Alternatives
A planning.data.gov.uk alternative for production apps
The official planning data platform is valuable and free. PlanWire is for teams that need broader operational coverage, council-source monitoring, decision outcomes, source links and webhooks in one product API.
Why teams outgrow the free government API
planning.data.gov.uk is the official public data platform for England. Its documentation says the planning applications data specification is still in development and that local planning authorities are not currently required to share application data to that specification.
That makes it a useful public source, but a difficult single dependency for products that sell nationwide planning search, Watch emails, CRM enrichment, decision monitoring or freshness guarantees.
PlanWire compared with planning.data.gov.uk
| PlanWire | planning.data.gov.uk | |
|---|---|---|
| Best fit | Commercial products, CRMs, alerts, GIS and monitoring | Official public datasets and open-data exploration |
| Cost | Free sandbox; paid plans from £49/month + VAT | Free public API and bulk downloads |
| Planning applications | Normalized application records from direct council monitoring and official datasets | Specification in development; LPA publishing is not mandatory |
| Geography | 375 monitored source records across 382 official UK LPAs | England official platform |
| Webhooks | Signed webhooks for change events and Watch workflows | No webhook product advertised in the public API docs |
| Source evidence | Direct council source links and freshness metadata | Official dataset/entity records with published endpoints |
| Indexed applications | 18.3M application records and decisions | Coverage depends on supplied datasets |
Government API status checked against planning.data.gov.uk documentation on 31 August 2026.
Which one you should pick
Choose planning.data.gov.uk when you need official open datasets, planning constraints, policy/geography data, or a free public source you can inspect directly.
Choose PlanWire when you need planning applications and decisions to power a commercial workflow: broader source monitoring, product-ready filters, source links, operational freshness checks and webhook delivery.
Prototype free, then upgrade when freshness matters
Start with a free PlanWire key to test the response shape. Developer is £49/month + VAT and Production is £199/month + VAT when live data, decision outcomes and webhooks become part of the product.
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