Business Entity & UCC Lien Search

Verify a US company and see the liens against it in one call. Search official state business registries by company name for the normalized entity record — legal name, ID, type, status, formation date, registered agent, officers — and get each entity joined to its UCC / lien filings. Built for KYB, lending, and diligence agents that need to answer "is this company real, in good standing, and does it already have liens against its assets?" without stitching two systems together.

What this does

• Business entity search by company name across multiple US states in one call — the lookup you'd otherwise run on each state's Secretary of State business search, returned as a single normalized record per matched entity (company-registration lookup / business-entity verification).
• Entity → UCC lien join. For covered states, each resolved entity is joined to the Uniform Commercial Code (secured-transaction) filings recorded against it as debtor — filing number, type, status, filed/lapse dates, secured party (lender), and collateral. This is the differentiator: entity search and lien search, connected, keyed by the debtor's legal name.
• Normalized fields per entity: legal name, state entity/registration ID, entity type, registration status (e.g. Good Standing, Active, Forfeited, Dissolved), formation/registration date, jurisdiction of formation, registered agent, principal / mailing address, and officers where the state publishes them.
• Multi-state in one request — pass a company name, optionally scope to a list of states, and get one record per matched entity across every covered state.
• KYB / diligence use cases: confirm a counterparty is registered and in good standing, check whether a borrower's assets are already encumbered before lending, enrich a CRM/onboarding record with the legal entity + lien picture, screen an acquisition target, or resolve which state(s) a company is registered in.
• Deterministic and agent-callable. Every result carries a machine-readable status (completed / no_match / not_covered / failed), an explicit lien_coverage outcome, and structured field_notes explaining any field that is structurally absent, so an agent can reason about coverage instead of guessing.

Why the entity → lien join matters

Anyone can look up whether a company is registered. The expensive, manual part of KYB and lending diligence is the second question — are there already liens against the company's assets? Answering it normally means finding the entity in one system, then searching a separate UCC/secured-transactions registry by hand, matching names, and hoping you found the same legal entity.

This Actor does both and connects them. It resolves the entity from the state business register, then searches that state's UCC filings by the entity's core legal name and attaches only the filings whose debtor name actually matches — precise, so a lien against a similarly-named company never gets misattributed. One call returns the entity plus its lien exposure, ready for a risk decision.

How it compares to standalone registry tools

	This Actor	Standalone entity-search tools	Single-state UCC scrapers
Entity search by name	Yes, multi-state	Usually yes	No
Normalized schema across states	Yes	Varies	N/A
UCC / lien filings	Joined to each entity	No	Yes, but not linked to an entity
One call for entity + liens	Yes	No	No
Machine-readable status + coverage notes	Yes	Rarely	Rarely

The design bet: multi-jurisdiction assembly behind one schema, plus the entity-to-lien join, is worth more to a diligence workflow than any single registry scraped in isolation.

Input

Field	Type	Required	Default	Description
companyName	string	one of these	—	The company name to search, e.g. Tesla or Acme Holdings LLC.
companyNames	array of strings	one of these	[]	Multiple company names to verify in one run (batch); each is resolved and billed independently.
states	array of strings	no	all covered	Two-letter US state codes to scope the entity search. Lien joins cover a subset; the run's COVERAGE key-value record is authoritative.
includeLiens	boolean	no	true	Join UCC / lien filings where available. A state we cover for entity search but don't join liens for still returns the full entity record (with liens_checked=false, lien_coverage="no_lien_source", and a note) — you still get the entity. Set false to skip the lien join entirely.
matchMode	string	no	contains	contains (broad — find all entities sharing a name), exact (legal name equals the query), or starts (name begins with the query).
maxRecordsPerCompany	integer	no	25	Cap on entity records returned (and billed) per company name, across states. Bounds broad-name searches.

Provide companyName and/or companyNames — at least one is required.

Output

One dataset record per matched entity. Example (completed, with a lien join):

{
  "query": "Tesla Electric Company",
  "status": "completed",
  "state": "CO",
  "legal_name": "Tesla Electric Company LLC",
  "entity_id": "20141524018",
  "entity_type": "DLLC",
  "entity_status": "Good Standing",
  "formation_date": "2014-08-27",
  "jurisdiction": "CO",
  "registered_agent_name": "Felix Keil",
  "principal_address": "9750 Hilldale Dr, Morrison, CO, 80465",
  "officers": [],
  "liens_checked": true,
  "lien_coverage": "joined",
  "ucc_filings": [
    {
      "filing_number": "20192017103",
      "filing_type": "UCC financing statement",
      "status": "active",
      "filed_date": "2019-03-01",
      "lapse_date": "2024-03-01",
      "secured_party": "US BANK NA",
      "collateral": "All equipment now owned or hereafter acquired",
      "debtor_name": "TESLA ELECTRIC COMPANY LLC"
    }
  ],
  "ucc_summary": { "total": 6, "active": 6 },
  "source": "Colorado Secretary of State (Business Entities)",
  "source_url": "https://www.coloradosos.gov/biz/BusinessEntityCriteriaExt.do",
  "fetched_at": "2026-07-09T14:03:11Z",
  "field_notes": []
}

Key fields: status (resolution outcome), entity_status (registration standing, verbatim from the state), liens_checked (whether a covered lien source was queried), lien_coverage (joined, no_lien_source, unavailable, or not_requested), ucc_filings (the join), ucc_summary ({total, active}), and field_notes (why any field is structurally absent). Entity coverage is broader than lien-join coverage: an uncovered-for-liens state still returns the entity with liens_checked=false and a coverage note. A run also writes a COVERAGE key-value record listing the authoritative live entity-search and lien-join state sets.

Example

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/shelvick~business-entity-lien-search/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=$APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"companyName": "Tesla", "states": ["CO", "CT"], "includeLiens": true}'

Returns one record per matched Colorado and Connecticut entity, each with its UCC lien filings attached.

Calling from an AI agent

Agents are the primary customer. Three ways to call it:

• Apify MCP server (mcp.apify.com): expose shelvick/business-entity-lien-search as a tool; the input schema and per-field descriptions are advertised to the model.

• Apify Python SDK:

  from apify_client import ApifyClient
  
  client = ApifyClient("<APIFY_TOKEN>")
  run = client.actor("shelvick/business-entity-lien-search").call(
      run_input={"companyName": "Acme Holdings", "states": ["CO", "CT"], "includeLiens": True}
  )
  for record in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
      print(record["legal_name"], record["entity_status"], record["ucc_summary"])
  

• REST: POST /v2/acts/shelvick~business-entity-lien-search/run-sync-get-dataset-items for a synchronous call, or the async /runs endpoint plus polling for large batches.

Pricing

Pay-per-event, billed only on success. Each completed entity record is charged once, after it is pushed to the dataset (push-then-charge) — the charge covers the registry search, normalization, and the UCC lien join where available. no_match, not_covered, and failed results are returned but never charged.

Records from the three extended-coverage entity states — Montana, California, and Georgia — bill at a higher extended per-record rate. Those states are searched only when you explicitly name them in states, so the extended rate is never charged for a state you didn't ask about; the search-everywhere default sticks to the standard rate.

Pennsylvania, New York, and Iowa entity records remain part of the standard default search at the standard rate. Their lien joins are extended-coverage: they are available only when you explicitly name the state in states with liens enabled, and those records bill the extended per-record rate only when the lien join is delivered.

Broad-name searches are bounded by maxRecordsPerCompany and the run's max-charge cap, and every charge is clamped to your remaining budget. See the Pricing tab on this Store page for the current per-record rates and any active subscriber discounts.

Behavior

• Statuses: completed (entity found + normalized), no_match (covered states searched, nothing matched — a clear "not found"), not_covered (a requested state isn't supported yet), failed (a covered state's registry could not be reached; see error). Only completed is billed.
• Graceful degradation: if one state's registry is briefly unavailable, that state yields a failed record while the rest of the run completes — a source hiccup never fails the whole batch or charges you for it.
• Latency: an entity-only lookup returns in a few seconds; a multi-state search with the lien join is typically well under a minute. Batches run companies concurrently.
• Coverage: entity search covers 30 states — 27 in the default fan-out, plus Montana, California, and Georgia when explicitly requested. Clean-tier lien joins are available for AK, AL, AR, CO, CT, FL, ID, KY, MS, NM, RI, and WI. Extended-coverage joins are available for Montana, California, Pennsylvania, New York, and Iowa when explicitly requested. A state without lien-join coverage (Georgia included) still returns entity records with liens_checked=false, lien_coverage="no_lien_source", and a coverage note. The live COVERAGE key-value record is authoritative per run, and coverage expands over time.
• Source freshness: lien data is only as current as each state's published index. Florida lien data is indexed from the state's official public UCC data files on a periodic refresh cycle, so a very recently filed Florida lien may not appear until the next refresh; those files publish filing images rather than collateral text. Kentucky's UCC index in particular publishes on roughly a two-week lag, so a very recently filed Kentucky lien may not appear yet. Iowa's and Rhode Island's lien searches cover active filings plus those lapsed within roughly the past year — older lapsed history is not published, so lien totals there describe the current picture rather than all history. Rhode Island publishes no per-filing lapse date; each filing's status is derived from the state's own active/lapsed indexes and its filing history instead.
• Current-only sources: a few states publish only their currently registered entities — dissolved and withdrawn ones are absent from the source. For those, a no_match means no currently registered entity matched the name, not that it never existed; the record carries a field_notes entry saying so. Iowa reports every returned entity as active (its bulk file has no status column); Alaska keeps each entity's real standing (e.g. Good Standing, Non-Compliant) but still omits dissolved entities. Florida is the opposite: its register includes inactive and dissolved entities with their real status, so an FL record can come back Inactive — useful when you need to know a counterparty was dissolved rather than never registered. Mississippi also includes the full register and preserves state standing values such as Good and Dissolved, but its source does not publish registered-agent or officer data.
• Telemetry: to improve coverage and reliability, this Actor reports anonymous usage metrics and diagnostic events to the developer — run outcome counts, the states queried, and, only when something goes wrong, the relevant input fields. No account identifiers are collected, and telemetry never affects a run.

FAQ

• Which states are covered? Entity search: 27 states by default, plus MT, CA, and GA when named in states. The UCC / lien join is currently available for AK, AL, AR, CA, CO, CT, FL, ID, KY, MS, MT, NM, and WI — entities from any other state return as full entity records without a lien join, clearly flagged (liens_checked=false, lien_coverage="no_lien_source"). The run's COVERAGE record is the authoritative live list as coverage expands.
• Why are MT, CA, and GA only searched when I name them? They are extended-coverage states billed at a higher per-record rate (see the Pricing tab). Keeping them out of the search-everywhere default means you are never charged the extended rate for a state you didn't ask about — naming them in states is the opt-in.
• Can I use this for a registered agent lookup? Yes — every completed record carries registered_agent_name (and the agent's address where the state publishes it), so a registered agent lookup by company name is a single call.
• What if a company has no liens? For a lien-covered state, liens_checked is true, lien_coverage is joined, and ucc_summary is {total: 0, active: 0} — a confident "no liens found," not a gap. If the state lacks a lien join, liens_checked is false, lien_coverage is no_lien_source, and the entity record includes a coverage note instead.
• How precise is the entity→lien match? Filings are attached only when the UCC debtor's core legal name matches the entity's, so a lien against a similarly-named company is not misattributed. Descriptive words (Company, Trust) are kept; only legal-form suffixes (LLC, Inc.) are normalized away for matching.
• Can I verify a list of companies at once? Yes — pass companyNames; each is resolved and billed independently.
• Is this official / real-time? Data comes from the official state registries — Secretary of State / corporations-division records and state open-data portals; it is as current as those sources publish.

What this doesn't do

• No paywalled or login-gated sources. It uses only free, public registry data; it does not cross any state's paid detail lookup.
• No consumer / personal-PII lookups. Business-entity public records only — not people search, not skip tracing.
• No document images or filed PDFs — structured fields, not scanned filings.
• Not every state yet. Uncovered states return not_covered; it is not a 50-state guarantee.
• Not a monitoring service — it answers a point-in-time query, it does not watch an entity for changes.

Use a dedicated people-search or identity-verification tool for individuals, a document-retrieval service for filed images/PDFs, and a court-records or enforcement tool for litigation history — this Actor is for the business-entity record and its UCC lien exposure.

Data is sourced from public government registries and open-data portals and is provided for lawful business, compliance, and diligence use; verify against the official source of record before relying on it for a regulatory decision, and use it in accordance with the Apify Terms of Service and applicable law.

Design notes: www.scotthelvick.com/tools/business-entity-lien-search