Groundwork vs Shovels.ai
Shovels is a national permit-data platform built for teams with an API budget. We are a weekly email for a two-to-ten person shop.
$39/mo flat/No per-lead charge/Cancel in one click
Shovels.ai — from ~$599/mo
- Published pricing starts around $599/mo, and the useful tiers are sales-gated
- National coverage, a real API, contractor histories and analytics
- Built for suppliers, insurers and enterprise sales teams
- You do the filtering, the scoring and the delivery yourself
- Annual commitments are the norm at that level
Groundwork — $39/mo
- $39/mo, self-serve, card on file, cancel in one click
- No API to integrate and nothing to build — it is an email on Monday
- Already filtered to your trade, your region and the early-stage permits
- Built for the contractor who is on a roof at 7am, not for a data team
- A handful of San Diego jurisdictions, and we publish the exact weekly volume of each
If you have an engineer and a national territory, Shovels is the right tool and we are not competing for that. If you are a licensed contractor in San Diego who wants a dozen-plus addresses on a Monday, $599/mo is not a rounding error.
Fair to them: Shovels covers the country and we cover part of one county. Their data is broader, deeper and properly engineered.
What you get here for $39 a month.
One trade, the whole county, every qualifying job every Monday — every job that qualifies, and the bill does not move when the week is busy.
- Every qualifying job for your trade, every Monday — usually a few dollars a lead.
- Address, scope, valuation, permit number, map, street view on each one.
- City of San Diego, Coronado, Vista, Oceanside and Unincorporated San Diego County leads are owner-pulled: an individual, one property, no contractor named on the permit.
- Carlsbad, Santee, El Cajon, Imperial Beach, Chula Vista, Del Mar, Solana Beach, Encinitas, Escondido, San Marcos, Huntington Beach, Brea, Aliso Viejo, Laguna Hills, Laguna Niguel, Lake Forest, Costa Mesa, Fullerton, La Habra, Tustin, Newport Beach, Westminster and Yorba Linda are all new permits — those cities do not publish who pulled the permit, so we never call them owner-pulled.
- 13 qualified job sites a week citywide as of 2026-09-16. Real count, 7-day window.
We publish one of these for every product a contractor asks us about, including the ones that are the better buy outside San Diego.
Chad Vasquez · Groundwork, a Prompt Flow LLC company · San Diego, CA
(760) 464-5105 · chad@promptflowbusiness.com
A small San Diego operation, not a lead-gen call centre. Day job's a fireman; this is the side business. You can phone the number above and I will pick up. Cancel anytime in one click — no retention script, no website upsell. Billing is Stripe; the Monday email goes out through Resend.