Buildscout is a marketing tool that prints and posts letters to homeowners with planning approval. SiteLens is a planning-intelligence platform for material suppliers, subcontractors and developers. Two tools, two jobs, and this page helps you pick the right one.
No credit card, no call. Every new account includes a one-time 7-day Pro trial.
Buildscout focuses on householder approvals so its letter pipeline has a clean target. SiteLens covers every category, commercial, industrial, infrastructure, residential and change of use, across 380+ UK councils, which is the difference.
SiteLens gives you map-based search, plain-English smart search, AI classification, council analytics, constraint overlays, Companies House records and public tenders and awards. Buildscout gives you a printed letter in a homeowner’s letterbox, which is a different job.
SiteLens is a flat monthly price, £0 free, Pro £29/mo billed annually (£39 monthly) or Team £79/mo billed annually (£99 monthly), no matter how many projects you work. Buildscout charges a subscription plus a fee per letter: its published plans run £249 to £499 +VAT a month, with letters at 80p to £1 +VAT depending on tier. A contractor sending 300 letters a month is looking at roughly £550 to £750 +VAT all-in.
Feature-for-feature, based on publicly available information.
| Feature | SiteLens | Buildscout |
|---|---|---|
| Core function | Planning data platform | Direct mail to homeowners |
| Coverage of planning applications | All categories, 380+ councils | Householder + small residential only |
| Commercial / industrial / infrastructure applications | Included | Not included |
| Map-based search interface | Included | Not included |
| AI classification + plain-English summaries | Included | Not included |
| Saved searches + daily email alerts | Included | Not included |
| Council analytics (approval rates, decision times) | Included | Not included |
| Constraint overlays (flood, green belt, conservation) | Included | Not included |
| Planning history and EPC at the property | Included | Not included |
| Companies House enrichment | Included | Not included |
| Public tenders & awards (Contracts Finder / Find a Tender) | Included | Not included |
| CSV export | Included | Not included |
| Automated letter sending | Not included | Included |
| Integration with post/print operations | Not included | Included |
| Typical cost | £0 / £29 / £79 billed annually (£39 / £99 monthly) | £249 to £499/mo +VAT, plus 80p to £1 +VAT per letter |
SiteLens’s strength is breadth and intelligence: every type of application (residential, commercial, industrial, infrastructure, householder, change of use), across 380+ UK councils, classified by AI.
Yes, for some businesses this is the best setup. Imagine a groundworks subcontractor who does both new-build work (found via SiteLens on commercial and residential schemes at planning stage) and homeowner driveway work (found via Buildscout on householder approvals with direct-mail outreach). The two tools target different parts of the pipeline and don’t overlap.
Buildscout publishes its plans: roughly £249 to £499 +VAT a month depending on tier, plus a per-letter fee of 80p to £1 +VAT for each letter it prints and posts. A contractor sending 300 letters a month is looking at roughly £550 to £750 +VAT all-in. SiteLens is a flat monthly price with no per-lead or per-letter fee: £0 on the free tier, Pro £29/mo billed annually (£39 monthly) or Team £79/mo billed annually (£99 monthly). Buildscout figures are from its own site as at August 2026.
SiteLens, by a wide margin, because there is no per-letter fee: Pro is £29/mo billed annually (£39 monthly), however many projects you work. But they do different jobs, so it is not apples-to-apples. If your business model depends on letter volume, Buildscout’s cost is the cost of your outreach, print and postage included. SiteLens does not send letters.
Yes, that is the core SiteLens use case. Email, LinkedIn and phone outreach all work from SiteLens data, and Pro shows the agent and firm contacts where the record or the firm publishes them. For most supply-chain B2B work you do not need letters at all.
It can, but you may find Buildscout’s letter automation more directly useful if you sell straight to homeowners. The exception is if you want to target developer-built housing, new-build estates rather than owner-occupier extensions, and that is SiteLens territory.
Pick Buildscout if you’re a residential contractor (builder, extension specialist, loft conversion firm, kitchens, driveways, roofing, solar, rewires) whose sales model is direct-to-homeowner. If what you want is a “set it and forget it” pipeline of phone calls from householders in a 10-mile radius, Buildscout does that job very well and SiteLens doesn’t try to.
The trade-off is that Buildscout’s coverage is limited to householder approvals because that’s what the letter model converts on. It doesn’t show you the commercial, mixed-use, industrial, or infrastructure schemes where the supply-chain opportunities live. If your business is built on those, SiteLens is built for you.
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The £5,000/yr enterprise platform, without the sales call.
Read →Same daily UK planning feed, without the daily phone call.
Read →Whole-UK coverage from £29/mo billed annually, plus the map and classification.
Read →Live planning leads for the supply chain, where SearchLand does land sourcing.
Read →Unlimited application views on every plan, not 25 at £60.
Read →Planning leads for the trades, not site sourcing.
Read →Every council included, classified by trade and value.
Read →Leads for your trade, not alerts about your neighbours.
Read →Find the work worth chasing, where BuildAlert posts letters.
Read →Construction leads from planning, not investment data.
Read →Planning-stage projects, not shared homeowner leads.
Read →Projects at planning stage, not pay-per-lead homeowner jobs.
Read →Reach the project before it reaches a tender list.
Read →The 2026 NPPF reforms commit to 1.5 million new homes, mandatory targets and faster decisions. That widens the pipeline for every trade.
Read: What the 2026 NPPF reforms mean for SME construction →