San Antonio building permit search: BuildSA, the legacy portal and open records

Which office has your permit

The City of San Antonio permits property inside the city limits only. Unincorporated Bexar County and the small cities inside or next to San Antonio, such as Alamo Heights, Leon Valley, Castle Hills, Converse, Live Oak and Schertz, run their own permit offices.

The City notes that the legacy portal "only contains permits that reached the 'Issued' stage and are within the retention periods" set by the Texas State Library and Archives Commission (Legacy Portal page, read 24 October 2026).

How to look up the permits on a San Antonio address

1. Open the BuildSA record search and change the drop-down from General Search to Search by Address.
2. Enter the street number and street name, or the permit number from your paperwork.
3. Open each record. A remodel often has a building permit plus separate plumbing, electrical and mechanical permits, each with its own number.
4. Read the record's status and the inspection list to see whether a final inspection passed.
5. For a house built or worked on before December 2020, repeat the search in the Legacy Permit Data Portal.
6. To see a contractor's other jobs, use Search by Licensed Professional Information and enter the license number or name of business.

What the statuses mean here

The City's open data file has no permit status and no final inspection date, so it can't say whether a job was finished. The record in BuildSA can: its status and inspection results are the only public place to check that a permit was closed out. If a record still looks open long after the work ended, call the DSD Call Center at 210-207-1111 with the permit number.

When the record is not online

Plans, older files and anything not in either portal go through a Texas Public Information Act request. The City takes requests by email to openrecords@sanantonio.gov, through its Open Government Portal, or by mail to the Open Records Division, P.O. Box 839966, San Antonio, Texas 78283. The City says requests expected to cost more than $40 get a cost estimate first (Open Government Request page, read 24 October 2026).

What our San Antonio pages add

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

Roofing permits fell 33% and solar 57% between the two years of the window (October 2024–September 2025 against October 2025–September 2026), while remodel and repair permits rose 20%. ZIP 78245 had the most permits, 5,810, mostly new homes. The permit statistics page has year, month and ZIP counts, and browse permits lists the rows. To check the license behind a name on a permit, see How to check a contractor's license in Texas.

What this does not tell you

The City's file names a primary contact on each permit, often a person rather than the contractor of record, so we show no contractor lists for San Antonio. It has no status, final date or usable job value (a value is filled on about 3% of permits, almost all commercial), so we show no finished share, time to final or costs. Lawn sprinkler permits, which the City files as plumbing, are counted as other.