Canada Business Entity Search

Search over 1.55 million Canadian federal corporations registered with ISED Corporations Canada. This Apify Actor provides instant full-text search across the entire federal company registry — the most comprehensive Canadian corporation lookup tool available on the Apify platform.

What Is This Actor?

The Canada Business Entity Search Actor connects to the federal corporation database maintained by Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED). It enables you to search Canadian business entities by keyword and retrieve structured data including company name, status, registered address, province, business number, and incorporation date.

Whether you need to verify a Canadian company exists, look up its registration status, or gather data on businesses in a specific industry, this Actor delivers results in seconds. There are currently zero competitors on Apify offering equivalent access to the ISED Corporations Canada registry, making this the only tool of its kind on the platform.

Features

• One search, 12 sources — Query ISED federal corporations, BC OrgBook, CRA charities, FINTRAC MSB registry, OSFI regulated institutions, and Statistics Canada indicators in parallel
• Official government data — All sources are public Canadian federal and provincial government databases
• Structured JSON output — Every record includes _product_id, _source, _search_term, and _collected_at metadata
• 1.55 million federal corporations — Full coverage of the ISED Corporations Canada registry
• Configurable result limits — Control output volume with maxResultsPerSource (up to 200 per source)
• No upstream API keys needed — SIP handles authentication with all upstream Canadian government APIs

Data Coverage

This Actor searches a single authoritative source:

• Federal Corporations (ca_federal_corporations) — 1.55 million corporations registered under the Canada Business Corporations Act (CBCA) through ISED Corporations Canada. This covers all federally incorporated businesses across every province and territory.

Each record includes the following fields:

Field	Description
license_id	Unique corporation identifier
business_name	Registered legal name of the corporation
license_type	Type of registration
status	Current status (Active, Dissolved, etc.)
address	Registered street address
city	City of registration
state	Province or territory
zip_code	Postal code
country	Country (Canada)
owner_name	Business Number (BN) assigned by CRA
issue_date	Date of incorporation
source_jurisdiction	Originating jurisdiction

Use Cases

KYB (Know Your Business) Compliance

Financial institutions, fintech companies, and payment processors need to verify that a business is legitimately registered before onboarding them as clients. This Actor lets compliance teams quickly confirm a Canadian corporation's existence, status, and registration details — a critical step in KYB workflows. Automate your business verification pipeline by integrating this Actor into your onboarding process.

Due Diligence

Investors, law firms, and M&A advisory teams conducting due diligence on Canadian companies can use this Actor to verify corporate registration details, confirm active status, and cross-reference business numbers. Pull structured data directly into your research workflow instead of manually searching government websites.

Market Research and Competitor Analysis

Researchers and business analysts can search the federal corporation registry by industry keywords to identify competitors, map market landscapes, and discover new entrants. With 1.55 million corporations indexed, you can uncover businesses operating in any sector across Canada. Use keyword searches like "fintech", "cannabis", "mining", or "artificial intelligence" to find relevant companies and build comprehensive market maps.

Lead Generation

Sales and business development teams targeting Canadian businesses can use this Actor to build prospect lists based on keyword searches. Find companies in specific industries, verify their active status, and extract contact addresses for outreach campaigns. Combine with other Apify Actors to enrich the data further.

Academic and Policy Research

Researchers studying Canadian business formation trends, regional economic development, or corporate demographics can extract bulk data from the federal registry. Analyze incorporation dates to track business creation over time, examine geographic distribution across provinces, or study dissolution rates by sector.

How to Use

Input Parameters

• keyword (required): The search term to look up in the federal corporation registry. Examples: "Shopify", "Toronto consulting", "blockchain".
• maxResults (optional): Maximum number of records to return. Defaults to 50, maximum is 200.

Running the Actor

1. Set your SIP_API_KEY as an environment variable in the Actor's settings on Apify Console.
2. Provide a search keyword in the input.
3. Run the Actor. Results are saved to the default dataset.

Example Input

{
    "keyword": "Shopify",
    "maxResults": 50
}

Example Output

{
    "license_id": "1234567",
    "business_name": "SHOPIFY INC.",
    "license_type": "Federal Corporation",
    "status": "Active",
    "address": "151 O'Connor Street",
    "city": "Ottawa",
    "state": "ON",
    "zip_code": "K2P 2L8",
    "country": "CA",
    "owner_name": "BN123456789",
    "issue_date": "2004-09-28",
    "source_jurisdiction": "Federal"
}

Integration and Automation

This Actor works seamlessly with the Apify platform's scheduling and integration features:

• Schedule regular runs to monitor new incorporations matching your keywords.
• Use webhooks to trigger downstream workflows when new results are found.
• Export data in JSON, CSV, or Excel format directly from the Apify Console.
• Connect via API to integrate results into your own applications, dashboards, or databases.

Data Source

All data originates from ISED Corporations Canada, the official federal corporate registry maintained by Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada. The database is regularly updated to reflect new incorporations, status changes, and dissolutions.

Why Choose This Actor?

• Comprehensive: 1.55 million federal corporations — the complete ISED registry.
• Fast: Full-text search returns results in seconds.
• Structured: Clean, consistent JSON output ready for analysis or integration.
• Unique: The only Canadian federal corporation search tool available on Apify.
• Reliable: Built on official government data from ISED Corporations Canada.

Start searching Canadian federal corporations today. Whether you need a quick Canadian corporation lookup for compliance, a bulk export for market research, or automated monitoring for competitive intelligence, this Actor has you covered.

Use as MCP Tool (AI Agent Integration)

This Actor works as an MCP tool — AI agents (Claude, GPT, Cursor) can discover and run it automatically.

Quick setup (Claude Desktop / Cursor / VS Code)

Add to your MCP config:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "apify": {
      "url": "https://mcp.apify.com",
      "headers": {
        "Authorization": "Bearer YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN"
      }
    }
  }
}

Then ask your AI: "Search for Shopify in Canadian business registries"

Direct API call

from apify_client import ApifyClient
client = ApifyClient("YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN")
run = client.actor("lentic_clockss/canada-business-search").call(
    run_input={"searchTerms": ["Shopify"], "maxResultsPerSource": 50}
)
for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item)

Other Data API Actors

• US Business Entity Data API
• UK Government Data API
• Australia Government Data API

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🔗 Integrations

Connect this Actor to 1,000+ apps with zero code changes:

Platform	How to Connect
Make	Search "Apify" in Make → select "Run Actor" → Actor ID: lentic_clockss/canada-business-search
n8n	Add Apify node → "Run Actor" action → Actor ID: lentic_clockss/canada-business-search
Zapier	Use the Apify integration → "Run Actor" action
LangChain	See Python example below
MCP	Connect via npx @anthropic-ai/mcp apify → this Actor is auto-discoverable

Python (LangChain AI agent):

from langchain_apify import ApifyActorsTool

tool = ApifyActorsTool("lentic_clockss/canada-business-search")
result = tool.invoke({"searchTerms": ["Shopify"], "maxResultsPerSource": 5})

→ Browse all Actors: apify.com/lentic_clockss

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Also Available

• Postman Collection: Fork and test in Postman — pre-built requests with example responses
• GitHub: Collection source files — import JSON into any API client
• Direct API: https://opendata.best/api/v1/data — use with any HTTP client and your API key