Philadelphia building permit search: Atlas, the L&I permit file and old records

Where Philadelphia permits live

The Department of Licenses and Inspections (L&I) issues permits for the whole city, which is also Philadelphia County. Suburbs in Bucks, Montgomery and Delaware counties have their own permit offices.

How to look up the permits on a Philadelphia address

1. Open Atlas and type the street address.
2. Open the permits section of the property and note each permit number, type and status.
3. Expect several permits per job: a new house gets separate building, plumbing, electrical and mechanical permits.
4. For a list you can sort or filter by contractor, filter the open permit file by address.
5. Compare the contractor on the permit with the one on your contract, and check the firm; our Pennsylvania licence guide covers the Attorney General's home improvement contractor registration.

What the statuses mean

Of residential permits issued October 2024 to September 2025, 71% were Completed by our count. Roofing is the outlier: 71.5% of those roofing permits expired.

When the record you want is not online

L&I sells copies of permits, licences and certificates of occupancy from 2006 on for $15 each, using the request form on its forms page. For building plans: confirm the building permit number in Atlas, submit L&I's online record-check form, and if the records exist L&I contacts you to book an in-person visit, where you hand in the building files request form and pay $50 a file. Plans are copied onto a flash drive you bring. "You must be the owner or authorized agent or have written permission to get building plans", and plans processed before 2004 were generally not kept unless tied to a variance or major project. Visits to the Permit and License Center, 1401 John F. Kennedy Blvd., MSB, Public Service Concourse, need an appointment (Get a copy, read 24 October 2026).

What our Philadelphia pages add

Our Philadelphia page counts L&I's residential permits by kind of work, October 2024 to September 2026. Days to final are for permits issued October 2024 to September 2025 that were completed.

The usual permit took 86 days from issue to completion (middle half 21 to 203 days) on how long permits take. The permit statistics page has counts by year and month, browse permits lists the rows, and permits by ZIP code splits them by neighbourhood. Smaller groups have their own pages: garages and sheds and fences. Whether a job needs a permit is in Do I need a permit?

What this does not tell you

We count residential permits only, as the city's file marks them; a home job filed as commercial is not counted. The open file has no declared job value, so we show no costs. A completed date is the day L&I marked the permit completed; expired and cancelled permits carry no final date in our counts.