Business Licenses — Chicago: full dataset

NOTE, 9/25/2025 - We have populated the Address column for additional records . Business licenses issued by the Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection in the City of Chicago from 2002 to the present. This dataset contains a large number of records/rows of data and may not be viewed in full in Microsoft Excel. Therefore, when downloading the file, select CSV from the Export menu. This Actor returns it as one flat JSON row per record, with 42 declared fields — typed, named and documented in the dataset schema, so a spreadsheet or an agent can use it without guessing.

What you get

Field	Type	Meaning
id	string	ID
location_address	string	LOCATION (address)
community_area	number	COMMUNITY AREA
license_id	number	LICENSE ID
ward_precinct	string	WARD PRECINCT
application_type	string	APPLICATION TYPE
license_start_date	string	LICENSE TERM START DATE
latitude	number	Latitude
longitude	number	Longitude
legal_name	string	LEGAL NAME
application_requirements_complete	string	APPLICATION REQUIREMENTS COMPLETE
community_area_name	string	COMMUNITY AREA NAME
location_city	string	LOCATION (city)
ward	number	WARD
longitude_2	number	LONGITUDE
conditional_approval	string	CONDITIONAL APPROVAL
precinct	number	PRECINCT
location_zip	string	LOCATION (zip)
ssa	string	SSA
police_district	number	POLICE DISTRICT

The output schema lists all 42 fields; the table above is the first twenty.

Every row also carries sourceRowId, sourceUpdatedAt and scrapedAt, so a pipeline can tell one record from another and know exactly when it was read.

{
  "id": "2977363-20261016",
  "location_address": "text",
  "community_area": 14,
  "license_id": 3099221,
  "ward_precinct": "33-9",
  "application_type": "RENEW",
  "license_start_date": "2026-10-16T00:00:00.000",
  "latitude": 41.96223481162694
}

Inputs

Field	What it does
Filter (SoQL)	Applied at the source, so a narrow question fetches a narrow page instead of downloading everything.
Order	Empty keeps the publisher's own order; set a column to sort, for example amount DESC.
Maximum rows	Hard cap. The source is paged 1,000 rows at a time.
Time budget	Stops cleanly and reports how far it got.
Pause between pages	Keeps the run inside the publisher's rate limits.

Limitations

• This is one dataset, from one publisher. It is the Business Licenses dataset as City of Chicago publishes it — not a national or cross-city equivalent, and not a merge with other sources.
• The publisher can change it. Columns are added, renamed and retired upstream; the field list here is the schema the Actor was generated from. A renamed column arrives as a new field only after the Actor is updated.
• Fields are typed from live records. A column that was empty in the sample is declared as text; a value that does not fit the declared type comes back null rather than being coerced into a wrong number.
• Records are what the publisher publishes. No geocoding, no de-duplication across datasets, no enrichment.
• Freshness is the publisher's. The data was last changed upstream on 2026-10-24. Where the publisher supplies a row timestamp it appears as sourceUpdatedAt; scrapedAt records when this Actor read the row.

Why this is different

• Business Licenses — Chicago: full dataset declares all 42 of its output fields in the dataset schema, each with a type, a description and an example.
• The Actor reads the Business Licenses dataset directly from Chicago Open Data; no key, login or account is needed.
• Filters run at the source with SoQL, so a narrow request returns a narrow page rather than a full download.
• Every row is flat JSON: nested location objects become latitude and longitude, and no field holds a nested object.
• The row id is stable, so the same request de-duplicates instead of returning the same record twice.

FAQ

Do I need an API key? No. Chicago Open Data publishes this dataset openly.

How fresh is it? The Actor reads the dataset live. scrapedAt records when each row was read, and sourceUpdatedAt carries the publisher's own row timestamp where it supplies one.

Can I filter by date or status? Yes — use the Filter field with SoQL, for example status = 'Active'.

What happens if my filter is wrong? The run stops with the portal's own message and the hint to check SoQL, rather than returning an empty dataset that looks like "no data".

Is this the whole dataset? Up to your row cap, paged 1,000 at a time. Raise the cap to read more.

What is sourceRowId? The publisher's own row id when it supplies one, otherwise a stable hash of the row. Either way it is what makes de-duplication and joins possible.

Pricing

Pay per result: $0.0005 per row. Each stored dataset row is billed, including any diagnostic row returned instead of results.

An Actor-start event is also charged at $0.0001 per GB of allocated memory (minimum one event), even if no rows are returned. At 1 GB or less, 1,000 result rows cost $0.5001 before any applicable Store discount.

Data source

Chicago Open Data — Business Licenses, published by City of Chicago. Public data under the portal's open-data terms.