Not an emergency service · In an emergency, call 911 PlansAccountAPI & MCPStore ↗Watt Street ↗
Independent · Est. 2026
THE PUBLIC RECORD · ORGANISED · SOS.CITY · SOS.cityThe public record of every place, organised.

Type a question, a place, a dataset or an agency. We answer from the record first, with sources. When we can't, Claude looks further.

Independent · Est. 2026 · Free to read

The public record of every city, organised.

Power, water, emergencies, police and fire, laws, permits and funding: the official sources for every place, found, checked by a person and filed in one library. Every entry links to the original.

Is there a live power outage feed for Los Angeles?Who publishes building permits in Los Angeles?Which water sources in Los Angeles have an API?How many sources cover Texas?
Choose your cityToday’s front page
1,431official sources
328places
15departments
928publishers
77%opened and checked
48%with an API
Free · no accountGet alerts for your area Severe weather warnings, strong earthquakes nearby, disaster alerts and changes in travel advice, from the agencies that issue them, plus our safety pages. Only when something happens.
Follow more places from the link in any alert email.Privacy

Three doors in

Free for people. Paid when it saves a business time.
For residents · free

Know who to call, and what’s happening

Outage maps, water quality, permits, 311, crime data and council agendas for your city, each straight from the agency that publishes it. Safety pages when something hits.

  • The terminal answers from the record, no AI guessing
  • Alert pages for storms, quakes and unrest
  • Free checklists and calculators
Find your city
For property managers · Los Angeles first

Every building’s record, before it costs you

Permits, code-enforcement cases, inspections and certificates of occupancy for each address you manage, from the City’s own records, and a weekly note when something changes.

  • Check an address free
  • A free record for three buildings
  • The full building record, $9 one time
For property managers
For developers and AI agents

One key. The whole public record.

Search sources, places, publishers and gaps from code, or plug the library into Claude and other assistants with one MCP address. Every row carries its publisher, licence and update rate.

curl https://api.sos.city/v1/sources \
  -G -d department=water \
  -d place=us-ca-los-angeles
API & MCP

Fifteen shelves for every place

Open the library →
Portals328Open-data portals and platforms that hold many recordsLaws and government241Codes, ordinances, council votes, courts, elections, lobbying, records requestsSafety and emergencies177Alerts, hazards, fire, police, EMS, earthquakes, sheltersHousing, buildings and business150Permits, inspections, parcels, rent rules, landlords, business registrationsFunding, grants and spending125Budgets, contracts, grants you can apply for, where the money wentWater124Drinking water, violations, rates, drought, rivers, floods, sewers, beachesPower and energy82Utilities, outages, the grid, data-centre load, rates, chargers (Watt Street)Transport63Transit, crashes, bridges, airports, roadsCity services and 31149Service requests, streets, trash, lights, parkingEnvironment and parks30Air, toxics, clean-up sites, trees, parks, heatHealth23Hospitals, care homes, inspections, disease, overdosesPeople and places17Census, boundaries, maps, geographyConsumer protection8Complaints, recalls, licences, scamsEducation8Schools, colleges, child careJobs6Government jobs, wages, labour enforcement
How the record stays true

We would rather show a gap than invent a source.

  1. A person opened it. A source is marked checked only when someone fetched the page and it matched. 328 sources still say “not checked”, and the site says so.
  2. It links to the original. Every entry names its publisher and links to their page. We copy data only where the licence allows it.
  3. Missing records go on the gap board. 84 records people need still have no public source we can point to. They are listed, not dressed up.
  4. Never a search for a person. SOS.city is not a consumer reporting agency. Its data may not be used for tenant, employment, credit or insurance screening.
  5. Sealed means gone. Sealed, expunged and court-ordered records come out within 48 hours and stay out.
How we source

When it matters most

Not an emergency service. In an emergency, call 911.
Safety pages

Storms, quakes, unrest

One page per place and hazard, from the official warnings, updated each time it happens.

Open the alerts → The power desk

Watt Street

The grid, your utility, outages, rates and the new data-centre load, from public records.

Open Watt Street → The store

Survival guides

The 72-Hour Atlas, the Go-Bag Kit and the Field Manual: printable guides for the day the lights go out.

Visit the store ↗

Plans

Compare plans →
FreeFreeFor anyone who lives somewhere
  • 10 questions a day
  • The whole library and the terminal
  • Email alerts for the places you follow
  • The weekly record for 1 city
  • Free building record for up to 3 LA addresses
  • Every free tool and guide
Local$9/moFor one city you care about
  • Unlimited questions
  • 50,000 API calls a month
  • Alerts on up to 10 addresses in 1 city
  • 1 year of history
Business$49/moFor property managers and operators
  • Everything in Local
  • 500,000 API calls a month
  • 25 cities
  • The expired-records archive
Pro$199/moFor data teams and AI agents
  • Everything in Business
  • 5,000,000 API calls a month
  • Every city
  • Bulk export, full history

Pay yearly and get three months free. A single building record is $9, one time.

Start with your city.

Can’t find a record? Ask for it and we’ll go and get it: free to request, or quoted first for a deep search, with a full refund if nothing is found.

Choose your cityRequest a record