NYC Business License Scraper

Search New York City's official business license registry. Find active and historical licensed businesses — home improvement contractors, hotels, tobacco retailers, locksmiths, car washes, pawnbrokers, and 40+ other licensed trades — by business name, category, borough, license status, license number, or phone number. Sourced live from the NYC Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCA) open dataset. No login, no API key, no cookies required.

What this actor does

• Four modes: search (name + filters), byLicenseNumbers (exact license lookup), byPhoneNumbers (reverse phone lookup), byBusinessUniqueIds (all licenses held by one business entity)
• Full filter surface: business category (48 licensed trades), NYC borough, City Council district, Community Board, license status, license type, address type, ZIP code, license issue date range, license expiration date range
• Sortable: relevance, business name A-Z/Z-A, newest/oldest license, expiring soonest/latest
• Geo-located — latitude/longitude included whenever the source record has an address on file
• Empty fields are omitted — every record only contains fields NYC actually has on file

Output per business

• licenseNumber — official NYC DCA license number
• businessName, dbaName (trade name, if different from legal name)
• businessUniqueId
• category — licensed business category (e.g. Home Improvement Contractor, Hotel, Locksmith)
• licenseType — Individual or Premises
• licenseStatus — e.g. Active, Expired, Out of Business
• licenseCreationDate, licenseExpirationDate
• detail — extra license conditions where published (e.g. product categories/stand counts for vending stands, vehicle/bicycle capacity for sightseeing buses)
• phone — normalized (XXX) XXX-XXXX format
• addressStreet, addressStreet2, addressStreet3 (rare secondary/tertiary address lines, when NYC has one on file), addressUnit (suite/apt/floor, e.g. STE 3012), addressCity, addressState, addressZip, borough, addressType (e.g. Complete Address, Cross Street (Intersection), P.O. Box, Place (Landmark)), fullAddress
• communityBoard, councilDistrict, neighborhood (NYC Neighborhood Tabulation Area code, e.g. MN17)
• buildingIdNumber (NYC DOB Building Identification Number / BIN), taxBlockLot (Borough-Block-Lot / BBL tax parcel ID)
• censusTract, censusBlock (2010 Census geography, where mapped)
• latitude, longitude
• sourceUrl — direct link to the live NYC Open Data record
• recordType: "businessLicense", scrapedAt

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
mode	string	search	search / byLicenseNumbers / byPhoneNumbers / byBusinessUniqueIds
searchQuery	string	pizza	Free-text match on business legal name or DBA trade name
licenseNumbers	array	–	Exact license numbers (mode=byLicenseNumbers) — either the older -DCA suffix or the newer -DCWP suffix
phoneNumbers	array	–	Phone numbers, any format (mode=byPhoneNumbers)
businessUniqueIds	array	–	Exact Business Unique IDs, e.g. BA-1216876-2022 (mode=byBusinessUniqueIds) — returns every license held by that business entity
category	select	–	One of 48 licensed business categories
borough	select	–	Manhattan / Brooklyn / Queens / Bronx / Staten Island / Outside NYC
licenseStatus	select	–	Active, Expired, Out of Business, etc.
licenseType	select	–	Individual or Premises
zipCode	string	–	5-digit NYC ZIP code
councilDistrict	select	–	NYC City Council district (01-51)
communityBoard	select	–	NYC Community District Board code (e.g. 301 = Brooklyn CB 3)
addressType	select	–	How the address is recorded on file: Complete Address, Cross Street (Intersection), Place (Landmark), or P.O. Box
createdAfter / createdBefore	date	–	Restrict to licenses first issued on/after or on/before a given date (YYYY-MM-DD)
expiresAfter / expiresBefore	date	–	Restrict to licenses expiring on/after or on/before a given date (YYYY-MM-DD) — combine with licenseStatus=Active to find licenses expiring soon
sortBy	select	relevance	relevance / nameAsc / nameDesc / newest / oldest / expiringSoon / expiringLatest
maxItems	int	20	Hard cap on emitted records (1–5000)

Example: active home improvement contractors in Brooklyn

{
  "mode": "search",
  "category": "Home Improvement Contractor",
  "borough": "Brooklyn",
  "licenseStatus": "Active",
  "maxItems": 100
}

Example: lookup by exact license number

{
  "mode": "byLicenseNumbers",
  "licenseNumbers": ["0002902-DCA", "0390712-DCA"]
}

Example: reverse phone lookup

{
  "mode": "byPhoneNumbers",
  "phoneNumbers": ["(718) 237-1166"]
}

Example: all licenses held by one business

{
  "mode": "byBusinessUniqueIds",
  "businessUniqueIds": ["BA-1216876-2022"]
}

Example: hotels with a license expiring in the next few months

{
  "mode": "search",
  "category": "Hotel",
  "licenseStatus": "Active",
  "expiresBefore": "2026-12-31",
  "maxItems": 200
}

Example: active licenses expiring soonest (renewal outreach)

{
  "mode": "search",
  "licenseStatus": "Active",
  "sortBy": "expiringSoon",
  "maxItems": 100
}

Example: active licensed businesses in a City Council district

{
  "mode": "search",
  "councilDistrict": "03",
  "licenseStatus": "Active",
  "maxItems": 100
}

Use cases

• Due diligence — verify a contractor, locksmith, or tow-truck company is actually licensed and active before hiring
• Lead generation — build category-specific prospect lists (e.g. all active hotels or car washes in a borough)
• Consumer protection research — check whether a business has an expired, suspended, or revoked license
• Local market analysis — count and map licensed businesses by category and borough
• Reverse phone / name lookup — identify the licensed business behind a phone number or license number
• Multi-license entity lookup — find every license (past and present, all categories) held by one business using its Business Unique ID
• Renewal outreach — find active licenses expiring in a given window using expiresAfter/expiresBefore
• Civic / constituent services — pull every licensed business in a specific City Council district using councilDistrict

FAQ

What's the data source? The NYC Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCA) "Legally Operating Businesses" open dataset, published on NYC Open Data (data.cityofnewyork.us), a public, no-auth Socrata API maintained by New York City government.

Which businesses are covered? Any trade that requires a DCA license to operate in NYC — home improvement contractors, hotels, tobacco/e-cigarette retailers, electronics stores, locksmiths, pawnbrokers, tow truck companies/drivers, sightseeing guides, secondhand dealers, debt collectors, employment agencies, and more. Businesses that don't require a DCA license (e.g. most restaurants, which are licensed separately by the Health Department) are not in this dataset.

How current is the data? NYC Open Data refreshes this dataset regularly (typically daily); the actor always queries live.

Why do some records lack a phone, borough, or coordinates? Not every license type collects every field — for example, individual license holders (as opposed to business premises) may not have a mapped street address. The actor only includes fields NYC actually published for that specific license.

Is there a cost or rate limit? The actor uses NYC's free public Socrata API — no proxy, no API key, and no per-request cost.

Can I search partial business names? Yes — searchQuery matches anywhere in the legal business name or the DBA trade name, case-insensitive.

What is a Business Unique ID and how is it different from a license number? A license number identifies one specific license (one category, one issue/expiration cycle). A Business Unique ID identifies the underlying business entity and stays the same across every license that entity holds — a business can be licensed for multiple categories (e.g. a hotel that's also a garage) or renew under a new license number over time, all under the same Business Unique ID. Use mode=byBusinessUniqueIds to pull every license on file for one business.

Why do some license numbers end in -DCA and others in -DCWP? The licensing agency was renamed from the Department of Consumer Affairs (DCA) to the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCWP) in 2020. Older licenses kept their original -DCA number; licenses issued or renewed more recently use the -DCWP suffix. Both formats work with mode=byLicenseNumbers — just enter the exact number as shown on the license.