Florida DBPR Professional & Contractor License Search Scraper

Search Florida's Department of Business & Professional Regulation (DBPR) public license registry — the same data available at myfloridalicense.com, public per Florida Statute Chapter 119. Search by licensee name, exact license number, or by profession/board (contractors, real estate, cosmetology, engineering, and 35+ other regulated professions), optionally narrowed by Florida county or city. No login, no API key.

What this actor does

• Three search modes: byName, byLicenseNumber, byProfession
• 39 DBPR boards/professions covered — construction, real estate, cosmetology, engineering, electrical contractors, barbers, veterinary medicine, and more
• 309 license sub-types across those boards (e.g. "Certified General Contractor", "Real Estate Broker or Sales")
• 70 Florida counties available as a filter, plus free-text city filter
• Full detail-page enrichment (on by default) — every result's detail page is fetched to add county, licensure (issue) date, DBA name, alternate names, and special qualifications
• Status filter — active / inactive / pending / any
• Empty fields are omitted — a record only contains data DBPR actually published for that licensee

Output per license record

• licenseeName — individual or business name on file
• dbaName — "doing business as" name, when on file
• alternateNames[] — other names associated with the license
• nameType — Primary, Alternate, or DBA
• licenseNumber, licenseType (profession), rank (license sub-category abbreviation)
• status, statusCategory (active / inactive / pending / unknown), expirationDate
• licensureDate — original issue date (from the detail page)
• county — Florida county on file (from the detail page)
• mainAddress, mailingAddress, licenseLocationAddress — each { street, city, state, zip, fullAddress } when the format is parseable, { fullAddress } otherwise
• specialQualifications[] — { qualification, effectiveDate }
• profession — the board/profession category searched (mode=byProfession)
• sourceUrl — canonical DBPR licensee detail page
• searchType, searchTerm — the query that produced this record
• recordType: "license", scrapedAt

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
mode	string (select)	byName	byName / byLicenseNumber / byProfession
lastName	string	–	Last name or business name (mode=byName)
firstName	string	–	First name, narrows a last-name search
orgName	string	–	Business/establishment name (mode=byName)
licenseNumber	string	–	Exact license number, e.g. CFC056678 (mode=byLicenseNumber)
board	string (select)	–	One of 39 DBPR boards/professions (mode=byProfession)
licenseType	string	–	Sub-type within the board, e.g. Certified General Contractor (mode=byProfession, optional)
county	string (select)	–	One of 70 Florida counties. Optional for byName; required (or set city) for byProfession
city	string	–	City filter. Optional for byName; required (or set county) for byProfession
statusFilter	string (select)	any	any / active / inactive / pending
fetchDetails	boolean	true	Enrich each result with its full detail page
maxItems	integer	20	Hard cap on emitted records (1–200)
proxyConfiguration	object	Apify Proxy (auto)	Not needed in normal operation (the site is publicly reachable); used automatically only if direct requests start getting blocked

Example: search by last name

{
  "mode": "byName",
  "lastName": "Smith",
  "maxItems": 20
}

Example: exact license number lookup

{
  "mode": "byLicenseNumber",
  "licenseNumber": "CFC056678"
}

Example: active general contractors in a county

{
  "mode": "byProfession",
  "board": "06",
  "licenseType": "Certified General Contractor",
  "county": "58",
  "statusFilter": "active",
  "maxItems": 25
}

Example: real estate licensees in a city

{
  "mode": "byProfession",
  "board": "25",
  "licenseType": "Real Estate Broker or Sales",
  "city": "Miami",
  "maxItems": 25
}

Use cases

• Due diligence — verify a contractor, real estate agent, or other Florida professional's license status before hiring or signing a contract
• Compliance / KYC — confirm a business or individual's active licensure and expiration date
• Lead generation — pull licensee lists for a profession and county (e.g. all active general contractors in Orange County)
• Consumer protection research — check disciplinary/status history via the licensee's DBPR detail page link
• Market research — count active licensees per profession per county across Florida

FAQ

What is the data source? The actor scrapes the public license search portal at myfloridalicense.com, operated by the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation. It is not affiliated with the State of Florida. Access is public per Florida Statute Chapter 119 (public records law) — no login is required on the official site either.

Why does a name search sometimes return licensees whose name doesn't contain my search term? DBPR's name search performs a starts-with / nearest-alphabetical match against its sorted licensee index, identical to the official search UI. Results are ordered alphabetically from your search term.

Does licenseNumber search support partial matches? No — it requires the license number in the exact format DBPR issued it (including any letter prefix, e.g. CFC056678, not just 056678).

Why do I need to pick a board for profession search, and what is licenseType? A "board" is DBPR's top-level regulatory category (e.g. Construction Industry, Real Estate, Cosmetology). Each board has several license sub-types (e.g. Construction Industry includes "Certified General Contractor", "Certified Plumbing Contractor", etc). If you don't specify licenseType, the actor uses the board's first available sub-type — for full control, set licenseType to the exact sub-type label.

Why do I need to set county or city for mode=byProfession? DBPR's own profession/board search (both the official site's client-side validation and its server) requires a location filter — either a Florida county or a city — for this search type; it returns zero results without one. byName and byLicenseNumber searches don't have this restriction.

Why are some fields like county or licensureDate missing on some records? Those fields are only available from the licensee's detail page. Set fetchDetails: true (the default) to populate them; disabling it returns faster but with only the summary-table fields (name, license number, type, status, expiration, main address).

How current is the data? DBPR serves live data directly from the state's licensing system, so results reflect the registry at the time the actor runs. The search results page shows "Data current as of" the scrape date.

Does this actor need a login, cookies, or proxy? No. DBPR's license search portal is fully public. A proxy is only used automatically as a fallback if the source starts blocking direct requests.