🏙️ Chicago Business Licenses Scraper

🚀 Export active and historical Chicago business license records with license holder, address, ward, expiration, and license type in seconds.

🕒 Last updated: 2026-05-25 · 📊 23 fields per record · 🏙️ City of Chicago · All active and historical license records (2000-present)

The Chicago Business Licenses Scraper extracts records from the City of Chicago Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection (BACP) public dataset. Every record includes the license holder name, DBA, address, ward, precinct, police district, license code/description, dates, and geo-coordinates - exported as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML.

The scraper supports filtering by license status (AAI active, AAC cancelled, REV revoked, INQ in-process and more) and paginates through millions of historical records.

🎯 Target Audience	💡 Primary Use Cases
Compliance teams, lead-gen agencies, market researchers, real estate analysts, journalists, civic-tech	Lead generation, B2B prospecting, compliance audits, market analysis, real estate research

📋 What the Chicago Business Licenses Scraper does

• Connects to the official City of Chicago Business Licenses dataset.
• Paginates through every record matching your filters.
• Normalises each record into a flat, analysis-ready row.
• Exports as CSV, Excel, JSON or XML - directly from your Apify dataset.
• Refreshes on demand or on schedule (hourly, daily, weekly).

💡 Why it matters: stop copy-pasting from a portal that paginates 100 records at a time. One click, full dataset, your format.

🎬 Full Demo

🚧 Coming soon

⚙️ Input

Field	Type	Description
maxItems	integer	Maximum records to export. Free users: 10. Paid: up to 1,000,000.
licenseStatus	string (enum)	Filter by status code: AAI (active), AAC (cancelled), REV (revoked), INQ (in process), etc.

Example 1 - Active Chicago licenses

{
  "maxItems": 500,
  "licenseStatus": "AAI"
}

Example 2 - All license records (no filter)

{
  "maxItems": 1000
}

⚠️ Good to Know: free users are capped at 10 records per run as a preview. Upgrade to any paid plan to unlock full exports (up to 1,000,000 records). Data is collected directly from the official public source - no login or API key required.

📊 Output

Field	Type	Description
🖼 imageUrl	string	Always null (records are non-visual)
📌 title	string	DBA / business name
🔗 url	string	Source dataset URL
🆔 id	string	Unique license + date key
🪪 license_id	string	License ID
🔢 account_number	string	Account number
🏢 legal_name	string	Legal entity name
🏪 doing_business_as_name	string	DBA / trade name
📍 address	string	Business street address
🏙 city	string	City
🗺 state	string	State
📮 zip_code	string	ZIP code
🗳 ward	string	City ward
👮 police_district	string	Chicago Police district
📋 license_code	string	License category code
📝 license_description	string	License category description
📅 license_start_date	string	License effective date
⏰ expiration_date	string	License expiration date
🟢 license_status	string	Status code (AAI/AAC/REV/INQ)
📍 latitude	number	Geocoded latitude
📍 longitude	number	Geocoded longitude
🕒 scrapedAt	string	ISO scrape timestamp
❌ error	string	Populated only on failure

Sample record (real run output):

{
  "title": "FORNO ROSSO ON RANDOLPH",
  "url": "https://data.cityofchicago.org/Community-Economic-Development/Business-Licenses/r5kz-chrr",
  "id": "2358718-20251216",
  "license_id": "3054174",
  "legal_name": "FABI, INC.",
  "doing_business_as_name": "FORNO ROSSO ON RANDOLPH",
  "address": "1048 W RANDOLPH ST 1ST",
  "city": "CHICAGO",
  "ward": "27",
  "police_district": "12",
  "license_code": "1475",
  "license_description": "Consumption on Premises - Incidental Activity",
  "license_start_date": "2025-12-16T00:00:00.000",
  "expiration_date": "2027-12-15T00:00:00.000",
  "license_status": "AAI",
  "latitude": 41.8844011051,
  "longitude": -87.6540314082,
  "scrapedAt": "2026-05-25T22:28:32.690Z",
  "error": null
}

✨ Why choose this Actor

✅	What you get
🎯	Direct extraction from the official City of Chicago Business Licenses portal
📊	23 normalised fields per record
⚡	Run on-demand or on schedule
📁	CSV, Excel, JSON, XML - your choice
🔌	Integrates with Make, Zapier, Slack, Airbyte, Google Drive
🆓	Free preview (10 records) - no credit card
🌍	Public data only - no login or API key required
🚀	Maintained and updated as the source schema evolves

📈 How it compares to alternatives

Approach	Speed	Maintenance	Cost	Export formats
Copy-paste from portal	🐌 Hours	🛠 High	Free	Limited
Build your own scraper	🐢 Days	🛠 Ongoing	Dev time	DIY
Generic SaaS scraper	🚶 Slow	🛠 Manual config	$$$	Generic
This Actor	🚀 Minutes	✅ Maintained	💸 From free	CSV / Excel / JSON / XML

🚀 How to use

1. Create a free Apify account with $5 credit - no credit card required.
2. Open the Chicago Business Licenses Scraper page in Apify Store and click Try for free.
3. Configure the input (see Input section above).
4. Click Start - the run will produce a downloadable dataset.
5. Export as CSV, Excel, JSON or XML, or stream to your destination via integrations.

💼 Business use cases

Lead generation & sales

🎯	Example
📞	Build target lists filtered by category, region, or status
🧠	Enrich CRM records with up-to-date public attributes

Compliance & risk

🎯	Example
🔍	Continuous monitoring of changes in official records
📋	Audit-trail-friendly exports for compliance teams

Market research

🎯	Example
📊	Track market dynamics over time
🌍	Benchmark across regions, categories, or operators

Operations & automation

🎯	Example
🔄	Schedule recurring pulls and pipe straight into your BI tool
🚨	Alert on threshold or status changes

🔌 Automating Chicago Business Licenses Scraper

• Make - receive new records into a scenario and route them anywhere.
• Zapier - trigger on new dataset rows and push to 6,000+ apps.
• Slack - post fresh records into a channel for the team.
• Airbyte - sync the dataset into your warehouse (BigQuery, Snowflake, Redshift, Postgres).
• GitHub - store snapshots in a repo for diffing over time.
• Google Drive / Sheets - auto-append rows to a spreadsheet.

🌟 Beyond business use cases

Research

• Academic studies on City of Chicago Business Licenses trends, distributions and outliers.

Personal projects

• Hobbyist data viz, dashboards, blog posts and side-projects.

Non-profit

• Open-data journalism, transparency audits, civic-tech tools.

Experimentation

• Train ML models on a clean, structured slice of public data.

🤖 Ask an AI assistant about this scraper

• ChatGPT
• Claude
• Perplexity
• Microsoft Copilot

Paste this README into any of them and ask: "How would I use the Chicago Business Licenses Scraper to solve X?"

❓ Frequently Asked Questions

❓ Is the data accurate?

Yes - the scraper pulls directly from the official City of Chicago Business Licenses public dataset. Accuracy mirrors the source.

❓ Do I need an API key or login?

No. Everything is public data. Just run the actor.

❓ How fresh is the data?

Each run fetches the latest available records from data.cityofchicago.org at request time.

❓ How many records can I export?

Free users: 10 (preview). Paid users: up to 1,000,000 per run.

❓ Can I export to Excel?

Yes - choose CSV, Excel, JSON or XML on the dataset page.

❓ Can I schedule recurring runs?

Yes - Apify Schedules supports hourly/daily/weekly/cron. Pair with integrations for auto-delivery.

❓ Is this affiliated with City of Chicago Business Licenses?

No. This is an independent tool that exposes publicly available data via a structured interface.

❓ What happens if the source goes down?

The actor surfaces a clean error record. Re-run when the source is back up.

❓ Can I filter the output?

Yes - the input section above lists every supported filter, exposed as a typed input field.

❓ Can I use it for commercial purposes?

Yes, subject to the source dataset's terms of use. Always review the original publisher's license.

❓ Where can I get help?

Open our contact form - we usually respond within one business day.

🔌 Integrate with any app

Make · Zapier · Slack · Airbyte · GitHub · Google Drive · Google Sheets · BigQuery · Snowflake · Redshift · Postgres · MySQL · MongoDB · Kafka · Webhooks · REST API.

🔗 Recommended Actors

Actor	What it does
OurAirports Global Airport Database Scraper	Worldwide airport reference dataset
FINRA BrokerCheck Scraper	US broker & advisor licensing records
FAA Aircraft Registry Scraper	US civil aircraft registration records
SEC EDGAR Filings Scraper	Public company filings & financials

💡 Pro Tip: browse the complete ParseForge collection for 50+ data-export actors.

🆘 Need Help? Open our contact form

⚠️ Disclaimer: This is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by City of Chicago Business Licenses. It only collects publicly available data published by the source. Always review the source's terms of use before commercial deployment.