Chicago Business Licenses Scraper

Scrape Chicago's open business license database — over 100,000 active licenses with business name, address, license type, business activity, expiration date, GPS coordinates, and more.

Data source: City of Chicago Data Portal — publicly available with no API key required.

What can it do?

• Search businesses by name, license type, business activity keyword, neighborhood, or ZIP code
• Lookup specific licenses by license number
• Filter by license status (active, revoked, inactive)
• Retrieve GPS coordinates for location-based analysis

Input

Field	Type	Description
mode	select	searchBusinesses or getBusinessProfile
query	string	Partial match on legal name or DBA name
licenseType	string	Filter by license description (e.g. "Retail Food Establishment")
businessActivity	string	Filter by activity keyword (e.g. "attorney", "food")
neighborhood	select	Chicago neighborhood (e.g. "LOOP", "LINCOLN PARK")
zipCode	string	Chicago ZIP code (e.g. "60601")
licenseStatus	select	AAI (active), AAC (conditional), REV (revoked)
licenseNumbers	array	License numbers for getBusinessProfile mode
maxItems	integer	Max records to return (default: 100, max: 10,000)

Output

Each record contains:

{
  "licenseId": "3082190",
  "licenseNumber": "2818291",
  "legalName": "ALTRUISTIC ESTHETICS INC.",
  "doingBusinessAsName": "ALTRUISTIC ESTHETICS",
  "address": "4809 N RAVENSWOOD AVE 116",
  "city": "CHICAGO",
  "state": "IL",
  "zipCode": "60640",
  "neighborhood": "UPTOWN",
  "communityAreaName": "UPTOWN",
  "licenseDescription": "Limited Business License",
  "businessActivities": ["Skincare Services", "Provide Waxing Services"],
  "primaryActivity": "Skincare Services",
  "licenseStatusCode": "AAI",
  "licenseStatus": "Active (Issued)",
  "licenseStartDate": "2026-11-16",
  "expirationDate": "2027-11-15",
  "latitude": 41.9650268,
  "longitude": -87.6665356,
  "sourceUrl": "https://data.cityofchicago.org/resource/uupf-x98q.json?license_number=2818291",
  "recordType": "businessLicense",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-05-30T10:00:00+00:00"
}

Use Cases

• Business prospecting — find businesses by type or neighborhood
• Market research — analyze business density by area or industry
• Competitive intelligence — track restaurant, law firm, or retail openings
• Data journalism — investigate business license patterns in Chicago

FAQs

Is this free to use? Yes — the data comes from Chicago's open data portal and requires no API key.

How current is the data? The City of Chicago updates the dataset daily.

Can I search by attorney or law firm? Yes — use businessActivity: "attorney" or query: "law".

What neighborhoods are available? All 77 Chicago community areas plus named neighborhoods. Use the neighborhood dropdown in the input schema.

Does it work globally? This scraper is specific to the City of Chicago. For other cities, open data portals (data.cityofla.org, data.cityofnewyork.us, etc.) offer similar datasets.