CA County Business Licenses & FBN - Sacramento + Sonoma

California counties publish who is licensed / who just registered to do business as open data - but on county portals with no shared shape: Sacramento runs an ArcGIS feature service, Sonoma a Socrata register, and their notions of a "record" barely overlap. This actor unifies three county-level business registers into one queryable, charged-per-record API - for B2B new-business leads and reference checks on a specific county-registered business.

What it covers

Pick one register via sourceCounty:

Sacramento Co FBN (sac-fbn, default) - fictitious business names, ~59.3k records:

• RecordStatus is Filed (~58.3k) / Abandoned (936) / Invalid Filing (74) / In Review (1) - the filing is the signal, and a fresh Filed row means someone just registered a new DBA.
• Ownership type on every filing (an Individual ~22.3k / Corporation ~16.9k / LLC ~15.9k / partnership / trust ...); owner name on individual filings.
• Street address + city + ZIP, filing date, expiry.
• New-filing lead flow: Sacramento sees ~1,000 new FBN filings a month.

Sacramento Co Business Licenses (sac-bl) - county-issued business licenses, ~25.7k records:

• Human-readable industry activity on every row (~99% filled) - Home Repair Services (1,023) / Consulting Services (904) / Internet Sales (645) / Restaurant-Limited Service (588) / Auto Repair Services (552) ...
• Home Based (~13.4k) / Commercial (~12.4k) location - home-based businesses carry no street address (the county lists none), only city + ZIP.
• No status column is published - the register holds the currently-licensed base with only ~380 stale rows, so Current / Expired is derived from the expiration date (~25.4k current).

Sonoma Co FBN (sonoma) - fictitious business names, ~15.6k records:

• Multi-DBA rows: one filing can list several business names (comma-separated).
• Registrant name, business type, business + mailing addresses, filing & publication dates.
• Document type FBN (9,990, the full filing) / FBNPOP (5,350, proof-of-publication sub-doc) / FBNAB (241, abandoned) / FBNWD (4, withdrawn) -> status derived (Filed / Abandoned / Withdrawn).
• Name / owner / new-lead searches return FBN main filings - the proof-of-publication sub-docs (FBNPOP) are excluded as paper-trail rows of the same filing, not separate businesses. The status / document-type aggregate still counts them.

Typical questions

• "Who just registered a new business in Sacramento County?" (filter newSince)
• "Is this company a currently-licensed Sacramento Co business, or an abandoned FBN?"
• "What industries dominate the county-licensed base - where should I sell?" (aggregate by activity)
• "Show me every FBN under LLC ownership in ZIP 95632."

Low cost

From $0.001 per record - billed only for the rows you use, with a per-run charge cap so a broad query can't surprise-bill.

Each county exposes a different portal shape with its own quirks, and none of them hands you a clean "who's active" list. Sacramento's license register carries no status field at all - "active" has to be reconstructed from whether the expiration date has passed (and a license expiring today stays Current until the day ends), and its FBN owner field is only filled on ~44% of filings (individual owners; companies list no person), so an owner search returns exactly what the county publishes. Home-based Sacramento licenses list no street address (just a "Home Based" marker + city/ZIP) - you can filter on that instead of a fake "0 street" value. Sonoma's register mixes main filings with proof-of-publication sub-documents and abandonment notices in one table, all sharing the same name field - a new FBNPOP row is a paper trail event for a filing, not a second business, so the record and new-lead paths filter it out (you'd otherwise be billed twice for one business). Aggregate counts roll up on demand from the live sources.

Inputs

Input	What it does
sourceCounty	sac-fbn (default) / sac-bl / sonoma
status	sac-fbn: Filed / Abandoned / Invalid Filing / In Review / sac-bl: Current / Expired / sonoma: Filed / Abandoned / Withdrawn
businessName	business name substring
ownerName	owner / registrant substring
activity	sac-bl industry activity substring
locationType	sac-bl: Home Based or Commercial
zip	ZIP prefix
newSince	only records filed on/after YYYY-MM-DD - the new-business lead feed
aggregate / groupBy	one row per group with a count. sac-bl: status / activity / sac-fbn: status / licenseType / sonoma: status / licenseType / docType
maxResults	cap records (default 200)

Default run = the ~200 most recently filed Sacramento Co FBNs - a live new-business lead feed, and fast enough for Apify's daily auto-test.

Source

• Sacramento Co Business Licenses - ArcGIS open data, live.
• Sacramento Co FBN register - ArcGIS open data, live.
• Sonoma Co FBN register - Socrata open data, live.