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type FBN (9,990, the full filing) / FBNPOP (5,350, proof-of-publication sub-doc) / FBNAB (241, abandoned) / FBNWD (4, withdrawn) -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 status derived (Filed / Abandoned / Withdrawn).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 $0.00005 per record, down to $0.00003 at Gold - billed only for the rows you use, and each record is metered individually.

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 50)

Default run = the ~50 most recently filed Sacramento Co FBNs - a live new-business lead feed, and fast enough for Apify's daily auto-test.

Note: a run is capped at $5 of usage - a request large enough to reach it (roughly 5,000 records at the entry price) is cut off part-way, and the truncated run still reports success. For whole-corpus counts, use aggregate.

Example inputs

Who just registered in Sacramento County - newSince is the new-filing lead window.

{ "sourceCounty": "sac-fbn", "newSince": "2026-09-01", "maxResults": 10 }

County-licensed restaurants - activity applies to sac-bl.

{ "sourceCounty": "sac-bl", "activity": "Restaurant", "maxResults": 10 }

Home-based businesses only - Sacramento's license register marks the home-based rows instead of publishing a street address.

{ "sourceCounty": "sac-bl", "locationType": "Home Based", "maxResults": 10 }

Sonoma County registrants - a third register with its own shape.

{ "sourceCounty": "sonoma", "status": "Filed", "maxResults": 10 }

Example output

One filing - businessName=DYSPORTS returns the Sacramento County FBN filing:

{
 "platform": "ca-county-business-licenses",
 "sourceCounty": "sac-fbn",
 "sourceLabel": "Sacramento County FBN",
 "bizName": "DYSPORTS",
 "ownerName": "",
 "licenseType": "Limited Liability Company",
 "activity": "",
 "docType": "",
 "status": "Filed",
 "dateFiled": "2026-09-14",
 "expiration": "2031-09-14",
 "streetAddress": "7732 32nd Ave NW",
 "city": "SEATTLE",
 "state": "WA",
 "zip": "98117",
 "location": "7732 32nd Ave NW, SEATTLE, WA, 98117",
 "locationType": "",
 "id": "FBNF2026-07102",
 "groupKey": "",
 "groupCount": ""
}

sourceCounty=sac-bl, aggregate=true, groupBy=activity - the licensed industry mix:

Home Repair Services             1,023
Consulting Services                904
Internet Sales                     645
Restaurant-Limited Service         588
Auto Repair Services               552

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.