LA Business Licenses Scraper
Pricing
from $19.00 / 1,000 results
LA Business Licenses Scraper
Scrapes business license records from the City of Los Angeles open data portal. Returns each license as a flat row with business name, address, NAICS code, council district, and status.
Pricing
from $19.00 / 1,000 results
Rating
0.0
(0)
Developer
ParseForge
Maintained by CommunityActor stats
0
Bookmarked
1
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1
Monthly active users
17 hours ago
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LA Business Licenses Scraper
Scrape LA business licenses from the City of Los Angeles open data portal, up to a million per run. Each license comes with its business name, address, NAICS code, council district, and status. No login or API key. Export to CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML.
The City of Los Angeles publishes every active business license in a public portal, but there is no bulk download and the web interface is slow to search. This Actor reads the license records directly, filtered by council district or NAICS code, and returns each match in one fixed schema. You get the raw data behind LA business activity without writing a single line of code.
| Who uses it | What they scrape City of Los Angeles Business Licenses for |
|---|---|
| Market researchers | Which industries are growing in each LA council district |
| Commercial real estate brokers | Find businesses that recently opened or renewed a license in a target neighborhood |
| B2B sales teams | Build a lead list of licensed businesses by NAICS code |
| Local government analysts | Compare license activity across council districts for policy reports |
What it does
This Actor collects LA business license records from the City of Los Angeles open data portal and returns each license as a flat row with its business name, address, NAICS code, council district, and status.
- 🏙️ Council district filter: narrow the dataset to a single LA council district number.
- 🏭 NAICS code filter: pull only licenses for a specific 6-digit industry code.
- 📊 Flat row output: every license is one record with business name, address, NAICS, council district, and status.
- 📥 Bulk export: download up to 1,000,000 licenses per run as CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML.
Results export to CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML, or straight from the API.
What you can do with City of Los Angeles Business Licenses data
📈 Track industry growth by district.
A market researcher runs the Actor with a council district filter and compares NAICS code counts month over month to spot emerging business clusters.
🏢 Find new tenants for retail space.
A commercial real estate broker pulls licenses renewed in the last 90 days for a specific district and cross-references the addresses with available storefronts.
🎯 Build a B2B lead list.
A sales team filters by NAICS code 541511 (custom computer programming) and exports 5,000 licensed firms with addresses for a direct mail campaign.
🗺️ Map business density for policy.
A city analyst scrapes all licenses and joins the council district field to a shapefile to visualize where business activity concentrates.
Why choose this scraper
| What you get | |
|---|---|
| No API key | The City of LA portal needs no registration or token, and neither does this Actor. |
| One fixed schema | Every license returns the same fields, so you can merge runs without cleaning. |
| Filter before download | Council district and NAICS filters run as records are read, so only matches reach your dataset. |
| Scale to a million | Set maxItems up to 1,000,000 and let the Actor paginate through the portal for you. |
How it compares
No other Store actor targets City of Los Angeles Business Licenses the same way, so the honest comparison is with the alternatives teams actually weigh.
| LA Business Licenses Scraper | Build it in-house | By hand | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Setup | Run it now, zero config | Days of engineering | None, but hours per pull |
| When City of Los Angeles Business Licenses changes | Maintained for you | You fix it | You re-learn the page |
| Proxies, retries, anti-bot | Built in | Your problem | Browser only |
| Output | Fixed JSON schema, CSV/Excel export | Whatever you build | Copy-paste |
| Cost | Pay per result | Engineering time | Analyst hours |
Configure the run
Drive the Actor with an optional council district number and an optional 6-digit NAICS code, alone or together, and set a maximum number of licenses to collect per run. The Input tab lists every parameter.
A first run with the defaults:
A larger pull:
Pricing
Pay-per-result: $0.021 per result collected. You pay only for the results written to your dataset.
| Results collected | Approximate cost |
|---|---|
| 100 results | $2.10 |
| 1,000 results | $21.00 |
| 10,000 results | $210.00 |
New Apify accounts start with $5 in free credit.
Free users
Free-plan runs return up to 10 results as a preview. Upgrade your Apify plan to collect up to 1,000,000 results per run.
Run it
- Create a free Apify account with $5 in credit.
- Open the LA Business Licenses Scraper.
- Set your inputs and any filters, then click Start.
- Export the results as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML from the Dataset tab.
Run it programmatically through the Apify API (run-sync-get-dataset-items) or the ApifyClient for JavaScript and Python.
Use with AI agents (MCP)
Give an AI agent live access to City of Los Angeles Business Licenses through the Model Context Protocol. Add the Actor to Claude, Cursor, or any MCP client:
Then prompt it in plain language to run the scraper and read back the results.
Troubleshooting
Why am I getting no results?
Check your council district number. It must be between 1 and 15. Also verify your NAICS code is a valid 6-digit code. If both are set, try clearing one filter.
The run stops before reaching maxItems.
The portal may have fewer records than your maxItems value. Lower maxItems or remove filters to confirm the total available.
Some fields are empty in the output.
Not every license has a value for every field. For example, a business may not have a secondary address. Empty fields are normal.
The Actor times out on large runs.
Reduce maxItems or add a council district filter to narrow the request. The portal can be slow for very large unfiltered pulls.
FAQ
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Does this Actor need an API key or login? | No. The City of Los Angeles open data portal is public, and this Actor reads it directly without any authentication. |
| What is a council district in the input? | Los Angeles is divided into 15 council districts. Enter a number from 1 to 15 to return only licenses registered in that district. |
| Can I filter by NAICS code? | Yes. Enter a 6-digit NAICS code in the input, and the Actor will return only licenses with that exact code. |
| How many licenses can I get in one run? | Set maxItems up to 1,000,000. The Actor will paginate through the portal until it reaches that number or runs out of records. |
| What format is the output? | The Actor returns a flat dataset. You can export it as CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML from the Apify platform. |
| Does the Actor include business addresses? | Yes. Each license record includes the business name and its registered street address, city, state, and ZIP code. |
| Is the data current? | The Actor reads the live portal on each run, so you get the licenses as they exist at that moment. |
| Can I run this on a schedule? | Yes. Use Apify's scheduler to run the Actor daily or weekly and keep a rolling dataset of LA business licenses. |
Related actors
Browse the full ParseForge collection for more scrapers.
🆘 Need help? Email parseforge@protonmail.com with your run ID, your input, and what you expected.
⚠️ Disclaimer. This Actor is unofficial and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by City of Los Angeles. It collects only publicly available data. You are responsible for using the collected data in compliance with the source's terms of service and applicable data-protection laws, including GDPR, CCPA, and PIPL. Do not use it to collect personal data unlawfully.
