Procurement and buyer FAQ
The questions buyers email us before subscribing, answered in one place. If yours is not here, email hello@sitelens.co.uk and a person will answer it.
How many councils does SiteLens cover?
SiteLens covers 380+ UK councils across all four nations: England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Every new planning application we collect is classified by trade and project type, so a search or an alert can be filtered to the work you want, by trade, area and estimated value.
How often is the data updated?
Nightly. We collect new applications from council planning registers overnight, every night, so an application typically appears in SiteLens the morning after the council publishes it. Alert digests go out daily on every plan, and Team plans can run alerts at up to hourly cadence during the day.
Is there a minimum term or a contract?
No. There is no contract and no minimum term on Free, Pro, or Team. Monthly plans roll month to month: cancel any time from your account settings and you keep access to the end of the month you have paid for. Annual Pro and Team plans are paid up front for the year and come with a 30-day money-back guarantee: if SiteLens is not working for you, email us within 30 days of your first annual payment and we refund that payment in full.
How does billing work?
Self-serve, by card, through Stripe. Plans are billed monthly or annually in advance, in GBP, exclusive of VAT where applicable. Pro is £39 a month, or £29 a month billed annually (£348 a year). Team is £99 a month, or £79 a month billed annually (£948 a year). Invoices are available from the billing portal in your account settings, and you can change plan or cancel there yourself, no phone call needed. Moving up, the unused part of your current period is credited and we invoice the difference straight away. Moving from annual to monthly takes effect when your annual period ends.
Do you sign a data processing agreement (DPA)?
SiteLens supplies data drawn from public records as a data controller in its own right. For your procurement or legal review we publish a buyer due diligence pack instead, covering where the data comes from, the lawful basis we rely on, and how people can object. It is public, with our legitimate interests assessment, DPIA and Article 30 record, so your reviewer can read, print or save it without an account.
Where does the data come from?
Council planning registers, Companies House, the EPC register, HM Land Registry, public tender feeds and other open government data, together with firms' own websites and other business sources for contact details. The attribution the licences require is on our data sources page.
Can I use SiteLens data for outbound sales or cold outreach?
The planning data is public, but you must comply with PECR and UK GDPR when you contact people. Emailing staff at a company (a corporate subscriber) is generally allowed under PECR, though UK GDPR still applies to a named individual. Sole traders and some partnerships count as individual subscribers and need consent. Take legal advice on your own use.
What support is included?
Email support on paid plans, from the people who build the product: hello@sitelens.co.uk. Team subscriptions get priority handling. The Free plan is self-serve. We are a UK company working UK hours.
Can more than one person use one subscription?
Pro is licensed for one person, and accounts are individual: credentials are not shared. When a second person needs access, Team covers up to 5 users and adds a shared leads pipeline, shared saved searches and one pooled contact lookup allowance, so the team works one patch together instead of paying twice for the same data. Need more seats or bulk data access? Email us and we will sort something out.
Can we try it before buying?
Yes. The Free plan is free forever with no card: search all 380+ councils and run one alert, daily or weekly, for as long as you like. And every account that has not subscribed before includes a one-time 7-day Pro trial, also without a card: sign up, then start it on the upgrade page. When the trial ends the account returns to the free tier by itself. There is nothing to cancel.
Who operates SiteLens?
SiteLens is operated by Alcyone AI Ltd, company 17060294, registered in England and Wales. Our terms and privacy policy are published on this site.
Need the data in your own systems?
The SiteLens API is a separate plan: read-only planning data over REST, from £149/mo billed annually. Endpoints and the full price list are on the API page.