US Liquor Licensing Watch — 51 State ABC Boards

What a liquor licence costs and requires in all 51 US states — plus the local city permit almost nobody accounts for — returned on every run, and flagged when it changes.

Most licensing tools tell you a page changed. That is useless until something moves, and even then it is a raw diff. This Actor returns the answer on the first call: every record carries the state's licence types with their fees, precomputed cost scenarios by business type, requirements, restrictions, timelines, primary sources, and the city-level local-permit overlay. Change detection then runs on top of that, not instead of it.

Why this one: it is the only Actor on the Store carrying 51-state licence facts plus the 1,638-of-1,970-city local permit overlay — the layer that catches people out, because a state licence is only half the cost. Generic change monitors return {"changed": true}; this returns what the licence costs, who issues it, and what your city adds on top.

What you get

• All 51 states, every run — 547 licence types with application/annual/issuance/renewal fees, and 359 precomputed scenarios ("restaurant with full liquor → permit 020 → $350/yr")
• City permit overlay — for each state, how many cities require a separate local permit, the indicative cost range, and the largest cities with permit name, timeline and clerk URL
• Provenance on every record — last_updated per state and sources[] pointing at the official state pages, so you can check our work
• Change detection — no_change / changed with line-level diffs, optional AI significance summaries using your own Anthropic key
• Honest coverage — 13 states serve JS-only pages or block datacenter IPs. We do not pretend to monitor them: they return facts_only with a monitoring_note, still carrying full licence data, and are not charged a page check

Why this one

1. Curated coverage. The working authority pages are pre-loaded. Run it as-is to watch all covered states, or pass states: ["TX","FL","PA"] to watch a subset.
2. Noise-filtered. Timestamps, counters and boilerplate are stripped — you get regulatory substance, not page churn.
3. AI summaries, your key. Turn on aiSummary with your own Anthropic API key: each change gets a plain-English summary + significance rating framed for licensing impact. Your key is used per-run, never stored.
4. Government sources only. Watches official state ABC-board pages. Respects robots.txt by default. No personal data collected — ever.
5. Schedule it. Pair with Apify Schedules for daily/weekly monitoring; route changes to Slack, n8n, or your own webhook.

How it works

YOU CONFIGURE              EACH SCHEDULED RUN              YOU RECEIVE
 ─────────────────────      ──────────────────────         ────────────────────────
 states: ["TX","FL"]   ──►  fetch each board page     ──►  one JSON record per state
 (empty = all 39 covered)   strip boilerplate/noise          • no_change
                            compare to last snapshot          • changed + exactly what
 + aiSummary (your key)                                         text was added / removed
 + webhookUrl          ──►  optional AI summary        ──►    • + AI summary & low/med/
                            optional webhook POST                high significance
                                                              • baseline_captured
                                                              • low_content (JS-only page)

Pair with Apify Schedules to run it daily or weekly; route changed records straight to Slack, n8n, or your own endpoint via webhookUrl.

Input

Run it with no input at all — you get all 51 states. Everything else is optional:

Field	What it does
states	Limit to specific states, e.g. ["CA","NY","TX"]. Your filter is absolute — you get exactly those states, including ones we cannot page-monitor.
includeFacts	Attach licence fees, types, requirements and city permits to every record. On by default — turn off for a lean change-only feed.
includeCityDetail	Include the largest cities per state with permit name, indicative cost, timeline and clerk URL. On by default.
aiSummary + anthropicApiKey	Plain-English significance summary when a page changes. Uses your key, so there is no marked-up AI fee.
respectRobotsTxt	On by default.
webhookUrl	POST the run summary somewhere when it finishes.

See the Input tab for the full schema with tooltips.

Output record

{
  "state": "New York",
  "state_code": "NY",
  "authority": "New York State Liquor Authority (SLA)",
  "authority_url": "https://sla.ny.gov",
  "status": "no_change",
  "fee_period": "2-3 years (varies by license type)",
  "application_timeline": "3-6 months typical. 6-12+ months if 500-foot rule hearing required.",
  "license_types": [
    { "code": "OP", "name": "On-Premises Liquor License", "business_types": ["bar", "event-venue"],
      "on_premise": true, "off_premise": false, "two_year_fee_usd": 4352,
      "notes": "Fee range $1,792-$4,352 depending on county (4 tiers by population)." }
  ],
  "common_scenarios": [
    { "business_type": "restaurant", "scenario": "Restaurant with full liquor service",
      "permits": ["OP"], "total_fee_usd": 4352, "fee_period": "2 years" }
  ],
  "local_permits": {
    "cities_tracked": 40,
    "cities_requiring_local_permit": 40,
    "largest_cities": [
      { "city": "New York City", "population": 8336817, "local_permit_required": true,
        "local_permit_name": "NYC Community Board Notification + DCA License",
        "local_permit_cost_usd_ai_estimate": 110, "typical_timeline_days": 180,
        "city_clerk_url": "https://www.nyc.gov/site/dcwp/index.page" }
    ]
  },
  "provenance": {
    "license_type_fees": "sourced",
    "common_scenarios": "derived",
    "local_permit_names": "sourced",
    "local_permit_costs": "ai_estimate",
    "local_permit_notes": "ai_authored"
  },
  "last_updated": "2026-07-08",
  "sources": ["https://sla.ny.gov/retail-license-fee-chart", "https://sla.ny.gov/500-foot-law"],
  "llc_state_url": "https://liquorlicensecost.com/states/ny",
  "llc_guide_url": "https://liquorlicensecost.com/guides/new-york-liquor-license-guide",
  "checkedAt": "2026-07-19T14:57:00.000Z"
}

Data honesty — provenance is machine-readable

Every record carries a provenance block stating, per value class, where that value came from. This follows the SDMX observation-status convention used by Eurostat, the IMF and the FAO: provenance attaches to the value, not to the dataset, so it survives being filtered, joined or read by an agent that never sees this README.

Level	Meaning
sourced	Researched against the official pages listed in sources
derived	Computed from sourced values; wording AI-composed
ai_estimate	Modelled by AI, not researched. Indicative only — do not quote as a fee
ai_authored	Explanatory prose written by AI from sourced material; figures within are sourced
observed	Directly observed by this Actor when it fetched the page
ai_generated	Written by an LLM at run time (only when aiSummary is on)

State licence fees are sourced. City permit costs are ai_estimate — and the field name says so too (local_permit_cost_usd_ai_estimate), so the caveat travels into any spreadsheet, join or agent answer. Permit names, requirement flags, timelines and clerk URLs are sourced.

We label AI-derived values explicitly rather than burying the caveat, both because quoting a modelled number as a fee would be wrong, and because the EU AI Act's transparency rules (Article 50, applicable 2 August 2026) expect AI-generated content to be marked in a machine-readable form.

First run per page captures a baseline; changes are reported from the second run onward.

Every record links to the full context

A diff tells you a fee line moved. It does not tell you what that license costs in total, which of the state's licence types you actually need, or how long approval takes. So every record carries two links into the reference data behind it:

• llc_state_url — that state's full fee table, licence types, requirements and timelines on LiquorLicenseCost.com
• llc_guide_url — the long-form state guide, e.g. California, Texas, New York

City-level rules layer on top of state rules — 1,638 of 1,970 US cities require a separate local permit — so the city directory is where a specific location's extra permit, cost and clerk contact live.

How much does it cost to monitor liquor licensing?

A page-check is $0.005 and an ai-summary is $0.01. Checking all 38 default state pages once costs about $0.19. Watching every state daily for a month is roughly $5.70; watching five states you actually operate in is about $0.75/month. AI summaries are charged only when a page actually changed, so a quiet month costs nothing extra.

You supply your own Anthropic API key for summaries, so there is no marked-up AI fee.

Pricing

Pay-per-event — page-check and ai-summary only. Watch one state or all 51; you only pay for what runs. Worked examples above.

How does this compare to a generic website change monitor?

	Generic change monitor	US Liquor Licensing Watch
Tells you a page changed	yes	yes
Returns licence fees and types	no	yes — 547 types across 51 states
Precomputed cost by business type	no	yes — 359 scenarios
City-level local permit overlay	no	yes — 1,638 of 1,970 cities
Useful on the very first run	no — only baselines	yes — full facts immediately
Cites primary sources per record	no	yes — sources[] + last_updated
Curated targets	no — you supply URLs	yes — 51 state authorities

If you want to watch arbitrary URLs of your own, use the sibling Actor below instead — this one is purpose-built for US alcohol licensing.

Other Actors by jakedata

• AI Change Monitor — watch any list of URLs you supply, with noise-filtered diffs and optional AI significance summaries. Use it when your targets are not liquor-licensing pages.

FAQ

Is this legal? Yes. Every monitored page is a US state government alcohol-licensing authority page — public record, published by the agency itself. No login, no paywall, no personal data. The Actor collects no PII by design.

How current is the data? Each record carries last_updated for that state (currently 2026-06 to 2026-07) and sources[] linking the official pages the figures came from. Check our work — that is what the sources are for.

Are the fees exact? State licence fees are researched against those primary sources. City-level permit costs are modelled estimates, labelled as such in both the field name and the cost_basis note on every record. Do not quote a city permit estimate as a fee.

Why are 13 states not monitored? Their authority pages are JS-only or block automated access from datacenter IPs. Rather than pretend, those states return facts_only with a monitoring_note — full licence data, no page check charged. Pass them in states to force a fetch attempt.

Can I get a state that is not in the default set? Yes — pass it in states.

Something looks wrong. Open an issue on the Issues tab. Data corrections get priority.

---

Curated from official state sources. Openly AI-built, human-supervised, with automated daily health checks. No PII. Support: jakeatthekeyboard@gmail.com