Michigan LARA License Lookup Scraper

Look up Michigan professional and occupational licenses issued by LARA (the Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs) — straight from the state's own public "Search for a Licensee" tool. Covers 169 license and credential types across cosmetology, real estate, healthcare, skilled trades, and more. No login, no API key, no proxy, no CAPTCHA required.

What this actor does

• Browse or search Michigan's full public license register by any combination of license type, license number, licensee name, organization name, DBA/trade name, or county
• 169 license/credential types covering accountants, barbers, cosmetologists, dentists, medical doctors, nurses, pharmacists, real estate professionals, veterinarians, and dozens more
• Exact license-number lookup — enter a license number alone (no license type required; numbers are unique across every credential type)
• All 83 Michigan counties available as a filter, where the licensee's county is on file
• Filter by license status after fetching (Active, Lapsed, Expired, Revoked, Deceased, and more)
• Disciplinary action history — every recorded condition (suspensions, probation, fines, revocations) from LARA's own "Disciplinary Action(s)" grid, with name, status, severity, and start/end/expiration dates
• Filter to only disciplined licensees with hasDisciplinaryAction
• Automatic pagination — MILARA's own results grid shows 50 records per page; this actor pages through automatically up to your maxItems limit
• Empty fields are omitted — a field only appears on a record when LARA actually published that data for the licensee

Output per license

• licenseNumber — LARA license number
• licenseType — one of LARA's 169 license/credential types
• name — the licensee's full display name (individual) or business name (organization)
• firstName, middleInitial, lastName — for individual licensees, where published
• organizationName — business/company/corporation name, where the license is issued to an entity
• dbaTradeName — "doing business as" / trade name on file, where published
• licenseStatus — current status as published (e.g. Active, Lapsed, Expired, Revoked, Deceased)
• licenseIssueDate — ISO date the license was first issued, where published
• licenseExpirationDate — ISO date the license expires/expired, where published
• county — Michigan county on file for the licensee, where published
• disciplinaryActions[] — recorded disciplinary conditions, where published: {name, status, severity, startDate, endDate, expirationDate} (e.g. Suspended, Probation, Fine Imposed)
• sourceUrl — the MILARA license detail page for this record
• recordType: "license", scrapedAt

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
licenseType	select	Cosmetologist	One of LARA's 169 license/credential types. Leave unset to search across all types.
licenseNumber	string	–	Exact license number (e.g. 4704006499). Unique across all license types.
formerLicenseNumber	string	–	Older/legacy license number on file, where different from the current number.
firstName	string	–	Licensee's first name (individuals only).
middleInitial	string	–	Licensee's middle initial (individuals only).
lastName	string	–	Licensee's last name (individuals only).
organizationName	string	–	Business/company/corporation name on file.
dbaTradeName	string	–	"Doing business as" or trade name on file.
county	select	–	One of Michigan's 83 counties. Not every license type has a county on record.
licenseStatus	select	–	Only emit licenses currently in this status (matched case-insensitively).
hasDisciplinaryAction	boolean	false	Only emit licenses with 1+ recorded disciplinary condition on file.
maxItems	integer	50	Hard cap on emitted license records (1–2000).

All fields are optional and combinable — leave everything blank to browse LARA's most recently indexed licenses.

Example: browse a license type

{
  "licenseType": "Cosmetologist",
  "maxItems": 50
}

Example: look up an exact license number

{
  "licenseNumber": "4704006499"
}

Example: search by licensee last name within a license type

{
  "licenseType": "Registered Nurse",
  "lastName": "Smith",
  "maxItems": 25
}

Example: licensees with disciplinary action(s)

{
  "licenseType": "Massage Therapist",
  "hasDisciplinaryAction": true,
  "maxItems": 25
}

Example: browse active salons by county

{
  "licenseType": "Barbershop",
  "county": "Wayne",
  "licenseStatus": "Active",
  "maxItems": 50
}

Use cases

• Credential verification — confirm a professional's Michigan license is current before hiring, contracting, or referring business
• Compliance monitoring — track license status changes for professionals or businesses you work with
• Lead generation — build lists of licensed professionals by credential type, county, or status
• Background research — check licensure history for a specific individual or business
• Market research — measure the number of active licensees by credential type or county across Michigan

Data Source

This actor targets aca-prod.accela.com/MILARA — the Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs' public "Search for a Licensee" tool, built on the Accela Citizen Access platform. The search form and license-detail pages are public, unauthenticated, and require no CAPTCHA.

Limitations

• LARA's own search results grid caps out around 50 records per page and this actor pages through it automatically. Very broad searches (e.g. a common license type with no other filters, combined with a restrictive licenseStatus filter) may need to scan further into the register to find enough matching records — narrow with lastName, county, or a more specific licenseType for faster, more targeted results.
• licenseIssueDate is omitted whenever LARA's own system shows the placeholder date 01/01/1900, which LARA uses internally to mean "no real issue date on file" — this is not treated as a real date.
• county and licenseIssueDate are only published on the license detail page for some license types; when unavailable, the field is simply omitted rather than filled with a placeholder.
• disciplinaryActions[] reflects LARA's public "Disciplinary Action(s)" summary grid on the license detail page (condition name, status, severity, dates). It is only populated when the per-license detail-page fetch succeeds (see fallback note above) — if that fetch fails after retries, the record falls back to results-grid-only fields and omits this array.
• Application/permit search and the full enforcement case file / complaint history on the MILARA portal require a MiPLUS account login and are out of scope for this actor.

FAQ

Do I need a login or API key? No. This actor uses LARA's public MILARA license search, which requires no account.

Can I look up a specific license number without knowing the license type? Yes — license numbers are unique across all 169 credential types, so licenseNumber alone is enough.

How current is the data? Records are scraped live from LARA's own license lookup tool at run time. LARA's own disclaimer notes licensing data is updated once a day.

Why don't some records have a county or issue date? LARA only publishes the fields it has on file for a given license. This actor never fabricates or fills in placeholder values for missing data.