Delaware Corporation Entity Search Scraper

Search the Delaware Division of Corporations' free public entity database. Look up a business by name (starts-with match) or exact file number and get the file number, formation date, entity kind/type, residency, and registered agent name and address. HTTP-only via the public icis.corp.delaware.gov entity search — no login required.

Data Source & Usage Notes

Read this before running a large job.

• Terms of Use caution. The Delaware Division of Corporations' website Terms of Use caution against using automated tools against the site. This is a contractual/policy risk, not a technical restriction enforced by a login wall -- there is no account, API key, or paywall standing between a user and this data. This actor is intended for light, occasional lookups (checking a handful of entities), not bulk harvesting. Please use it accordingly and review the source site's own terms.
• Conservative by design. maxItems defaults to a small value and is capped at 25. The actor adds deliberate delays between requests and only ever uses Apify's free datacenter (AUTO) proxy group -- never a paid residential proxy -- to spread requests across IPs if one gets rate-limited.
• The site can rate-limit automated traffic. Confirmed live: submitting several rapid, repeated searches from the same source IP can trigger the site's own anti-automation state (a disabled search button / CAPTCHA challenge), which blocks further searches from that IP for a period. If a run returns 0 results, this is the most likely cause -- wait and retry with a smaller maxItems, or try again later.
• Not affiliated with the State of Delaware. This is an independent third-party tool using the source's own public, no-login search form.

What this actor does

• Two modes: searchByName, byFileNumber
• Exact-name match option — exactMatch switches searchByName from the source's default "starts with" match to an exact whole-name match, using the source search form's own documented quotation-mark syntax
• Full entity detail — automatically follows through from search results to each entity's detail page
• Registered agent info — name, full address, county, and phone when on file
• Empty fields are omitted

What's NOT included (and why)

• status (active / inactive / good standing) and tax/filing history are explicitly a paid add-on on the source site itself ("Additional Information is available for a fee") -- they are not part of the free entity search this actor uses, and are never scraped.
• No permalink per entity. The source site has no bookmarkable URL for an individual entity record (the whole flow is form-postback based); sourceUrl points to the search page itself, which is the actual page a user must visit to reproduce the lookup.
• No entity-type / status / county dropdown filters. Confirmed against the live search form: the source's free search has exactly two input fields (entity name, file number) and no other filter controls -- there is nothing further to expose without scraping the paid detail area.

Output per entity

• fileNumber — Delaware file number
• entityName
• entityKind — e.g. Limited Liability Company, Corporation
• entityType — e.g. General
• residency — Domestic (Delaware-formed) or Foreign (formed elsewhere, registered to do business in Delaware)
• stateOfFormation
• formationDate — YYYY-MM-DD
• registeredAgentName
• registeredAgentAddress, registeredAgentCity, registeredAgentCounty, registeredAgentState, registeredAgentZip
• registeredAgentPhone — when on file
• sourceUrl
• recordType: "entity", scrapedAt

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
mode	string	searchByName	searchByName / byFileNumber
entityName	string	AMAZON	Starts-with match on entity name (mode=searchByName)
exactMatch	boolean	false	On: exact whole-name match instead of "starts with" (mode=searchByName)
fileNumbers	array	–	Exact file numbers to look up (mode=byFileNumber)
proxyConfiguration	object	AUTO proxy	Apify proxy config; always datacenter (AUTO), never residential
maxItems	int	5	Hard cap (1–25)

Example: search by entity name prefix

{
  "mode": "searchByName",
  "entityName": "TESLA",
  "maxItems": 5
}

Example: lookup by exact file number

{
  "mode": "byFileNumber",
  "fileNumbers": ["5804452"]
}

Example: exact entity name match

{
  "mode": "searchByName",
  "entityName": "GOOGLE ACCESS LLC",
  "exactMatch": true,
  "maxItems": 1
}

Use cases

• Due diligence — confirm a counterparty's Delaware formation date and registered agent before contracting
• Compliance & KYC — cross-check a business's legal entity name and file number
• Startup / legal research — look up how a company's Delaware entity is structured (LLC vs. Corp)
• Registered agent research — see which agent a specific entity uses
• Company name availability checks — see what similarly-named entities already exist before choosing a new name

FAQ

What's the data source? The Delaware Division of Corporations' own free public entity search at icis.corp.delaware.gov. This actor is an independent third-party tool and is not affiliated with the State of Delaware.

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

Why is entityName a "starts with" search instead of "contains"? That's how Delaware's own search form works -- searching GOOGLE returns entities like GOOGLE FIBER INC. but not a hypothetical ALPHABET GOOGLE HOLDINGS LLC. This actor mirrors the source's own matching behavior exactly.

How do I get only one exact entity instead of every name that starts with my query? Set exactMatch: true. The source search form's own help text says "For exact searches use quotation marks" -- this actor uses that same documented syntax internally, so you just flip the toggle instead of typing quotes yourself.

Why did my run return 0 results? Either the name/file number genuinely has no match, or the source's own anti-automation rate limiting kicked in for this run (see Data Source & Usage Notes above). Try again with a smaller maxItems, or space out your runs.

Why is maxItems capped so low? Every additional result costs an extra request against a source that actively rate-limits automated traffic. Keeping requests few and spaced out is the actor's main defense against getting blocked mid-run.

What's the difference between Domestic and Foreign residency? Domestic means the entity was originally formed in Delaware. Foreign means it was formed in another state or country and has registered with Delaware to do business there (or to take advantage of Delaware's registered-agent/franchise system).

How fresh is the data? Real-time -- the search reflects the Division of Corporations' database as of the moment of the search.