Arkansas Secretary of State Business Search Scraper

Search the Arkansas Secretary of State's free public business entity database (sos-corp-search.ark.org). Look up a business by corporation name, fictitious (assumed/DBA) name, registered agent, or exact filing number, and get entity type, status, date filed, principal/registered-agent address, officers, and — for foreign (out-of-state) entities — their home-state address and state of origin. HTTP-only via the public search form — no login required.

Data Source & Usage Notes

Read this before running a large job.

• No login, no CAPTCHA under normal use. The source is a modern server-rendered search application with no account wall observed on GET requests.
• AWS WAF rate-based challenge under sustained heavy traffic. Arkansas's site sits behind CloudFront + AWS WAF. Confirmed live: dozens of rapid requests within a short window (as happens during intensive QA/testing, not during normal single-search actor runs) can trigger AWS WAF's rate-based rule, which responds with 202 Accepted + x-amzn-waf-action: challenge and an empty body for a few minutes before clearing on its own. This actor paces requests (~0.6s between the search and each detail fetch), automatically retries with a fresh Apify AUTO-proxy session and exponential backoff (up to 4 escalations) on any blocked/challenged response, and fails soft with a clear Actor.set_status_message if the challenge persists through every retry. If 3 consecutive detail lookups fail even after full retry, the actor falls back to search-row-only fields for the remaining records (rather than aborting the run) and keeps going until every requested record is delivered. A normal job (one search + its detail fetches) does not generate enough traffic to trigger this rule.
• Conservative by design. The actor only ever uses Apify's free datacenter (AUTO) proxy group — never a paid residential proxy.
• Not affiliated with the State of Arkansas. This is an independent third-party tool using the source's own public, no-login search form.

Why Arkansas instead of California?

This actor was originally scoped as a California SOS (bizfileonline.sos.ca.gov) business search. Live verification (including from Apify's own cloud infrastructure, with and without the AUTO proxy group, using httpx and a Chrome-TLS-impersonated client) showed the site's underlying POST /api/Records/businesssearch search endpoint consistently returns an application-level 403 with no body — while the same infrastructure could load the static SPA shell and a separate detail-by-ID endpoint just fine. Every payload variation tried failed identically, indicating the search endpoint specifically blocks non-browser/datacenter traffic. Per this project's zero-cost reliability policy, the target was replaced with Arkansas's SOS business search — a real, free, no-login, no-CAPTCHA state business registry confirmed live and returning real search results from Apify's cloud infrastructure.

What this actor does

• 4 search modes, matching every reliable axis Arkansas's own search form exposes:
  • byName — corporation/business name (matches anywhere in the name)
  • byFictitiousName — fictitious/assumed (DBA) name
  • byAgent — registered agent name, optionally narrowed by agent city/state
  • byFilingNumber — exact Arkansas filing number
• Entity type filter (corpTypeId) — all 35 finite entity/filing types the site's own dropdown exposes (corporation, LLC, LP, cooperative, bank, name reservation, etc.), usable on every mode
• Full entity detail — automatically follows through from search results to each entity's detail record for filing type, dates, addresses, registered agent, and officers
• Officers list — every listed officer/incorporator with their title
• Foreign-entity home address — for entities formed outside Arkansas, the out-of-state name/address and state of origin
• Empty fields are omitted

What's NOT included (and why)

• Principal address — Arkansas's own detail record leaves this blank (shown as a dash) for the large majority of entities on file; when populated it is included, otherwise omitted rather than emitted as an empty/sentinel value.
• Filing history (list of individual filed documents/dates) — the source's public detail view exposes only the current filing snapshot, not a historical timeline.
• Certificate of Good Standing / Franchise Tax payment — these require a paid transaction on the state's own payment portal; this actor includes the direct informational/payment links (certificateOfGoodStandingUrl, franchiseTaxPaymentUrl) the source provides, but does not purchase or pay anything.

Output per entity

• corporationName
• filingNumber — Arkansas filing number
• filingType — e.g. Domestic Limited Liability Company, Foreign For Profit Corporation
• status — e.g. Good Standing, Withdrawn, Forfeited Charter
• filedUnderAct — statutory act reference on file
• fictitiousNames — list of DBA/assumed names, when on file
• principalAddress — when on file
• registeredAgentName, registeredAgentAddress
• registeredAgentCity, registeredAgentState — from the search index
• dateFiled — YYYY-MM-DD
• officers — list of {name, title}
• foreignName, foreignAddress, stateOfOrigin — for entities formed outside Arkansas
• certificateOfGoodStandingUrl, franchiseTaxPaymentUrl
• sourceUrl
• recordType: "entity", scrapedAt

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
mode	string	byName	One of the 4 search modes
corpName	string	GOOGLE	mode=byName
fictitiousName	string	–	mode=byFictitiousName
agentName	string	–	mode=byAgent
agentCity	string	–	mode=byAgent (optional narrowing)
agentState	string	–	mode=byAgent (optional narrowing; 2-letter US state)
filingNumber	string	–	mode=byFilingNumber
corpTypeId	string	All Types	Optional entity-type filter, all modes
proxyConfiguration	object	AUTO proxy	Apify proxy config; always datacenter (AUTO), never residential
maxItems	int	25	Hard cap (1–200)

Example: search by corporation name

{
  "mode": "byName",
  "corpName": "GOOGLE",
  "maxItems": 10
}

Example: search by fictitious/DBA name

{
  "mode": "byFictitiousName",
  "fictitiousName": "GOOGLE FI",
  "maxItems": 10
}

Example: search by registered agent

{
  "mode": "byAgent",
  "agentName": "Corporation Service Company",
  "agentState": "AR",
  "maxItems": 25
}

Example: lookup by exact filing number

{
  "mode": "byFilingNumber",
  "filingNumber": "811066819"
}

Example: entity-type-filtered search

{
  "mode": "byName",
  "corpName": "WALMART",
  "corpTypeId": "7",
  "maxItems": 25
}

Use cases

• Due diligence — confirm a counterparty's Arkansas filing date, entity type, and registered agent before contracting
• Compliance & KYC — cross-check a business's legal entity name and filing number, and its officers
• Registered agent research — find every entity a specific agent represents in Arkansas
• Foreign-qualification research — identify out-of-state entities registered to do business in Arkansas and their home jurisdiction
• Company name availability checks — see what similarly-named entities already exist before choosing a new name

FAQ

What's the data source? The Arkansas Secretary of State's own free public business entity search at sos-corp-search.ark.org. This actor is an independent third-party tool and is not affiliated with the State of Arkansas.

Is this data official / legally binding? No. For an official Certificate of Good Standing or certified copies, use the state's paid ordering channels (see the certificateOfGoodStandingUrl on each record). This actor returns the same free-tier informational data the public search page shows.

Why did my run return 0 results? The query genuinely has no match. Arkansas's name search matches anywhere within the name, so try a shorter/broader fragment.

What's stateOfOrigin? For entities formed outside Arkansas ("foreign" entities), this is the two-letter state/country code of their home jurisdiction, e.g. DE for a Delaware-incorporated company registered to do business in Arkansas.

How fresh is the data? Real-time — the search reflects the Secretary of State's database as of the moment of the search.