License Verification API — TDLR, DBPR, DORA, WA DOH, NPI

License verification API for US professional licenses: look up licenses by license number (or by name within one state board) in Texas TDLR, Florida DBPR, Colorado DORA, Washington DOH and the federal NPI Registry, and get one normalized JSON record per license: state, board, license number and type, profession, normalized status (ACTIVE, EXPIRED, SUSPENDED, REVOKED, PROBATION, PENDING, INACTIVE, UNKNOWN) plus the board's raw status, issue and expiration dates, city, county, zip, an optional disciplinary-action flag (includeDiscipline) and a link back to the source. In verify mode every record also carries verified: true|false and plain-English verificationNotes.

Renamed on 2026-11-07: this Actor's address changed from owlabee/us-license-verifier to owlabee/license-verification-api. Saved tasks, schedules, webhooks and integrations keep working, because they point to the Actor's ID, which did not change. Update anything that calls it by name: API URLs (owlabee~license-verification-api), MCP tool lists (owlabee/license-verification-api) and bookmarks.

What it does

The Actor queries only official, public license registries, over plain HTTP, with no login, browser or proxy:

Source id	Board	Coverage	How it is queried
TX_TDLR	Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation	~1.0 M licenses: electricians, A/C & HVAC technicians and contractors, cosmetologists, barbers, salons, tow operators, behavior analysts, property tax professionals, auctioneers, water well drillers, elevator and boiler inspectors, …	Socrata open-data API on data.texas.gov (dataset 7358-krk7)
FL_DBPR	Florida Department of Business & Professional Regulation	Real estate, construction contractors, community association managers, home inspectors, cosmetology and barbers, CPAs, architects, engineers, veterinarians, hotels & restaurants, …	The public "Verify a Licensee" portal on myfloridalicense.com (one HTML request per query, 1 request/second)
CO_DORA	Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies, Division of Professions and Occupations	~1.6 M licenses across every DORA profession: nurses, physicians, dentists, pharmacists, CPAs, cosmetologists, electricians, plumbers, real estate, … including disciplinary case numbers	Socrata open-data API on data.colorado.gov (dataset 7s5z-vewr, updated daily)
WA_DOH	Washington State Department of Health	~2.5 M health-care credentials: RNs, LPNs, ARNPs, nursing assistants, physicians, EMTs, counselors, pharmacists, … with an "action taken" flag	Socrata open-data API on data.wa.gov (dataset qxh8-f4bd, updated daily)
NPI	CMS NPPES NPI Registry (federal)	Every US health-care provider and organization with an NPI; includes the self-reported state license number and taxonomy	Official JSON API at npiregistry.cms.hhs.gov

It is built for credentialing and compliance teams verifying that a business or practitioner holds the license it claims, for marketplaces and procurement teams checking contractor, cosmetology, real-estate or healthcare licenses in bulk, and for AI agents that need a structured answer to "is this license active?". It is a lookup tool over the boards' own public registries, not a background check: see "Legal" below for what it does not do. Results arrive in the dataset as they are found and can be downloaded as JSON, CSV or Excel, read through the API, pushed to a webhook, or consumed through the Apify MCP server.

Checking contractors you found in permit records? Building Permits Scraper — Roofing & Construction Leads supplies the contractor names and license numbers to verify here.

Why this Actor

	This Actor	Typical scraper in this category	Do it yourself
Sources covered	Five registries in one run: Texas TDLR, Florida DBPR, Colorado DORA, Washington DOH and the federal NPI Registry, with one query syntax	One agency per Actor, each with its own input shape	One portal or open-data API at a time, each with its own HTML or schema
Modes	lookup, verify (adds verified and plain-English notes) and a monitor mode that reports status and expiration changes	Lookup, sometimes a status-only flag	Lookup; you keep the history
Output fields	One normalized record per license across boards: status in a fixed vocabulary plus the board's raw status, issue and expiration dates, city, county, zip, sourceUrl, verified, verificationNotes; the board's disciplinary flag and details on request (includeDiscipline)	The agency's own field names	Whatever each portal returns
Pricing unit	Per license record (found, not found or error) and per query re-checked in monitor mode; nothing per source or per minute	Per record, often a higher price for enriched records	Server time and portal upkeep
Proxies or API keys	None; a free open-data app token is optional	Often a proxy for the portal	None, until a portal rate-limits you
Agent / MCP ready	Yes: pin link, three prompts and a copy-paste call-actor block below	Sometimes	No
Limits	Four states plus NPI; no California; Florida returns the portal's first 50 matches; Texas status is derived from the expiration date	One state	Whatever you build and maintain

• One answer shape for every board. status is normalized across TDLR, DBPR, DORA, DOH and NPI, so a credentialing, compliance or procurement workflow has one rule to apply.
• Verification you can act on. verify mode says whether the license is active and unexpired, and verificationNotes explain why not when it is not.
• Bulk and monitoring in the same Actor. Paste a thousand queries, or schedule monitor mode and receive only the licenses whose status or expiration changed.
• Honest about the gaps. Unsupported states, derived statuses and lagging extracts are flagged on the record rather than hidden.
• Nothing to configure. No proxy, login or browser; paste queries and start.

How to use

1. Enter Queries, one per line, license number first: TX:3365:Master Electrician, FL:SEC17708, npi:1003000126; a name lookup names its state or board, name:Jane Smith:CO. For exact fields (city, board) use Lookups (structured) instead: [{"state": "CO", "name": "Smith, John", "licenseType": "RN", "city": "Denver"}].
2. Pick the Mode: lookup lists every matching license; verify adds verified and verificationNotes. Optionally narrow Sources, set Max records per query, and turn on Include disciplinary data if you need the board's disciplinary fields (off by default).
3. Click Start. For scheduled monitoring, turn on Monitor mode so later runs emit only licenses whose status or expiration changed.

Query routing

• A query with a state (TX:…, name:…:FL) is answered by that state's board(s) only.
• A license number without a state (license:SL3567250) is answered by every enabled source, including the NPI Registry: a license number identifies a credential, not a person.
• A name without a state or board (name:Jane Smith) is accepted only when exactly one source is enabled in sources; otherwise it returns an INVALID_QUERY item asking for a state or a board. The Actor never searches a person's name across several state registries: name lookups are a lookup aid within one board, not a people search (see "Legal").
• A board (npi:…, tdlr:…, dbpr:…, dora:…, doh:…) pins the query to one source. A bare 10-digit number is treated as an NPI.
• License numbers repeat across license types in Texas and Colorado; add the type (TX:3365:Master Electrician, CO:RN.123456) to get a single record.

Quick start input

The same input the Store runs in its daily automated test, so it is cheap and always available; paste it into the JSON tab of the input form or send it as the body of an API or MCP call:

{
  "queries": [
    "npi:1003000126",
    "name:John Smith:TX"
  ],
  "lookups": [],
  "mode": "verify",
  "sources": [
    "TX_TDLR",
    "FL_DBPR",
    "CO_DORA",
    "WA_DOH",
    "NPI"
  ],
  "maxResultsPerQuery": 5,
  "maxResults": 20,
  "monitor": false
}

Ready-to-run inputs

Complete inputs for four common jobs; paste one into the JSON tab and change the queries.

Texas TDLR lookup (license number with type, and a name limited to Texas):

{
  "queries": ["TX:3365:Master Electrician", "name:Jane Smith:TX"],
  "mode": "lookup",
  "sources": ["TX_TDLR"],
  "maxResultsPerQuery": 10
}

Florida DBPR verify (a license number and a name, with verified and verificationNotes on every record):

{
  "queries": ["FL:SEC17708", "name:Jane Smith:FL"],
  "mode": "verify",
  "sources": ["FL_DBPR"],
  "maxResultsPerQuery": 5
}

NPI lookup (a number, a provider name by state, and a structured organization lookup):

{
  "queries": ["npi:1003000126", "npi:Jane Smith:TX"],
  "lookups": [{ "board": "NPI", "name": "Mayo Clinic", "state": "MN" }],
  "mode": "lookup",
  "sources": ["NPI"],
  "maxResultsPerQuery": 10
}

Monitor run (schedule it; the first run is the baseline, later runs emit only new, changed and removed records and POST them to the webhook):

{
  "queries": ["npi:1003000126", "FL:SEC17708", "TX:3365:Master Electrician"],
  "mode": "verify",
  "monitor": true,
  "stateStoreName": "license-watch",
  "webhookUrl": "https://hooks.example.com/license-changes"
}

Input

Field	Type	Required	Description
queries	string[]	one of queries / lookups	Lenient one-line queries: STATE:NUMBER[:TYPE], name:NAME[:STATE], npi:NUMBER, npi:NAME[:STATE], BOARD:…
lookups	object[]	one of queries / lookups	Structured queries: state, licenseNumber, name, licenseType, city, board
mode	lookup | verify	no	verify adds verified and verificationNotes (default lookup)
sources	string[]	no	Subset of TX_TDLR, FL_DBPR, CO_DORA, WA_DOH, NPI (default all)
maxResultsPerQuery	integer	no	Cap per query across sources, 1–200 (default 25)
maxResults	integer	no	Cap on dataset items per run (default 500)
monitor	boolean	no	Emit only changes since the last run (default false)
includeDiscipline	boolean	no	Write the board's disciplinary fields (disciplinaryActionFlag, Colorado's disciplinaryAction, Washington's disciplinaryActionPending) as published. Default false: the fields are absent from every record
stateStoreName	string	no	KV store for monitor snapshots (default us-license-verifier-state)
socrataAppToken	string (secret)	no	Optional Socrata app token to raise rate limits on the TX/CO/WA datasets
maxConcurrency	integer	no	Parallel queries, 1–5 (default 3)
webhookUrl	string	no	POST target for the run summary and emitted items

Output example

A verified Texas master electrician (verify mode, query TX:3365:Master Electrician):

{
  "state": "TX",
  "board": "TDLR",
  "source": "TX_TDLR",
  "licenseNumber": "3365",
  "licenseType": "Master Electrician",
  "licenseSubtype": "ME",
  "profession": "Electrical",
  "status": "ACTIVE",
  "rawStatus": null,
  "statusDerived": true,
  "holderName": "Womack, Thomas F",
  "businessName": null,
  "issueDate": null,
  "expirationDate": "2027-03-19",
  "city": null,
  "county": "Walker",
  "zip": null,
  "continuingEducationRequired": false,
  "sourceUrl": "https://www.tdlr.texas.gov/LicenseSearch/",
  "sourceRecordId": "MASTER ELECTRICIAN#3365",
  "fetchedAt": "2026-10-16T13:18:49.662Z",
  "query": "TX:3365:Master Electrician",
  "queryKey": "tx:3365:master-electrician-9e1c2a7b",
  "found": true,
  "verified": true,
  "verificationNotes": [
    "Active; expires 2027-03-19.",
    "Status derived from the expiration date because the source publishes no status field.",
    "Confirm with the issuing board before relying on this result."
  ]
}

A Colorado nurse (CO_DORA) adds licenseTypeCode, licenseCategory and lastRenewedDate; with includeDiscipline: true it also carries disciplinaryActionFlag and, when the board lists an action, disciplinaryAction: { caseNumber, action, effectiveDate, completedDate }, and Washington records carry disciplinaryActionFlag and disciplinaryActionPending. Without includeDiscipline none of these three fields is written. Florida records add nameType and addressState. NPI records add enumerationType, taxonomyCode, stateLicenseNumber, stateLicenseState and allTaxonomies. No record ever carries a gender, ethnicity, birth year, home or mailing street address, personal telephone or e-mail, whatever the board publishes.

Other item shapes:

• Not found: { "query": "FL:ZZZZ99999", "found": false, "state": "FL", "sourcesQueried": ["FL_DBPR"], "verified": false, "verificationNotes": ["No matching record …"] }
• Error: { "query": "CA:123456", "found": false, "error": "INVALID_QUERY", "errorMessage": "State CA is not supported yet. Supported: TX, FL, CO, WA …" }. Error codes: SOURCE_UNAVAILABLE (timeout, 5xx), SOURCE_BLOCKED (403/429/block page), INVALID_QUERY (unsupported state or board, missing number and name, rejected filter), TIME_BUDGET (the board was abandoned for this run after 60 s without a usable response).
• Monitor change: a normal license record plus changeType (new / changed / removed), changedFields, previousStatus, previousExpirationDate.

If the output saves you time, a review on the Store page helps other buyers find this Actor; the Store invites you to leave one after you have run it a few times.

Alerts and delivery

• Schedules. Create a schedule in the Apify Console (daily or weekly is typical for license renewals) with monitor: true; each run appends only the changed records to its dataset.
• The Actor's own webhookUrl. After every run the Actor POSTs one JSON document to the URL you set: actor and runId, the mode, the number of queries and invalidQueries, produced, licensesFound, notFound, errors, monitor, monitorChecks, includeDiscipline, the sources enabled, the acceptable-use notice, the charges summary, limitReached, finishedAt, and items, up to 500 of the records written in this run (in monitor mode, only the changes). Delivery has a 10 s timeout and two retries; a failing endpoint never fails the run and is recorded as webhookDelivered: false in the run's SUMMARY key-value record.
• Apify integrations. On the Actor's Integrations tab you can attach Slack, Make, Zapier, Google Sheets, email or a generic Actor webhook that fires on run events (ACTOR.RUN.SUCCEEDED, ACTOR.RUN.FAILED, ACTOR.RUN.TIMED_OUT) and carries the run and dataset ids, so any downstream tool can pull the items.
• API and dataset endpoints. Start a run and wait for its items in one call with POST https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/owlabee~license-verification-api/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<APIFY_TOKEN> (the input JSON as the body), or start it asynchronously with POST /v2/acts/owlabee~license-verification-api/runs and read GET /v2/datasets/{datasetId}/items?format=json (also csv, xlsx) when it finishes. The run's SUMMARY record is at GET /v2/key-value-stores/{storeId}/records/SUMMARY and includes webhookDelivered when a webhook was set.

Pricing

Pay per event. You only pay for what the Actor produces; set a maximum cost per run in the run options to cap spend.

Event	Price	Notes
License record	$0.002	Per dataset item in lookup or verify mode: each license found, each not-found result and each error item
Monitor re-check	$0.002	Per query re-checked in monitor mode (not on the baseline run); changed records are charged as license records on top
Actor start	$0.00005	Apify platform event

Example: 1,000 verifications ≈ $2.00. A daily monitor of 100 licenses costs $0.20 per run when nothing changed, plus $0.002 per changed record. The first monitor run is a baseline that emits and charges every current record.

Store pricing discounts: users on the Scale plan (Silver) pay 10% less per event, Business (Gold) 20% less.

Limits and fair use

• Each source is rate-limited to about one request per second; Socrata datasets accept an optional free app token for higher limits. Very large inputs take proportionally longer (expect roughly 1–3 s per query per source).
• Each board has a time budget for the run: after 60 s in a row without a usable response (timeouts, 5xx, 403/429), that board is abandoned for the rest of the run. Its remaining queries get a charged error item with error: "TIME_BUDGET" immediately instead of waiting for another timeout; the other boards keep running. A board that answers but rejects a query (400/404/422) is not counted as down. In monitor mode a query with a source error keeps its previous snapshot. Default run memory is 512 MB.
• Name searches on common names can match hundreds of licenses; maxResultsPerQuery (default 25, max 200) caps them. Narrow with a license type or city. A name query is answered by one board: give it a state or a board, or enable a single source.
• Florida returns the first 50 matches of the portal's result page; Texas, Colorado and Washington return up to maxResultsPerQuery matches.
• Texas publishes no status column, so the Texas status is derived from the expiration date (statusDerived: true). Texas and Colorado open-data extracts are refreshed by the boards (Colorado and Washington daily, Texas less often); results may lag the board's live database.
• Only public records are accessed; no login, no proxies. Of what a board publishes, the Actor writes the license facts and the holder's name, business, city, county and zip; it never writes gender, ethnicity, birth year, street addresses, personal phone numbers or e-mail, and disciplinary fields only on request (includeDiscipline).

Related Actors

Other pay-per-event Actors from the same account, all limited-permission and agent-friendly:

• Building Permits Scraper — Roofing & Construction Leads — building permits with contractor names and license numbers to verify.
• SPF, DMARC & DKIM Checker — Bulk Domain WHOIS, DNS & SSL — enrich the contractor's or clinic's domain with WHOIS, DNS, email security and tech stack.
• Grants.gov API & SAM.gov Scraper — Federal Grants Feed — find who is bidding for or winning public work.

Guide and code examples

• Guide: Professional License Lookup: TDLR, DBPR, DORA, WA DOH, NPI, covering the source, its fields and limits, and curl and MCP examples.
• Runnable examples (curl, Python, Node.js and an MCP config): owlabee/owlabee on GitHub.

Use from AI agents (MCP)

Pin this Actor in the Apify MCP server with one link: https://mcp.apify.com?tools=owlabee/license-verification-api, or let the agent find it with the search-actors tool. It is pay-per-event with limited permissions, so agents can discover it, inspect the input schema with fetch-actor-details and pay per run through agentic payments. Prompts that map directly onto the input:

1. "Verify Texas master electrician license 3365 — is it active, who holds it and when does it expire?"
2. "Look up the Colorado registered-nurse licenses for Smith, John in Denver and tell me which are active and unexpired."
3. "Check NPI 1003000126 and Florida license SEC17708 every morning and send me a webhook only when a status or expiration date changes."

The agent receives the same dataset records shown in the output example above.

Copy this block to call it through the Apify MCP server with the quick-start input; the agent gets the dataset items back in the tool result and can follow up with get-dataset-items for larger runs:

{
  "tool": "call-actor",
  "arguments": {
    "actor": "owlabee/license-verification-api",
    "input": {
      "queries": ["npi:1003000126", "name:John Smith:TX"],
      "mode": "verify",
      "maxResultsPerQuery": 5,
      "maxResults": 20
    }
  }
}

FAQ

Does this need proxies or an API key? No. All five sources are public and reachable from Apify's standard datacenter infrastructure. A free Socrata app token is optional and only raises rate limits.

How is cost controlled? Set maxResultsPerQuery, maxResults and the run's maximum total charge. The Actor charges each item the moment it is saved and stops cleanly when any limit is reached.

Can I search a person by name across all states? No. A name lookup is answered by one board, so it needs a state (name:Jane Smith:FL), a board (npi:Jane Smith) or a single entry in sources; a bare name:Jane Smith with several sources enabled returns an INVALID_QUERY item. License-number lookups may span sources. This is deliberate: the Actor verifies a credential someone has given you; it is not a people search or a background check.

Where is the disciplinary flag? Off by default since 2026-11-07. Set includeDiscipline: true and Colorado and Washington records carry the board's own disciplinary fields as published (Texas, Florida and NPI publish none). The Actor adds no severity or risk score.

Which states are covered? Texas (TDLR trades and occupations), Florida (DBPR professions), Colorado (all DORA professions) and Washington (health-care credentials), plus every US health-care provider through the federal NPI Registry. Unsupported states return an INVALID_QUERY item naming the supported ones. California's DCA and CSLB lookups sit behind Cloudflare Turnstile and are not included.

What does verified mean exactly? found and status === "ACTIVE" and the expiration date is today or later. Statuses such as "Active - With Conditions" normalize to PROBATION and therefore do not verify; the raw status is always kept in rawStatus and explained in verificationNotes.

Can an AI agent use this? Yes; see "Use from AI agents (MCP)" above for the pin link and example prompts. Schedules and webhooks work the same way from the Console or the API.

How does monitor mode work? Each query's current licenses are fingerprinted (status + expiration date) in the named key-value store. Later runs emit only new, changed or removed records and charge one monitor-check per query. If a source errors during a run, that query's snapshot is kept so licenses are not reported as removed by mistake.

Can I try it for free? Yes. The Apify free plan comes with monthly platform credit, and the quick-start input above costs a few cents per run, so you can test it on your own inputs before paying anything.

How do I find this Actor again? Bookmark it on the Store page (the bookmark icon next to the title); bookmarked Actors are listed in your Console, and the Store page shows new versions as they ship.

Support

Questions, bugs or a source you'd like added? Open an issue on the Actor's Issues tab, or email jacob@owlabee.com.

Changelog

• 2026-11-07 — Legal guardrails (docs/legal/GUARDRAILS.md): a name query without a state or board is answered only when a single source is enabled and otherwise returns INVALID_QUERY (it used to fan out across every enabled registry); disciplinary fields are opt-in with the new includeDiscipline input, default off (disciplinaryActionFlag, disciplinaryAction and disciplinaryActionPending are no longer written unless it is set); personal fields a board may publish (gender, ethnicity, birth year, street address, personal phone or e-mail) are stripped at every level; the run SUMMARY and webhook carry an acceptable-use notice. Prices unchanged.
• 2026-11-07 — Renamed from owlabee/us-license-verifier to owlabee/license-verification-api so the address matches what people search for. Input, output and pricing are unchanged; calls by Actor ID, saved tasks and schedules are unaffected. Name-based calls to the old address stop resolving: update API URLs and MCP tool lists.
• 2026-10-27 — README: comparison table, ready-to-run inputs, alerts and delivery, MCP call example, changelog.
• 2026-10-25 — Pricing round (in the Console from 2026-10-26): event titles pluralized and Store discount tiers for the Scale and Business plans; no event or price changed.
• 2026-10-23 — Per-board time budget: a board with 60 s of unusable responses is abandoned for the run and its remaining queries get charged TIME_BUDGET error items at once; request deadlines include retries; unit-economics test.
• 2026-10-23 — Store listing: title now names TDLR, DBPR, DORA and NPI, SEO fields, quick start input, MCP section, agency-specific task examples.
• 2026-10-18 — Published on the Apify Store with pay-per-event pricing; charged events verified on a platform run.
• 2026-10-16 — First release: Texas TDLR, Florida DBPR, Colorado DORA, Washington DOH and NPI adapters, lenient one-line queries and structured lookups, lookup, verify and monitor modes, webhook delivery.

Legal

This Actor queries only official public license registries and reproduces what they publish; records may lag the issuing board's live database and should be confirmed with the board before any decision is based on them (every record links back to the official lookup in sourceUrl).

Not a consumer report. Not for employment, credit, insurance, housing or tenant-screening decisions. This Actor is not a consumer reporting agency and its output is not a consumer report. The data must not be used, in whole or in part, to determine a person's eligibility for employment, credit, insurance, housing or any other purpose covered by the Fair Credit Reporting Act or similar laws. It answers one question, whether a credential someone has presented to you is on the issuing board's register and in what status; it does not evaluate people. Verify with the issuing board. The same sentence travels with every run as the notice field of the SUMMARY record and the webhook body.

What the Actor does not do, by design. It has no people-search mode: a name is looked up within one board only, never across state registries, and license numbers are the primary key. It never writes a gender, ethnicity, year of birth, home or mailing street address, personal telephone number or e-mail address, even where a board publishes them. Disciplinary fields are off by default (includeDiscipline) and, when on, carry the board's own words without any severity or risk score; status and verified describe the credential, not the person. owlabee keeps no copy of the records: results exist only in your Apify storage, nothing is aggregated across runs or users, and no dataset is resold. The Actor is a pass-through client over government registers, not a data broker.

Sources and terms. Texas TDLR, Colorado DORA and Washington DOH are read through the boards' open-data APIs on Socrata (public datasets, optional free app token); Florida DBPR through its public "Verify a Licensee" page at one request per second; the NPI Registry through the CMS NPPES API. Use the data in compliance with each source's terms of use and applicable law. Not affiliated with or endorsed by TDLR, DBPR, DORA, the Washington State Department of Health or CMS; agency names are used to identify the source of the records.