Washington SOS Business Search Scraper

Scrape Washington State's Corporations & Charities Filing System (ccfs.sos.wa.gov) — the Secretary of State's official registry of businesses, nonprofits, and charities registered in Washington. Search by business name, UBI number, or a full set of advanced filters (business type, status, registered agent, governor, formation/expiration date). Returns entity status, registered agent details, principal office address, formation date, jurisdiction, and governors. No login required.

What this actor does

• Three modes: byBusinessName, byUBINumber, advancedSearch
• 47 business/entity types and 14 status values available as filters, taken directly from the Secretary of State's own lookup lists
• Advanced search by registered agent name, governor (officer/director/member) name, formation date range, expiration date, and nonprofit Federal EIN
• Optional detail enrichment — pulls registered agent addresses, formation/expiration dates, jurisdiction, nature of business, nonprofit flags, and governors from each entity's full record
• Empty fields are omitted — a field only appears on a record when the registry actually has a value for it

Output per business

• businessName, dbaBusinessName
• ubiNumber — Washington's Unified Business Identifier
• businessType, businessTypeId
• businessStatus — e.g. ACTIVE, DELINQUENT, TERMINATED
• principalOfficeStreetAddress, principalOfficeMailingAddress
• registeredAgentName, registeredAgentStreetAddress, registeredAgentMailingAddress
• formationDate — date of incorporation/formation/registration
• expirationDate — period of duration, if not perpetual
• nextAnnualReportDueDate
• inactiveDate
• jurisdiction — state/country of formation
• natureOfBusiness — NAICS description (when on file)
• nonprofitEIN, isCharitableNonprofit, grossRevenueOver500k, hasMembers, isPublicBenefitNonprofit, isHostHomeRegistered — nonprofit-only fields
• governors[] — { name, title } for each listed governor/officer
• businessId — CCFS internal record ID
• sourceUrl — deep link to the entity's page on ccfs.sos.wa.gov
• recordType: "business", scrapedAt

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
mode	string	byBusinessName	byBusinessName / byUBINumber / advancedSearch
businessName	string	–	Business name (mode=byBusinessName, required; optional filter in advancedSearch)
nameMatchType	string	Contains	Contains / StartsWith / ExactMatch (mode=byBusinessName)
ubiNumber	string	–	UBI number, e.g. 600413485 (mode=byUBINumber, required)
businessType	string	–	One of 47 registered entity types (mode=advancedSearch)
businessStatus	string	–	One of 14 status values (mode=advancedSearch)
registeredAgentName	string	–	Registered agent name search (mode=advancedSearch)
governorName	string	–	Governor/officer name search (mode=advancedSearch)
searchBy	string	Agent	Agent or Principal — which of the two name fields above is used
formationDateFrom / formationDateTo	string	–	Formation date range, MM/DD/YYYY (mode=advancedSearch)
expirationDate	string	–	Expiration date, MM/DD/YYYY (mode=advancedSearch)
feinNumber	string	–	Nonprofit's Federal EIN, e.g. 91-1234567 (mode=advancedSearch)
maxItems	integer	25	Maximum number of business records to return (1–500)
fetchDetails	boolean	false	Fetch full entity detail (agent addresses, dates, governors) per result. Slower and less predictable than the default summary-only search -- the registry re-verifies its anti-bot check on every detail page. Recommended only with small maxItems.
proxyConfiguration	object	AUTO	Apify proxy configuration

Example: quick search by business name

{
  "mode": "byBusinessName",
  "businessName": "Microsoft",
  "maxItems": 10
}

Example: lookup by UBI number

{
  "mode": "byUBINumber",
  "ubiNumber": "600413485"
}

Example: advanced search — active nonprofits formed since 2020

{
  "mode": "advancedSearch",
  "businessType": "73",
  "businessStatus": "1",
  "formationDateFrom": "01/01/2020",
  "formationDateTo": "12/31/2026",
  "maxItems": 50
}

Example: search by registered agent, summary only (fast)

{
  "mode": "advancedSearch",
  "registeredAgentName": "Corporation Service Company",
  "searchBy": "Agent",
  "fetchDetails": false,
  "maxItems": 100
}

Use cases

• Compliance & KYC — verify a Washington business is active and check its registered agent before signing a contract
• Sales & lead generation — build prospect lists of newly formed businesses in a given entity type or date range
• Nonprofit research — find charitable nonprofits registered in Washington and their governance details
• Legal & registered-agent services — monitor entities represented by a specific registered agent
• Market research — track business formation trends by entity type over time

FAQ

Is this an official Washington Secretary of State product? No. This is an independent, third-party actor that automates the same public search available at ccfs.sos.wa.gov. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Washington Secretary of State.

What is a UBI number? The Unified Business Identifier is a 9-digit number Washington assigns to every registered business, used across state agencies (Secretary of State, Department of Revenue, Employment Security).

Why are some fields missing on a record? Only fields the registry actually has data for are included. For example, expirationDate is omitted for entities with perpetual duration, and the nonprofit-specific fields only appear on nonprofit corporation types.

Can I search historical (pre-2004) filings? No — CCFS only covers current electronic filings. Washington's Digital Archives (digitalarchives.wa.gov) hosts historical documents, which this actor does not scrape.

Does fetchDetails=false return less accurate data? No — the summary fields (name, UBI, type, status, principal address, registered agent name) are exactly what the registry's own search results table shows. Enabling fetchDetails adds extra fields (dates, full addresses, governors) that require opening each entity's detail page, which takes longer.

How current is the data? Every run queries the live registry directly, so results reflect the registry's current state at run time.

Are trademark or UCC filings included? No — this actor covers business entity search only. CCFS also hosts separate trademark and charity-fundraiser search tools that are out of scope for this actor.

Data Source & Reliability Notes

ccfs.sos.wa.gov is a JavaScript single-page application protected by a Cloudflare Turnstile challenge on its search endpoints, which the registry re-verifies on every page (the initial search, each results page, and every detail page). This actor drives a real browser session to solve that challenge the same way a human visitor's browser does. The initial search is fast and highly reliable; because the site re-verifies on every subsequent page, enabling fetchDetails adds meaningfully more time per record and is best used with a small maxItems. On the rare run where a challenge cannot be resolved in time, the actor finishes cleanly with the records already collected (or zero, with a status message explaining why) rather than returning partial or fabricated data.