Madison, WI building permit search: Accela, the permit reports and records requests

Which office has your permit

The City of Madison Building Inspection Division permits property in the city. Permits issued by Fitchburg, Middleton, Monona, Sun Prairie, Verona and the other towns and villages around Madison, and by Dane County, are not in the City's search or reports.

How to look up the permits on a Madison address

1. Open Accela Citizen Access and change the General Search drop-down to Search by Address.
2. Enter the street number and street name, or switch to Search by Record Information and enter the permit number from your paperwork.
3. Open each record on the property. Re-roofs, siding, decks and alterations are building permits; electrical, plumbing and HVAC work each get their own permit.
4. Read the record's status and inspection history.
5. To see a contractor's other Madison jobs, use Search by Licensed Professional Information and enter the license number or name of business.

What the statuses mean here

The City's permit reports have no status column and no final inspection date, so they show only that a permit was issued (building permits) or filed (electrical, plumbing and HVAC permits). Whether the work passed final inspection is in the Accela record's status and inspection list.

When the record is not online

For the full permit history of an address, the Development Services Center says: "Looking for the permit record of an address? Submit a records request through the City of Madison Public Records Request Center" (Permits page, read 24 October 2026). The request center is at cityofmadison.govqa.us. Wisconsin's public records law is Wis. Stat. §§ 19.31–19.39.

What our Madison pages add

Our Madison page counts the City's permits from October 2024 to September 2026:

Roofing permits more than tripled, from 2,506 (October 2024–September 2025) to 8,352 (October 2025–September 2026): re-roofing and siding permits ran at about 2,000 a month in May to July 2026, against 500 to 900 a year earlier. ZIP 53704 had the most permits, 8,482. Each kind-of-work page lists the contractors named on the most permits, which is volume, not quality. The permit statistics page has year, month and ZIP counts, and browse permits lists the rows. Wisconsin trade credentials are issued by the Department of Safety and Professional Services.

What this does not tell you

The reports have no status or final date, so we show no finished share or time to final, and we don't rate or rank firms. Job values are the value declared on building permits; electrical, plumbing and HVAC permits carry none. The construction report has no ZIP code, so a building permit borrows the ZIP the trade report shows for the same address, and some building permits have none.