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.
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, £39/mo Pro or £99/mo Team (£29 and £79 billed annually), no matter how many projects you work. Buildscout charges per letter plus a subscription. A contractor sending 300 letters a month is looking at £450 to £750 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 | ||
| Map-based search interface | ||
| AI classification + plain-English summaries | ||
| Saved searches + daily email alerts | ||
| Council analytics (approval rates, decision times) | ||
| Constraint overlays (flood, green belt, conservation) | ||
| Land Registry price-paid matching | ||
| Companies House enrichment | ||
| Public tenders & awards (Contracts Finder / Find a Tender) | ||
| CSV export | ||
| Automated letter sending | ||
| Integration with post/print operations | ||
| Typical cost | £0 / £39 / £99 (£29 / £79 annual) | Varies by letter volume |
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.
For a contractor sending letters, SiteLens at £29/month billed annually is dramatically cheaper than Buildscout’s per-letter model. But they do different jobs, so it’s not apples-to-apples. If your business model depends on letter volume, the Buildscout cost is the cost of outreach. SiteLens doesn’t send letters.
Yes, that’s the core SiteLens use case. Email, LinkedIn and phone outreach all work from SiteLens’s data. For most supply-chain B2B work, you don’t need letters at all.
It can, but you may find Buildscout’s letter automation more directly useful. The exception is if you want to target developer-built housing (new-build estates) rather than owner-occupier extensions, and that’s 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 →Same price, plus the map, classification, and analytics.
Read →Live planning leads for the supply chain, not just land sourcing.
Read →Unlimited application views at £39/mo, not 25 views at £60.
Read →Planning leads for the trades, not site sourcing.
Read →Every council included, classified by trade and value.
Read →Find the work worth chasing, not just letters to post.
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 →Find the projects, not just get listed for tenders.
Read →The 2026 NPPF reforms commit to 1.5 million new homes, mandatory targets and faster decisions, expanding the pipeline for every trade.
Read: What the 2026 NPPF reforms mean for SME construction →