Business License Scraper: New Business Leads from US Cities

A business license scraper for B2B leads. It collects new business licenses and newly registered business locations from the official open data portals of Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles, one row per record in one schema: city, license or account number, business name, DBA name, license type, business activity, NAICS code, street address, ZIP, start date, status and a link to the record in the city's API.

Use it to find businesses that just opened or registered in a city (restaurants, shops, contractors, offices), to feed a CRM with fresh local leads every morning, or to count new businesses per industry and ZIP for a market report, instead of downloading each city's file by hand.

What is covered

City	Portal	Dataset	License
Seattle, WA	data.seattle.gov	Active Business License Tax Certificate (wnbq-64tb)	Public Domain
San Francisco, CA	data.sf.gov	Registered Business Locations - San Francisco (g8m3-pdis)	Open Data Commons PDDL
Los Angeles, CA	data.lacity.org	Listing of Active Businesses (6rrh-rzua)	CC0 1.0 (Public Domain Dedication)

The actor reads the datasets live through the Socrata SODA API, so a run returns what the portal has at that moment. Seattle and San Francisco update daily. Los Angeles states a monthly update interval in its metadata.

• Filters: city, start date range, license type or industry words, NAICS code prefixes, text in the business name, active businesses only.
• Private persons are left out by default (excludeIndividuals): sole proprietors and records that look like a person at a home address. See "Private persons" below.
• Newest first across all selected cities.
• With no input the actor returns the 50 newest active business records from the last 30 days across all three cities, without private persons.

Example from a real run

This is a run on the Apify platform on 8 October 2026 with empty input (run 3qX764YkYSpR2iKNV): the 50 newest active records from the last 30 days across all three cities, with excludeIndividuals at its default true. The log showed 32 San Francisco rows and 44 Los Angeles rows left out as likely private persons; Seattle's sole proprietors were filtered out on the portal. Three of the 50 rows:

Input:

{}

Output (excerpt):

[
  {
    "city": "Los Angeles",
    "state": "CA",
    "licenseNumber": "0003567811-0001-2",
    "businessName": "NOBLE PACK LOGISTICS LLC",
    "dbaName": null,
    "entityType": null,
    "licenseType": "Office of Finance business registration",
    "businessActivity": "Office administrative services",
    "naicsCode": "561110",
    "addressLine": "4716 S GRAMERCY PLACE, Los Angeles",
    "zip": "90062",
    "latitude": null,
    "longitude": null,
    "issuedAt": "2026-10-07",
    "expiresAt": null,
    "status": "Active",
    "isLikelyIndividual": false,
    "sourceUrl": "https://data.lacity.org/resource/6rrh-rzua.json?location_account=0003567811-0001-2",
    "sourceDataset": "https://data.lacity.org/d/6rrh-rzua",
    "license": "Creative Commons 1.0 Universal (Public Domain Dedication)"
  },
  {
    "city": "San Francisco",
    "state": "CA",
    "licenseNumber": "1189473",
    "businessName": "Mission 19 Taqueria LLC",
    "dbaName": "Sf Vibe Creamery",
    "entityType": null,
    "licenseType": null,
    "businessActivity": null,
    "naicsCode": "722515",
    "addressLine": "275 Jefferson St, San Francisco",
    "zip": "94133",
    "latitude": 37.807992,
    "longitude": -122.4168525,
    "issuedAt": "2026-10-07",
    "expiresAt": null,
    "status": "Active",
    "isLikelyIndividual": false,
    "sourceUrl": "https://data.sf.gov/resource/g8m3-pdis.json?uniqueid=1434493-10-261-1189473",
    "sourceDataset": "https://data.sf.gov/d/g8m3-pdis",
    "license": "Open Data Commons Public Domain Dedication and License (PDDL)"
  }
]

A Seattle row from the same run shows the ownership type that Seattle adds:

{
  "city": "Seattle",
  "state": "WA",
  "licenseNumber": "0008958310813717",
  "businessName": "ELEVATE WINDOWS LLC",
  "dbaName": "ELEVATE WINDOWS LLC",
  "entityType": "LLC - Multi Member",
  "licenseType": "Business License Tax Certificate",
  "businessActivity": "Glass and Glazing Contractors",
  "naicsCode": "238150",
  "addressLine": "11900 NE 1ST ST STE 300, Bellevue",
  "zip": "98005",
  "latitude": null,
  "longitude": null,
  "issuedAt": "2026-10-06",
  "expiresAt": null,
  "status": "Active",
  "isLikelyIndividual": false,
  "sourceUrl": "https://data.seattle.gov/resource/wnbq-64tb.json?city_account_number=0008958310813717",
  "sourceDataset": "https://data.seattle.gov/d/wnbq-64tb",
  "license": "Public Domain"
}

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
cities	array	all three	seattle, san-francisco, los-angeles. Names such as "San Francisco", "SF" or "LA" also work.
licenseTypes	array	all	Words that must appear in licenseType or businessActivity, or NAICS code prefixes, any of them. For example ["restaurant"], ["7225"] or ["salon", "8121"].
businessNameContains	string	none	Text that must appear in the business name or DBA name, case insensitive.
issuedFrom	date	30 days ago	Records that started on or after this date, YYYY-MM-DD.
issuedTo	date	today	Records that started on or before this date. Future start dates, which some portals hold, are left out by default.
activeOnly	boolean	true	Leave out locations that the city lists as closed or ended.
maxResults	integer	50	Rows in total, 1 to 10 000.
onlyNew	boolean	false	Only records that earlier runs with the same input did not deliver.
excludeIndividuals	boolean	true	Leave out sole proprietors and records that look like a private person at a home address. Set false only if you have a lawful basis to process personal data.

Output

Field	Description
city, state	The city whose portal the row comes from, and its two letter state code.
licenseNumber	Seattle: city account number. San Francisco: business account (certificate) number, shared by all locations of one business. Los Angeles: location account number.
businessName	Registered or legal business name as the city publishes it. For sole proprietors this is the owner's name, which is why they are left out by default.
dbaName	Trade name or "doing business as" name, null when the city has none, or when the trade name looks like a private person and excludeIndividuals is true (see "Private persons").
entityType	Seattle only: ownership type such as Corporation, LLC - Single Member or Sole proprietorship.
licenseType	Seattle: Business License Tax Certificate. San Francisco: the city's license code description where one exists (most rows have none). Los Angeles: Office of Finance business registration.
businessActivity	Industry in words (NAICS description) for Seattle and Los Angeles. San Francisco publishes only the code.
naicsCode	NAICS industry code as reported by the business. Los Angeles uses 2007 NAICS codes.
addressLine, zip	Business location street address and locality, and five digit ZIP.
latitude, longitude	Coordinates where the city publishes them (San Francisco, part of Los Angeles), otherwise null. Seattle publishes none.
issuedAt	Start date, YYYY-MM-DD: license start date in Seattle, location start date in San Francisco and Los Angeles.
expiresAt	End date of the location or DBA when the city has recorded one (only with activeOnly: false), otherwise null.
status	Active or Closed.
isLikelyIndividual	true when the record looks like a private person: in Seattle an ownership type of Sole proprietorship, General Partnership, Trust or Other, in San Francisco and Los Angeles a person's name or a home address (see "Private persons"). With excludeIndividuals: true (the default) every delivered row has false.
sourceUrl	SODA API link that returns exactly this record from the portal.
sourceDataset, license	The dataset the row comes from and its license.

The schema leaves out personal contact data on purpose: phone numbers, mailing addresses, e-mail, separate owner fields and state tax ids are never requested from the portals.

Private persons

The cities register sole proprietors under the owner's own name, often at a home address. That is personal data, so by default (excludeIndividuals: true) the actor leaves out every record that looks like a private person:

• Seattle: the city's own ownership_type field. Sole proprietorship, General Partnership, Trust and Other are filtered out on the portal before any row is downloaded.
• San Francisco and Los Angeles: the portals have no ownership type, so a rule decides. A record is left out when the owner part of the business name (the text before "DBA" or a colon) has no company word (LLC, Inc, Corp, Co, Ltd, LP, LLP, PC, PLLC, Trust, Group, Services, Restaurant, Cafe, Coffee, Bar, Salon, Hospital and similar) and one of its names is 2-4 words without digits. Names are split on "&", commas, slashes and the word "and", and a name with an initial (a single letter such as the A in "Scott A M") next to a longer word counts as a person at any length. A name with a word such as "of" or "the" is not a person. A record is also left out when the address has an apartment or unit number (APT, UNIT, #12) and no suite or floor.

A company record can still carry a person's name as its trade name. With excludeIndividuals: true, dbaName is set to null when the trade name looks like a private person by the same rule and differs from the business name; the rest of the record is kept.

Every row carries isLikelyIndividual. Set excludeIndividuals to false only if you have a lawful basis to process personal data; the records that look like private persons are then delivered with isLikelyIndividual: true.

Monitoring and scheduling

Set onlyNew to true to use the actor as a daily new business feed. The actor then remembers which records it has delivered for the same input, in a named key-value store in your Apify account (nightwave-state-us-business-licenses, one record per input). Each run returns and charges only records that earlier runs did not deliver. The first run returns everything in the selection. A run without news finishes successfully with 0 rows.

onlyNew and maxResults are not part of the remembered input, so you can change them without starting over. Changing any other field starts a fresh state. Leave issuedFrom empty in a schedule: it then always looks 30 days back, and records you already have are skipped. That also catches records that a city adds to its file a few days late.

Example: every morning at 07:00, new restaurants and cafes in Seattle and Los Angeles. In Apify Console, open Schedules, create a schedule with the cron expression 0 7 * * * and add this actor with the input below.

{
  "cities": ["seattle", "los-angeles"],
  "licenseTypes": ["7225"],
  "onlyNew": true,
  "maxResults": 500
}

The same schedule through the Apify API:

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/schedules?token=<YOUR_TOKEN>" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"name": "daily-new-businesses", "cronExpression": "0 7 * * *", "timezone": "America/Los_Angeles", "isEnabled": true, "isExclusive": true,
       "actions": [{"type": "RUN_ACTOR", "actorId": "nightwave-owner~us-business-licenses",
                    "runInput": {"contentType": "application/json; charset=utf-8", "body": "<the input above as a JSON string>"}}]}'

Connect a webhook or an integration (Slack, e-mail, Google Sheets, HubSpot) to the actor in Apify Console if you want the new rows sent somewhere when the run finishes.

Limitations

• The three cities publish different things. Seattle lists businesses that hold a Seattle business license tax certificate, San Francisco lists registered business locations, Los Angeles lists businesses registered with the Office of Finance. All three include businesses whose address is outside the city (for example a Bellevue company with a Seattle license), so filter on zip or addressLine if you need only local addresses.
• The start date is the date the city recorded, which can be before or after the actual opening. Some records carry future start dates. They are left out unless you set issuedTo in the future.
• Seattle's dataset lists only active licenses. The Los Angeles dataset is named "Listing of Active Businesses", but the actor still applies activeOnly there (rows with a location_end_date are left out, and with activeOnly: false they are delivered with status Closed). On 8 October 2026 no Los Angeles row had an end date, so in practice activeOnly: false changes the result only for San Francisco.
• excludeIndividuals works on Seattle's own ownership type field, but in San Francisco and Los Angeles it is a rule based on the name and address. The rule also removes some real companies whose registered name is a person's name or a short name without a company word (for example a studio named after its owner), and it can miss a sole proprietor with a company-like trade name at a business address.
• Industry codes are self reported by the business and are sometimes broad (for example 310000).
• Chicago and New York City are not included. Chicago's business license dataset is published under the City's terms of use (with an indemnity clause) rather than a public domain license, and the New York City dataset states no license in its metadata, so they are left out until that changes.
• A city that does not answer is logged as a warning and the run continues with the other cities. The run fails only if every selected portal fails.
• Each city is read with at most 20 000 rows per run. Narrow the date range if you need more history from one city.

Use cases

• Sales teams and agencies: new restaurants, salons, offices or contractors in a city, every morning, for outreach through your own channels.
• Suppliers and service companies: POS, payroll, insurance, signage, cleaning and food suppliers looking for businesses that just opened.
• Market research: count new businesses per NAICS code and ZIP to see which industries and neighbourhoods grow.
• Local news and economic development: track openings by industry over time.

FAQ

Is this the official data? Yes. Every row comes straight from the city's own Socrata portal, and sourceUrl returns the same record from the portal's API.

Do I get owner names, phone numbers or e-mail? No. The actor returns business data only, and records of sole proprietors and other private persons are left out by default (see "Private persons").

Can you add my city? Only cities whose business license dataset is published under a public domain or equivalent open license are added. Write to kontakt@nightwave.se with the dataset link.

Data source and license

All data comes from the Socrata Open Data API (SODA) of each portal listed in the table above. The license of each dataset was read from the portal's own metadata (/api/views/<id>.json) on 7 October 2026, and is repeated in the license field of every row:

• Seattle: "Public Domain".
• San Francisco: "Open Data Commons Public Domain Dedication and License" (http://opendatacommons.org/licenses/pddl/1.0/).
• Los Angeles: "Creative Commons 1.0 Universal (Public Domain Dedication)" (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/legalcode).

These licenses allow copying, changing and commercial reuse without permission. The cities provide the data as is and make no warranty about its accuracy. This actor is not affiliated with or endorsed by any of the cities.

Pricing

Pay per result: 0.003 USD per record returned (event license), which is 3 USD per 1 000 records. Platform usage is included, so you pay only per result. maxResults caps how many rows a run returns, so you always know the highest possible cost.

Rows are delivered only after they have been charged. If you set a maximum cost per run (maxTotalChargeUsd), the run stops there and its status message says how many rows were delivered.

Contact

Built and maintained by Nightwave AB. Questions, bugs and feature requests: kontakt@nightwave.se

På svenska

Actorn hämtar nya företagstillstånd och nyregistrerade verksamhetsadresser från de öppna dataportalerna i Seattle, San Francisco och Los Angeles, en rad per post i ett gemensamt format: stad, licens- eller kontonummer, företagsnamn, handelsnamn (DBA), licenstyp, bransch, NAICS-kod, adress, postnummer, startdatum, status och en länk till posten i stadens API.

• Källa: varje stads Socrata-portal (SODA API), läst direkt vid körningen. Ingen API-nyckel behövs.
• Licens: bara dataset som enligt portalens egen metadata är public domain (Public Domain, PDDL eller CC0) är med, kontrollerat 7 oktober 2026. Licensen står i fältet license på varje rad. Chicago och New York är inte med: Chicagos dataset har stadens användarvillkor i stället för en öppen licens och New Yorks dataset anger ingen licens.
• Inga personuppgifter: telefonnummer, postadresser, e-post, separata ägarfält och skattenummer hämtas aldrig. Enskilda firmor och poster som ser ut som en privatperson på en bostadsadress tas bort som standard (excludeIndividuals). I Seattle används stadens eget fält för ägarform, i San Francisco och Los Angeles en regel på namn och adress som också kan ta bort en del riktiga företag. Fältet isLikelyIndividual finns på varje rad.
• Filter: stad, datumintervall, ord i licenstyp eller bransch, NAICS-prefix, text i företagsnamnet och bara aktiva verksamheter. Utan input fås de 50 senaste aktiva företagsposterna från de senaste 30 dagarna i alla tre städerna.
• Med onlyNew: true levereras bara poster som tidigare körningar med samma input inte har levererat, vilket passar för daglig bevakning (se "Monitoring and scheduling").
• Pris: 0,003 USD per post (3 USD per 1 000). Plattformsanvändningen ingår.
• Kontakt: kontakt@nightwave.se