LA Business Licenses Scraper

Search and export active City of Los Angeles business registrations from the official Office of Finance open dataset. Use it for local-market research, lead discovery, compliance screening, territory analysis, and business-directory enrichment without browser automation or private credentials.

What “license” means here: the source is the City's Listing of Active Businesses. A record means the owner has registered with the LA Office of Finance and has not reported ceasing operations. It is not proof of a California professional, contractor, health, alcohol, or other regulatory license.

What the Actor extracts

Field	Description
locationAccount	Stable Office of Finance account for the business location
businessName, dbaName	Legal and Doing Business As names
streetAddress, city, zipCode	Registered business-location address
mailingAddress, mailingCity, mailingZipCode	Public mailing address when present
naics, primaryNaicsDescription	Self-reported 2007 NAICS code and City-provided industry description
councilDistrict	Current LA council district; 0 means outside the City
locationStartDate, locationEndDate	First activity start date and most recent activity end date when present
latitude, longitude	City-provided coordinates when the location was geocoded
sourceDatasetId, sourceUrl, scrapedAt	Provenance and retrieval timestamp

Every dataset item has a stable shape. Unavailable optional source values are returned as null, not omitted. Run diagnostics are stored separately in the SUMMARY key-value record.

When to use it

Use this Actor when you need active LA business-registration data filtered by:

• a broad keyword;
• legal name or DBA name;
• exact location account;
• street address, city, or five-digit ZIP prefix;
• exact self-reported NAICS code;
• LA council district; or
• location activity start-date range.

Do not use it to verify a regulated occupation, determine whether taxes are current, infer that a business is physically open today, or obtain statewide California entities. The City updates the source monthly and defines “active” by whether the owner has reported ceasing business operations.

Input

All filters are combined with AND. Text name/address matching is case-insensitive.

Input	Type	Default	Notes
query	string	—	Broad full-text search across the source record
businessName	string	STARBUCKS	Legal business name contains
dbaName	string	—	DBA name contains
locationAccount	string	—	Exact account such as 0000008207-0001-5
streetAddress	string	—	Business-location street address contains
city	string	—	Exact city name
zipCode	string	—	Five digits; includes matching ZIP+4 values
naics	string	—	Exact 2–6 digit NAICS code
councilDistrict	integer	—	0 through 15
startDateFrom	date	—	Inclusive YYYY-MM-DD
startDateTo	date	—	Inclusive YYYY-MM-DD
maxResults	integer	25	From 1 to 10,000

Console example

{
  "businessName": "STARBUCKS",
  "city": "LOS ANGELES",
  "maxResults": 25
}

API example

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/YOUR_USERNAME~la-business-licenses-scraper/runs?token=YOUR_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"zipCode":"90012","naics":"722211","maxResults":100}'

Keep API tokens in headers or a secret manager in production rather than committing them to source control.

Output example

{
  "locationAccount": "0000008207-0001-5",
  "businessName": "STARBUCKS CORPORATION",
  "dbaName": "STARBUCKS #5759",
  "streetAddress": "22815 VICTORY BLVD #A",
  "city": "CANOGA PARK",
  "zipCode": "91307-3953",
  "locationDescription": "22815 VICTORY 91307-3953",
  "mailingAddress": "POST OFFICE BOX #34067",
  "mailingCity": "SEATTLE",
  "mailingZipCode": "98124-1067",
  "naics": "722211",
  "primaryNaicsDescription": "Limited-service eating places",
  "councilDistrict": 3,
  "locationStartDate": "2000-04-08",
  "locationEndDate": null,
  "latitude": 34.1864,
  "longitude": -118.6236,
  "sourceDatasetId": "6rrh-rzua",
  "sourceUrl": "https://data.lacity.org/d/6rrh-rzua",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-08-27T12:00:00.000Z"
}

Pay-per-event pricing

Event	Price
Actor start	$0.00005 per run
Business registration record	$0.0005 per delivered record

A default 25-record run costs at most $0.01255 in event charges. A 100-record run costs at most $0.05005. The Actor writes and validates a record before charging its record event, stops after maxResults, and stops promptly when the platform reports that the event spending limit was reached.

Reliability and limits

The Actor reads the first-party data.lacity.org Socrata endpoint directly. It uses stable account-number ordering, bounded 1,000-row pages, output validation, account-level deduplication, a 30-second request timeout, and four bounded attempts with backoff for transient failures. No proxy, browser, login, cookie, or third-party data provider is required.

• Maximum 10,000 results per run.
• Source updates are controlled by the City and currently described as monthly.
• A valid no-match query returns zero dataset items plus an EMPTY summary.
• A bad date range or malformed input returns an actionable REJECTED summary without result charges.
• A source outage preserves any already delivered records and writes a FAILED summary; no fabricated records are added.
• Broad text and contains filters may take longer than exact account, ZIP, NAICS, city, or district filters.

Responsible use

This Actor processes public government records. Mailing and location fields can still contain personal or home-address information for sole proprietors. Use the data only for a lawful purpose, minimize retention, honor applicable privacy and marketing rules, and independently verify records before making eligibility, enforcement, credit, employment, housing, insurance, or other high-impact decisions. The City of Los Angeles remains the authoritative source.

Support

When reporting an issue, include the Actor run ID, redacted input, expected result, and the relevant public Office of Finance account number. Do not post API tokens or non-public personal data.