and plan limits are shown on the Pricing page.

Plan limits are based on actively monitored permits. Archiving a permit or turning monitoring off stops future checks, preserves all history you have already collected, and frees the slot.

If you downgrade below your current usage, we disable monitoring on the most recently added permits until you are within the new limit. We do not delete your permits or your history. You can choose which permits to re-enable.

You may cancel at any time through the customer portal. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the current billing period; we do not provide prorated refunds for partial periods except where required by law.

Free plan features and limits may change. We will give notice of material changes to paid plans before they take effect.

5. Data

Your data. Projects, permit selections, notes, team membership, and settings are yours. You can export permit data as CSV at any time on plans that include export. If you close your account we delete your data within 30 days, except where we must retain records for legal or accounting reasons.

Permit records. The underlying permit records are public records published by government authorities. We do not claim ownership of them. Our normalization, change history, and presentation are ours.

Our use of your data. We use it to operate the service. We do not sell it. We may use aggregated, de-identified information about how the service performs — for example, connector reliability statistics — to improve it.

6. Availability

We aim for high availability but do not offer an uptime guarantee on any plan at this time. Monitoring depends on third-party government systems that we do not control and that regularly change, go offline, or restrict access. When we cannot reach a source, we say so rather than presenting stale information as current.

7. No professional advice

PermitChime does not provide legal, architectural, engineering, or code-compliance advice, does not prepare or file permit applications, and does not determine code compliance. Do not rely on PermitChime as the sole basis for a decision with legal, financial, or safety consequences. Verify consequential information with the issuing authority.

8. Warranties and liability

The service is provided "as is" and "as available". To the maximum extent permitted by law we disclaim all implied warranties, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement.

To the maximum extent permitted by law, our total liability arising out of or relating to the service is limited to the amount you paid us in the twelve months before the event giving rise to the claim, and we are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for lost profits, lost revenue, or missed deadlines — including any arising from a change we failed to detect or reported inaccurately.

Some jurisdictions do not allow these limitations, in which case they apply to the fullest extent permitted.

9. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms. If a change is material we will notify account owners by email before it takes effect. Continuing to use the service after that means you accept the updated terms.

10. Termination

You may stop using the service at any time. We may suspend or terminate an account for a material breach of these terms, for non-payment, or where required by law — with notice where practical.

11. Contact

Questions about these terms: [email protected]