Most API documentation starts with endpoints. This one starts with the data, because the data is the reason you are here. BrightCat's pipeline covers Canadian residential and commercial property markets at the property level, with weekly refresh, continuous since 2014. The question is how you get it into your application. BrightCat offers three delivery paths. Choose one, or combine them.
Three delivery paths
BrightCat does not publish a public HTTP REST endpoint. The data volumes and query patterns enterprise teams use against Canadian property data are better served by the three delivery mechanisms below. Each one is an API in the architectural sense: a programmatic interface between the consumer's application and BrightCat's data. Each one exists at a layer above raw HTTP.
The three paths share one underlying pipeline. Schemas, refresh cadence, and coverage are identical across delivery modes. The choice is about where the query runs and how the consumer's application authenticates.
Path 1 — Snowflake Marketplace
The preferred delivery path for enterprise data teams. BrightCat publishes five Marketplace listings (Listings, Sold, Rentals, Commercial, Core) as Snowflake Secure Data Shares. The consumer mounts the share into their own Snowflake account; queries run as SQL inside the consumer's warehouse against the live BrightCat data. No file transfer, no ETL pipeline, no scheduled refresh to maintain. When BrightCat updates the pipeline, the change is visible in the same query immediately.
Best for: analytics workloads, dashboards, scheduled reports, retention/acquisition use cases where the query joins BrightCat data to the consumer's own customer or property tables.
Path 2 — MCP Connector
The delivery path for AI agents and LLMs. The BrightCat MCP Connector implements the Model Context Protocol, letting Claude, custom agents, and any MCP-compatible client query BrightCat data through natural language. Authentication is OAuth-based. The consumer's AI agent issues tool calls; BrightCat's MCP server translates them into SQL, runs the query, and returns structured results. The underlying data is the same Snowflake-hosted pipeline the Marketplace listings expose.
Best for: conversational analytics, agent-driven workflows, retention triggers, next-best-offer routing, natural-language property research.
Path 3 — Flat file delivery
The delivery path for teams not yet on Snowflake or that have a specific compliance requirement for file-based delivery. BrightCat delivers Parquet or CSV to the consumer's SFTP endpoint on the weekly refresh cadence. Schemas match the Snowflake and MCP delivery paths. Partitioning and chunking are customizable per client.
Best for: Databricks environments, BigQuery pipelines, on-prem data warehouses, regulated workloads requiring file-based audit trails.
What the API returns
Five product lines, each available through all three delivery paths:
- BrightCat Listings — 5.8M+ Canadian residential properties, weekly lifecycle states (NEW, PRICE CHANGED, DROPPED, RELISTED, SOLD), 135+ columns per property including listing price, days on market, property characteristics.
- BrightCat Sold — Canadian sold transaction events with full listing-to-sale history, linked by stable matchkey across relistings.
- BrightCat Rentals — Canadian residential rental listings with national coverage.
- BrightCat Commercial — 297,000+ Canadian commercial properties across sale and lease tracks, with dual-listing detection.
- BrightCat Core — unified property-level enrichment including the Canadian Home Price Index series (194,167 verified repeat-sale pairs).
Authentication
There is no separate BrightCat API key system. Authentication happens at the delivery layer of whichever path the consumer chooses:
- Snowflake Marketplace — Snowflake's native authentication. The consumer's Snowflake account ID is the unit of authorization. Share permissions are granted to the account during Marketplace listing acceptance.
- MCP Connector — OAuth through the BrightCat Snowflake account. Claude Desktop handles the OAuth flow natively; other MCP clients follow the standard MCP server registration pattern.
- Flat file delivery — SFTP with customer-specific credentials issued at contract start.
Query patterns
Snowflake — identifying pre-movers
Join the consumer's customer address table against BrightCat Listings by postal code. Filter for properties with lifecycle state of NEW in the past seven days. Return matched customer IDs for the retention queue.
MCP — natural language through Claude
"Show me active residential listings in Toronto with price drops of more than 5% in the last 14 days, sorted by original list price." Claude issues the tool call; the MCP server resolves the query against the BrightCat pipeline and returns structured results.
Flat file — weekly batch delivery
Consumer's SFTP endpoint receives the weekly Parquet drop. Downstream pipeline loads the files into the consumer's warehouse of choice. Schema is identical to what the Snowflake and MCP paths expose.
Pricing
BrightCat licenses the data through a commercial agreement, not through per-call API metering. Pricing is based on scope (which of the five products), delivery path, and term structure (12/24/36-month). Every Snowflake Marketplace listing includes a sample schema that prospective consumers can query before any commercial commitment. The fastest way to evaluate is to accept the Marketplace listing and run queries against the sample.
Frequently asked questions
What is the BrightCat API?
The BrightCat API is the combined set of three delivery mechanisms BrightCat exposes for programmatic access to Canadian property data: Snowflake Marketplace (Secure Data Share for SQL access), the MCP Connector (for AI agents and LLMs), and flat-file delivery (Parquet or CSV). All three paths query the same underlying pipeline covering 5.8 million residential and 297,000 commercial Canadian properties.
Is there a REST API endpoint?
BrightCat does not publish a public REST endpoint. Canadian property data at enterprise scale is delivered through Snowflake Secure Data Share and the MCP Connector, both of which are preferable to HTTP REST for the data volumes involved. Snowflake access uses SQL inside the consumer's own warehouse; MCP access uses tool calls from an AI agent. For integrations that specifically require REST, a Snowflake-mediated REST wrapper can be built in the consumer's environment.
What authentication does the BrightCat API use?
Snowflake Marketplace access uses Snowflake's native authentication and share permissions, so no separate API keys need to be managed. The MCP Connector uses OAuth through the BrightCat Snowflake account. Flat-file delivery uses SFTP with customer-specific credentials. There is no separate BrightCat API key system because the authentication happens at the delivery layer.
What Canadian property data does the API return?
5.8 million residential properties with weekly lifecycle tracking, 297,000 commercial properties with dual-listing detection, national rental listings, Canadian sold transaction events with full history, and the Canadian Home Price Index series derived from 194,167 verified repeat-sale pairs. Coverage spans all ten Canadian provinces with continuous weekly refresh since 2014.
How is pricing structured?
BrightCat licenses the data through a commercial agreement rather than through per-call API metering. Pricing is based on scope of data, delivery path, and term structure. Every Snowflake Marketplace listing includes a sample schema consumers can query before entering a commercial agreement, so evaluation is zero-friction.
What is the refresh cadence?
Weekly. The full pipeline refreshes on a weekly schedule that has been continuous since 2014. For Snowflake consumers, the refresh is visible immediately in the next query. For MCP consumers, the refresh is visible on the next agent query. For flat-file consumers, a new Parquet drop arrives each week.
What regions does the Snowflake share use?
Azure Canada Central is the primary region. Cross-region access is supported through Snowflake's replication mechanism for consumers in other regions or cloud providers.
Is there a sandbox for evaluation?
Yes. Every Snowflake Marketplace listing includes a sample schema, and the MCP Connector supports the same sample tier. Consumers can query the sample data before any commercial commitment to validate coverage, schema, and query patterns against their own use case.
The right Canadian property data API is the one that meets the consumer's application where it already lives. Snowflake-native for analytics teams. MCP-native for AI agents. Flat file for everyone in between.
BrightCat Data · Five products · Three delivery paths · One pipeline
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