US Business Entity Search

Search US business entities across state registries, extended business sources, and optional federal screening sources in one run.

This Actor is designed for business verification, early-stage due diligence, vendor onboarding, sales research, and registry-based company checks. Instead of checking multiple Secretary of State portals and public registries one by one, you can search them together and get back a normalized dataset with business names, status fields, addresses, authorities, and source metadata.

The current search coverage is built from:

• 8 directly selectable state registry sources
• 23 optional extended business sources
• optional federal checks for OFAC, SEC, and IRS nonprofit records

If you want a single search that can help answer questions like:

• Is this company registered in public US business records?
• In which states or registries does it appear?
• Is it active, inactive, dissolved, or otherwise not in good standing?
• Does it also appear in OFAC, SEC, or IRS nonprofit data?

this Actor is the right fit.

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Who is this for?

• Compliance and KYB teams verifying legal existence before onboarding a counterparty
• Operations and procurement teams checking vendors, suppliers, and partners
• Sales and research teams validating business names before outreach
• Legal and diligence teams collecting public registration evidence
• Journalists and investigators tracing business records across public sources
• Developers and data teams building registry lookups into internal workflows

This Actor is most useful when you need the public-records layer of company verification without manually searching multiple registry systems.

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What this Actor does

This Actor searches one or more company names across selected US public business sources and returns normalized records.

1. State registry search

Use states: ["ALL"] to search all 8 directly supported state registry sources. You can also select individual state codes:

• New York

• Texas

• Colorado

• Connecticut

• Iowa

• Pennsylvania

• Oregon

• Alaska Typical use cases:

• confirm that a company appears in public state records

• check whether the listed status is active or inactive

• collect official registry evidence for a company profile

2. Extended business-source search

You can optionally include extended sources for broader coverage. These include additional public business datasets such as:

• city-level business-license datasets
• Delaware entity and trade-name data
• Virginia corporation records
• Texas franchise and sales-tax sources
• Oregon new-business and nonprofit sources
• Missouri alcohol-license data
• Washington contractor-license data
• FDIC institution and location data
• GLEIF LEI data
• NAICS reference data

This helps when a company may not only appear in a standard state registry result, but also in related public business or licensing datasets.

3. Optional compliance screening

If you enable includeCompliance, the Actor also searches:

• OFAC sanctions
• SEC EDGAR

Typical use cases:

• add a basic federal compliance layer to a business-entity check
• review whether a searched name also appears in sanctions or SEC filing records

4. Optional nonprofit screening

If you enable includeNonprofits, the Actor also searches:

• IRS Exempt Organizations

This is useful when you want to know whether an organization appears in public IRS nonprofit records alongside business registry results.

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Default example

This example matches the Actor's default input:

{
  "searchTerms": ["Google"],
  "states": ["ALL"],
  "includeCompliance": false,
  "includeNonprofits": false,
  "includeExtendedSources": false,
  "maxResultsPerState": 50,
  "maxTotalResults": 500
}

This means the default run:

• searches for Google
• uses the ALL state-registry group
• uses only the directly supported state-registry sources
• does not include OFAC, SEC, or IRS unless you explicitly turn those on

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Example use cases

Vendor or counterparty verification

Before you onboard a vendor or sign an agreement, search the business name and review whether it appears in public registry records, what the status is, and which authority published the record.

Multi-company prospecting or research

Search several companies in one run to see where they appear across state sources, then export a single table for downstream review. Turn on extended sources when you need broader public-record coverage.

Basic compliance context

Turn on includeCompliance when you want to add OFAC and SEC signals to the same run instead of doing separate searches.

Nonprofit identification

Turn on includeNonprofits when you need to check whether an organization appears in IRS exempt-organization records.

Footprint mapping

Search a known company name and review which state and extended sources return matches. This gives you a public-record view of where the company shows up across available US datasets.

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What you get back

Each result row includes source-specific fields plus normalized metadata for filtering and exports.

Common fields include:

• name
• type
• status
• country
• authority
• _product_id
• _source
• _search_term
• _collected_at

Many results also include source-level business fields such as:

• business_name
• license_id
• license_type
• address
• city
• state
• zip_code
• issue_date

Because upstream public sources use different schemas, the exact field set varies by source. The normalized preview fields make it easier to inspect results across all of them in one dataset.

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Data sources

The Actor combines multiple source groups.

Core state registry group

Source group	Coverage
Direct state registry sources	NY, TX, CO, CT, IA, PA, OR, AK. Use ALL to search all of them.

Extended business sources

When includeExtendedSources is enabled, the Actor also includes public sources such as:

• Chicago business owners and licenses
• Colorado history and UCC data
• Delaware licenses, historical entities, and trade names
• Denver licenses
• Kansas City licenses
• Missouri alcohol licenses
• New York filings and NYC business records
• Oregon new businesses and nonprofits
• Seattle licenses
• Texas franchise and sales-tax sources
• Virginia corporation records
• Washington contractor licenses
• FDIC institution and location sources
• GLEIF LEI records
• NAICS reference data

Optional federal sources

Toggle	Source
includeCompliance	OFAC sanctions and SEC EDGAR
includeNonprofits	IRS Exempt Organizations

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Input reference

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
searchTerms	array of strings	["Google"]	One or more business names or keywords to search
states	array of strings	["ALL"]	Search all supported state codes with ALL, or selected supported state codes: NY, TX, CO, CT, IA, PA, OR, AK
includeCompliance	boolean	false	Also search OFAC sanctions and SEC EDGAR
includeNonprofits	boolean	false	Also search IRS exempt-organization records
includeExtendedSources	boolean	false	Include 23 additional business-related public sources
maxResultsPerState	integer	50	Maximum records per source; valid input range is 1 to 200
maxTotalResults	integer	500	Maximum records written to the dataset for the whole run; this also caps result-based charges

Practical guidance

• Use specific company names for cleaner results
• Leave states as ["ALL"] when you want all supported state-registry sources
• Turn on compliance and nonprofit sources only when you need them
• For larger batch jobs, split long company lists into multiple runs for easier review

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Sample output patterns

State or business source record

{
  "name": "GOOGLE LLC",
  "type": "business_entity",
  "status": "Active",
  "country": "US",
  "authority": "New York Department of State",
  "_product_id": "us_business_ny",
  "_source": "us_business_ny",
  "_search_term": "Google"
}

OFAC or SEC result

{
  "name": "ACME TRADING LLC",
  "type": "sanctions_record",
  "status": "No match",
  "country": "US",
  "authority": "OFAC",
  "_product_id": "us_ofac_sanctions",
  "_source": "federal_ofac",
  "_search_term": "Acme Trading LLC"
}

IRS nonprofit result

{
  "name": "Example Foundation",
  "type": "nonprofit_record",
  "status": "Active",
  "country": "US",
  "authority": "IRS",
  "_product_id": "us_irs_nonprofits",
  "_source": "federal_irs",
  "_search_term": "Example Foundation"
}

---

Pricing

This Actor uses pay-per-event pricing.

Event	Price
Actor start	$0.005
Each business record	$0.002

Example totals:

• 20 records: $0.045
• 100 records: $0.205
• 500 records: $1.005

This model works well for:

• one-off company verification
• batch business screening
• internal pay-per-use workflows

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How to use it

In Apify Console

1. Open the Actor
2. Enter one or more values in searchTerms
3. Choose your states selection
4. Decide whether to enable compliance, nonprofit, and extended-source options
5. Set maxResultsPerState and maxTotalResults
6. Start the run and review the Dataset output

In automation tools

You can run this Actor from:

• Make
• n8n
• Zapier
• LangChain
• Apify MCP-compatible workflows

Python example

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN")

run = client.actor("lentic_clockss/us-business-entity-search").call(
    run_input={
        "searchTerms": ["Google"],
        "states": ["ALL"],
        "includeCompliance": False,
        "includeNonprofits": False,
        "includeExtendedSources": False,
        "maxResultsPerState": 50,
        "maxTotalResults": 500,
    }
)

for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item.get("_source"), item.get("name"))

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When to use this Actor vs something else

Use this Actor when you want:

• US business-entity and registry lookups
• public business and licensing source coverage
• optional OFAC, SEC, and IRS context in the same run

Use something else if you need:

• non-US company registries
• credit reports or commercial risk scoring
• deep litigation research
• beneficial-ownership mapping
• location-level consumer-business contact data
• broader multi-jurisdiction sanctions screening

If you need company verification outside the US, use a global company-registry search product instead.

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FAQ

Which states can I select directly?

Direct state selection currently supports New York, Texas, Colorado, Connecticut, Iowa, Pennsylvania, Oregon, and Alaska.

What does ALL mean in states?

It searches all directly supported state-registry sources instead of limiting the run to selected state codes.

Are compliance sources enabled by default?

No. includeCompliance defaults to false. Turn it on only when you want OFAC and SEC checked.

Are nonprofit sources enabled by default?

No. includeNonprofits defaults to false.

Are extended business sources enabled by default?

No. includeExtendedSources defaults to false to keep standard runs fast and cost-bounded. Turn it on when you need broader city, filing, license, bank, LEI, or industry-code coverage.

Do all sources return the same fields?

No. Public sources use different schemas. The Actor adds normalized preview fields so you can still review mixed-source results in one table.

Can I search multiple companies in one run?

Yes. Add multiple values to searchTerms.

Is this a credit report or beneficial-ownership product?

No. This Actor focuses on public business, licensing, registry, and optional federal screening records.

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Related Actors

• Global Company Search
• Global Sanctions Screening
• Regulatory Compliance Search
• Google Maps Scraper

Browse more Actors from this publisher at apify.com/lentic_clockss.