New here? This is the short orientation — what ALKARTIS actually is, how the platform is laid out, and the fastest path from signing in to your first useful answer.
ALKARTIS is a Philadelphia real-estate and civic intelligence platform. Rather than one sprawling dashboard, it's a suite of focused apps — each built on public records, and each designed to answer a single question well. CompensationAtlas answers "what does this city job pay?"; TaxAssessmentIQ answers "is my property assessment fair?"; LandlordEye answers "who owns this property, and what's their record?"; BlockWatcher answers "what's happening around this address?"; and BuildSignal answers "where is construction investment moving?" You don't have to learn a whole system — you pick the app that matches your question.
Everything you see traces back to a specific, checkable public record. ALKARTIS connects and explains those records; it doesn't invent figures. That's the thread running through every app.
Once you're signed in at app.alkartis.com, the apps live in the sidebar. Each app opens to an Overview that explains, in plain language, what that app reads (which public datasets it draws on) and what it's for (the one question it's built to answer). Reading the Overview first is the quickest way to know whether you're in the right place before you start searching.
Because every app sits on the same foundation of public records, moving between them feels consistent — the same search, the same emphasis on traceable sources, the same shape of results. Learn one app and the rest feel familiar.
Three steps cover most first sessions:
1. Pick the app that matches your question. Start from what you're trying to find out — a salary, an assessment, an owner, a block, a development trend — and open the corresponding app. Its Overview will confirm you're in the right one.
2. Use search to jump straight to what you need. Every app has a search box, and pressing ⌘K (or Ctrl+K on Windows) opens quick search from anywhere so you can jump to a name, address, or department without clicking around.
3. Save a watch to get alerted when something changes. When you land on a result worth following — a property, an owner, a block — save a watch. ALKARTIS will email you when the underlying records change, so you don't have to keep checking back. See Saved Views & Alerts for how watches and saved views work.
All of it is public records. The core is the City of Philadelphia's open data — property assessments, payroll, permits, licenses, violations, and 311 requests — supplemented by federal and state sources where relevant. ALKARTIS's job is to connect those scattered records into something you can actually read and act on. For the full breakdown of what's public and how current it is, see Data Accuracy & Sources.
No — a single ALKARTIS account signs you in to every app you have access to. See Creating Your Account for where signup happens.
Whichever matches the question you have right now. There's no required order — each app stands on its own, so start where your question is and branch out from there.
No. A free account lets you explore the live apps at the free-trial tier before deciding whether to subscribe — see What's Included in the Free Trial.