I spent years trying to find out where I could really build — and the answer was scattered across three thousand county websites, fifty state codes, and a pile of forum rumors. Nobody had ever put it in one place. So we did.
1,000 counties, graded on the ten things that decide whether you can build, get water, grow food, and be left alone — every claim traced back to the county's own code. The rest of the country is on the map too, marked grey and unverified, because we'd rather admit what we haven't done than guess at it. Off-grid is the deep end we serve best, but if you just want land and no one telling you what to do on it, this is for you.
We score the restrictive places honestly too — and tell you exactly where the freedom stops. Watch the research on YouTube →
HOW IT WORKS
You don't have to buy anything to start. Look at the map, and go as deep as you actually need.
Every county we've carded gets a letter grade, S through F. Wander around. See which parts of the country are still free to build in — and which aren't.
Then tell it how you actually plan to live. Where your water comes from, how much land you want, what you can spend an acre, how cold you'll take it, how far from town, which hazards are a hard no, how much property tax you'll wear — and the grades re-rank themselves around you. A place that's an A for a firewood-and-a-well homesteader is a C for someone who wants a paved road. It's your map, not ours.
Open the map →Open any county and get the whole story: what you can build, how you'd get water, what it costs to own, what's most likely to wreck it. Every claim quoted from the county's own code.
Open a real card — free →Idaho County, Idaho — fully unlocked, no purchase. It's the actual card, not a mockup.
Once you've narrowed it down, the Advisor reads the code for your situation. It includes that county's full card. Can you put up the shop before the house? Can you live in it while you build? What's your exact permit order?
Tell us you want it for your county →You've got the land. PermitReady fills your county's real forms, sequences the permits in the right order, and flags what gets people rejected.
Coming to the Apple App Store. Not finished, so not for sale.
Tell us you want it for your county →Want to see how the sausage gets made?
We film the research. County codes, water law, the stuff nobody reads. Watch us get it right — and watch us get corrected.
Before it costs anything
If you're actually hunting for land, become a scout: full access while we build, in exchange for honest feedback from the ground. Not for sale — you apply, we pick for a spread of counties.
A measured case
Some regulation earns its place. A forty-story building downtown can fail in ways that hurt thousands of people who never chose to be near it — inspect it, code it, absolutely. That's a real third-party risk, and pretending otherwise would be dishonest.
The problem is taking that same machinery — written for dense cities and genuine shared danger — and aiming it at a cabin on forty acres, where the only person exposed is the owner who chose to be there.
So we don't rant. For every rule we flag, we say plainly what it was written to prevent and who actually bears the risk in that context — then we show you the county's own words and let you decide. Read the case in full →
Concede what's fair. Contest what's mis-scaled. Cite everything.
How it works
Each step earns the next. You never pay for a promise you haven't already seen us keep.
A letter grade for 1,000 counties, free to browse. Tell it how you plan to live — water, acreage, budget, climate, remoteness, taxes, hazards — and the whole country re-ranks around you. Narrow a continent down to a shortlist.
Answers: “Where should I even look?”Open any county and get all ten dimensions: what you can build, how you'd actually get water, what it costs to own, the growing season, the most likely hazard — every claim quoted from the county's own code, with a date on it.
Answers: “What's really going on here?”For the county you're serious about, ask plain questions about your build and get answers pulled straight from that county's code, section quoted. Can you put up the shop first? Can you live in it while you build?
Answers: “Is this the right one for me?”Not for sale yet — we don't sell what isn't finished.Once you own the land, the companion app fills the county's real forms, sequences your permits in the right order, and flags the mistakes that get people rejected.
Answers: “Now help me do this.”Why you can trust it
The whole product is designed to be checkable. If we can't source it, we don't claim it. See exactly how we verify →
Direct quotes from official county and state pages — each with a link and the date we read it. No “trust me.” When something can't be confirmed, the card says so.
Aspen, Jackson Hole, and Sun Valley are on the map — rated at the bottom, honestly. We don't grade on a curve. A floor is what makes the freedom mean something.
Scores describe unincorporated county land. The incorporated towns inside — usually stricter — are listed on every card, so no one buys a lot inside city limits thinking it's free.
1,000 counties carded — about 32% of the country — and growing every week. Every one of them gets the same ten dimensions and the same sourcing; there is no thin tier. Where we haven't got to yet, the map is grey and admits it, because “I don't know” is more honest than a guess on a five-figure decision.
The map
The whole country is on the map. Verified counties show their grade and full ten-dimension card; the rest are honestly marked unverified while we work through them.
Preview the map →Get in early
The map is live and growing. Join the founders list — you'll be first to know when checkout opens, at the founders price.
No spam, no selling your address. One email when it's ready, plus the occasional new-county note.