California Business & UCC Lien Search — bizfileOnline Scraper

Search the official California Secretary of State registers at bizfileOnline and get structured JSON back.

Choose your registers — both are selected by default, so one search term returns both sides:

• Business entities — every corporation, LLC and LP in California, with status, standing, entity type, formation date and the registered agent for service of process.
• UCC liens — filings recorded against businesses: financing statements (who lent against a company's assets), plus judgment liens, state and federal tax liens and attachments, each with debtor, secured party, file date and lapse date.

So one search for a company tells you both what it is and who has a claim on it. Untick either register to search only the other.

The business side has a second mode of its own, exactly as the registry's own Business tab does: publicly traded disclosure filings, searchable by director or officer, board composition, compensation range and auditor.

Free to run. No login, no California state API key, nothing to configure.

Why this Actor

Most business-registry tools only let you look up a company you already know. This one also lets you discover, because it exposes the registry's own advanced filters:

• Every LLC formed in California last month → entity type + formation-date range
• Every federal tax lien filed in a date range → lien type + date range
• Every suspended entity whose name contains a keyword → status filter

What data can this California business search scraper extract?

Business entity record

{
  "register": "business",
  "name": "TESLA MOTORS CLUB LLC",
  "entityNumber": "201313510058",
  "status": "Terminated",
  "standing": "Good Standing",
  "entityType": "Limited Liability Company - CA",
  "formedIn": "CALIFORNIA",
  "initialFilingDate": "05/13/2013",
  "registeredAgent": "CALIFORNIA CORPORATE AGENTS, INC.",
  "jurisdiction": "California, USA",
  "searchQuery": "Tesla Motors"
}

UCC lien record

{
  "register": "ucc",
  "fileNumber": "187651573053",
  "uccType": "Notice of Federal Tax Lien",
  "status": "Active",
  "filingDate": "06/01/2018",
  "lapseDate": "07/01/2028",
  "debtorName": "TESLA ENERGY OPERATIONS INC A CORPORATION",
  "debtorLocation": "SAN MATEO, CA",
  "securedPartyName": "IRS/OHIO",
  "securedPartyLocation": "CINCINNATI, OH"
}

With Full profile, every record also carries its addresses

{
  "principalAddress": "25 ISABELLA AVE, ATHERTON, CA 94027",
  "mailingAddress": "25 ISABELLA AVE, ATHERTON, CA 94027",
  "agentType": "Individual",
  "agentName": "Weina Yu",
  "agentAddress": "25 ISABELLA AVE, ATHERTON, CA 94027",
  "standingSos": "Good", "standingFtb": "Good",
  "standingAgent": "Good", "standingVcfcf": "Good",
  "statementOfInfoDueDate": "07/31/2028"
}

and every UCC party gets a street address — often naming an individual behind a trading name that the search rows never show:

{
  "debtorsDetailed": [
    { "name": "ARAUJO, FAUSTO",   "address": "625 S RIVERSIDE AVE STE P, RIALTO, CA 923767072" },
    { "name": "LA CASA DEL TACO", "address": "625 S RIVERSIDE AVE STE P, RIALTO, CA 923767072" }
  ],
  "securedPartiesDetailed": [
    { "name": "EMPLOYMENT DEVELOPMENT DEPARTMENT", "address": "722 CAPITOL MALL, SACRAMENTO, CA 95814" }
  ]
}

With Download documents, the filings themselves come back as PDFs

{
  "documentCount": 3,
  "documents": [
    {
      "type": "Statement of Information",
      "number": "BA20261385813",
      "date": "7/4/2026",
      "key": "document-business-BA20261385813",
      "contentType": "application/pdf",
      "bytes": 129548
    }
  ]
}

Each key is a record in the run's key-value store, under the Filing documents collection.

Records are written to the dataset as they are extracted, so a large search starts filling in immediately instead of arriving in one batch at the end.

How to use it

Search a company in both registers — this is the default:

{ "searchQueries": ["DEL TACO"] }

Only the lien side:

{ "registers": ["ucc"], "searchQueries": ["DEL TACO"] }

One exact entity, by its California entity/file number:

{ "searchQueries": ["3814816"] }

Every LLC formed in January 2024 — a new-business lead list:

{
  "searchQueries": ["California"],
  "entityType": "3",
  "filedFrom": "2024-01-01",
  "filedTo": "2024-01-31"
}

Only federal tax liens on the UCC side:

{ "searchQueries": ["Tesla"], "uccType": "2174" }

Full profiles with addresses, ready for outreach:

{ "searchQueries": ["DEL TACO"], "detailLevel": "full", "maxResultsPerQuery": 25 }

What the UCC lien types mean

Lien type	What it tells you
Financing Statement	A lender claims a security interest in the business's assets. Normal borrowing — and it names the lender. Lapses 5 years after filing unless renewed.
Judgment Lien	Someone sued the business and won, then recorded the judgment against its property.
State Tax Lien	California claims unpaid state taxes.
Federal Tax Lien	The IRS claims unpaid federal taxes.
Attachment	A court froze assets while a lawsuit is still pending.

Only the first is routine. The other four are distress signals.

Input options

Section	Fields
Top	registers — Business entities, UCC liens, or both (default). searchQueries — company names, entity numbers, or debtor / secured-party names
Business entity filters	Mirrors the registry's own Business tab in the same order: matchType (Contains / Starts with), searchType (Entity Information / Publicly Traded Disclosure), entityType (35 types), entityStatus (24 statuses), filedFrom, filedTo — then the disclosure-only fields: corporation bankruptcy and legal proceedings, director / officer first, middle and last name, board composition, compensation range, the five Disclosures checkboxes (Shares, Options, Bankruptcy, Fraud, Loans to Directors) and independent auditor
UCC lien filters	uccStatus, uccType (All, Financing Statement, Judgment Lien, State Tax Lien, Federal Tax Lien, Attachment), uccFiledFrom, uccFiledTo, uccLapseFrom, uccLapseTo
Limits & connection	detailLevel, maxResultsPerQuery, proxyConfiguration

Every dropdown lists its options in the registry's own order and wording, so a filter you know from the site is where you expect it. Search terms are limited to 49 characters — the registry's own search box truncates anything longer, so a longer term would quietly run a different search than the one you typed.

Detail level — the main speed lever

Level	What you get	Cost
Search results only	The registers' own columns	Fastest — one request per search
+ Full profile	Addresses, agent record, all four standings, SOI due date	One extra request per record
+ Filing history	Every filing, its document link, and field-level change history	Two extra requests per record
+ Download documents	Each filing fetched as a PDF into the key-value store	Slowest — a single company can have ten or more filings

Keep maxResultsPerQuery low when downloading documents.

maxResultsPerQuery applies per register, so 10 returns up to 10 business records and up to 10 UCC records for each search term.

Why does this Actor need a residential proxy?

The registry refuses datacenter addresses — verified against both plain datacenter egress and Apify's datacenter proxy. So runs go out through a US residential proxy by default, and you should leave that setting alone. The Actor is free; you pay only your own Apify platform and proxy usage.

What can you do with California registry data?

• KYB / KYC onboarding — verify an entity exists, is active and is in good standing before you onboard it.
• Registered-agent intelligence — get the agent for service of process, for legal, compliance or sales work.
• Lending and credit risk — check existing liens before lending, and see who already has a claim on the collateral.
• Distress and collections — tax liens, judgment liens and attachments identify businesses in trouble, and full profiles name the individuals behind them.
• Competitive intelligence for lenders — a fresh financing statement shows a company just borrowed, and names its current lender.
• Lead generation — pull newly formed companies by type and formation month, with mailing addresses.

Frequently asked questions

Is it legal to scrape California business records? California business-entity and UCC records are public records. This Actor reads the open public searches at bizfileonline.sos.ca.gov — it does not log in and does not pass any paywall. Use the data lawfully for KYB/AML, due-diligence and B2B purposes.

Do I need a California state API key? No. The state's own bulk API is key-gated and capped. This Actor reads the open public search, so there is nothing to obtain or configure.

Why did my business search return exactly 500 records? That is the register's own hard per-term ceiling. The run warns you when a search hits it. Narrow the term, or add an entity type, status or formation-date filter.

Why did I get a message about more than 1,000 UCC filings? The UCC register refuses to answer a term matching more than 1,000 filings rather than returning a partial list — common words like "Tesla" or "California" hit this easily. Your business-entity results are unaffected. Search a fuller name, or narrow the UCC side with a lien type, status or date range.

Why did the UCC side get skipped entirely? Either you unticked it under Which registers to search, or the term is shorter than 3 characters — the UCC register's own minimum. Shorter terms search the business register only.

Why is my search term limited to 49 characters? Because the registry's own search box truncates anything past 49 characters. Accepting a longer term would run a silently different search than the one you typed.

How do I search publicly traded disclosures? Set Search type to Publicly traded disclosure search in the business filters. That switches the business side to the disclosure register and enables the director/officer, board-composition, compensation and auditor fields.

How do I get only active LLCs? Set entityType to Limited Liability Company - CA and entityStatus to Active.

Where do downloaded documents go? Into the run's key-value store, under the Filing documents collection. Each dataset record lists its documents with the key to look up.

How much does it cost? The Actor is free. You pay only your own Apify platform usage and residential proxy traffic.

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Support

Found a bug, or need a field this Actor does not return yet? Open an issue on the Actor's Issues tab and it will be looked at.

Legal & compliance

This Actor collects publicly available business-registry information only. You are responsible for using the extracted data in compliance with applicable laws, including data-protection rules in your jurisdiction, and with the source's terms.

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