U.S. Census County & ZIP Business Patterns Scraper

Export official U.S. Census Bureau County Business Patterns (CBP) and ZIP Code Business Patterns (ZBP) without a Census API key. Choose county, state, ZIP totals or ZIP-by-industry detail and receive analysis-ready establishment, employment, payroll and business-size data.

The Actor streams Census bulk ZIP files and enriches codes with official county and NAICS descriptions. It avoids the API-key requirement that applies to many Census API requests and can process large source files within a 512 MB Actor.

Use cases

• Market sizing and sales-territory planning by industry and geography.
• Retail, logistics, franchise and commercial real-estate site selection.
• Local business-density and employment analysis.
• Industry concentration and regional economic dashboards.
• B2B total-addressable-market estimation by employee-size band.

Geography modes

Mode	Grain and scale
county	State + county + NAICS detail; the current uncompressed file exceeds 100 MB.
state	State + NAICS + legal form of organization.
zipTotals	One summarized record per ZIP with city, state and county labels.
zipIndustry	ZIP + NAICS detail; the current compressed source is roughly 284 MB.

Input

Use latest to automatically resolve the most recent Census reference year. Filter by state/county FIPS, ZIP prefix, NAICS prefix, legal form, establishments, employment or annual payroll. maxResults supports up to 500,000 records per run.

{
  "year": "latest",
  "geographyLevel": "county",
  "stateFips": ["06", "48"],
  "naicsPrefixes": ["72"],
  "minEstablishments": 10,
  "minEmployment": 100,
  "maxResults": 50000
}

Output

One item is one year–geography–industry cell, with the fields available for the selected source mode.

{
  "dataYear": 2023,
  "geographyLevel": "county",
  "stateFips": "01",
  "fullCountyFips": "01001",
  "countyName": "Autauga County, Alabama",
  "naicsCode": "11----",
  "naicsDescription": "Agriculture, Forestry, Fishing and Hunting",
  "establishments": 10,
  "employment": 50,
  "annualPayrollThousands": 2945
}

Payroll fields preserve the Census source unit of thousands of dollars. minAnnualPayroll accepts normal dollars and converts before comparison. Noise flags and source links remain available for auditability.

Scale and performance

Files are downloaded, decompressed and parsed as streams. The Actor stops the upstream transfer when it reaches the requested limit instead of loading the full file. Segment more than 500,000 results by year, state, county, ZIP or NAICS.

API and integrations

Run through Apify Console, REST API, JavaScript, Python or MCP. Export JSON, JSONL, CSV, Excel, XML and RSS and connect schedules, webhooks, Make, Zapier, Sheets, warehouses and BI tools.

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/logiover~us-census-county-business-patterns-scraper/runs?token=YOUR_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"geographyLevel":"zipIndustry","zipPrefixes":["90"],"maxResults":10000}'

FAQ

Does it require a Census API key? No; it uses official downloadable files.

What does empty input do? It discovers the latest reference year and exports county industry-detail records.

Are these individual business leads? No. CBP publishes aggregate counts by geography and industry, not company names.

Why is employment or payroll sometimes null? Census disclosure protection can suppress or noise-infuse values. Flags are preserved.

Can I get hundreds of thousands of rows? Yes. County and ZIP industry files contain a large result pool; each run supports 500,000 output items.

Responsible use

This Actor is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Census Bureau. CBP is aggregate statistical data and reference years are released with a lag. Preserve disclosure context when interpreting small cells.

Changelog

2026-08-05

• Initial keyless Census CBP/ZBP bulk exporter.
• Added latest-release discovery, four geography modes, official reference enrichment and streaming ZIP parsing.
• Verified live default, filtered and bulk behavior.