Secretary of State Business Search & LLC Lookup: CO, CT, NY, PA

Look up US businesses in official state business registries. Search for a company, LLC or corporation by name, by state entity ID, or by formation date (new business filings) in Colorado, Connecticut, New York and Pennsylvania. For each business entity you get:

• entity name and state entity ID (file / filing / DOS number)
• entity type (LLC, corporation, nonprofit, partnership...)
• status (Good Standing, Active, Delinquent, Dissolved, Withdrawn...) plus a simple statusClass
• formation or registration date, and jurisdiction of formation
• links to the official record: the Secretary of State record page (Colorado) and the entity's row on the state's official open-data portal (all four states)

$0.003 per business record returned. Searches that find nothing are free, and so are invalid searches and any state that fails to answer.

Data comes from each state's official open-data portal, published by the Secretary of State / Department of State under licenses that allow reuse. We don't scrape state search websites, so there are no CAPTCHAs, no blocked runs and no terms-of-service gray areas.

What can I use it for?

• KYB and vendor onboarding: confirm that a company is registered, in good standing, and when it was formed.
• LLC lookup and corporation search in bulk: paste up to 1,000 company names and get every matching registration in four states.
• New business filings: list every entity formed in a date range, for example all Colorado LLCs formed last week.
• Data enrichment and CRM cleanup: add the official entity ID, type, status and formation date to a list of companies.
• AI agents: one call answers "is this business registered in CO, CT, NY or PA, and is it active?" through Apify's MCP server or API.

How to search

1. Add Company names (one per line), Entity IDs, or a formation date range.
2. Pick the States and the Name match type:
   • Fuzzy (default): every word of the name in any order. Case, punctuation, plurals and legal forms (LLC, Inc, Corp) are ignored, and results are ranked by name similarity. "Acme Widgets Inc" finds "ACME WIDGET COMPANY, LTD." and "Acme Widgets LLC".
   • Exact: the full name, case-insensitive.
   • Starts with: every name beginning with your text.
3. Click Start. Export the results as CSV, Excel or JSON, or call the Actor from the API or MCP.

{
  "companyNames": ["Microsoft Corporation", "Acme Widget"],
  "entityIds": ["CT:0191632", "NY:1768283"],
  "states": ["CO", "CT", "NY", "PA"],
  "matchType": "fuzzy",
  "maxResultsPerSearch": 25
}

New business filings in Colorado and Connecticut during the first week of October:

{ "formedAfter": "2026-10-01", "formedBefore": "2026-10-07", "states": ["CO", "CT"], "maxResultsPerSearch": 5000 }

Input

Field	What it does	Default
companyNames	Business names to search, up to 1,000 per run
entityIds	State IDs. Use a state prefix: CO:19931121425, CT:0191632, NY:1768283, PA:0002826638. An ID without a prefix is tried in each selected state whose ID format fits, so it can match a different business with the same number in another state.
states	Any of CO, CT, NY, PA	all four
matchType	fuzzy, exact or startsWith	fuzzy
formedAfter / formedBefore	Formation or registration date filter. With no names or IDs, it lists every entity formed in the range.
activeOnly	CO: Good Standing or Exists. CT: Active or Registered. (NY and PA list active entities only anyway.)	false
maxResultsPerSearch	Most records per search, per state (1–10,000). Results are paged automatically.	25
includeNoMatchRows	Adds a free no_match row for each name or ID with no result in a state. Useful for bulk verification.	false

You need at least one name, one ID, or a date. To cap your spend, set Max total charge on the run. The Actor stops cleanly when it reaches the cap.

Output

One dataset item per business entity. This is real output (2026-10-09):

{
  "resultType": "record",
  "state": "CO",
  "entityId": "19931121425",
  "entityName": "MICROSOFT CORPORATION",
  "entityType": "FPC",
  "entityTypeDescription": "Foreign Profit Corporation",
  "status": "Good Standing",
  "statusClass": "active",
  "formationOrRegistrationDate": "1993-12-29",
  "jurisdictionOfFormation": "WA",
  "recordUrl": "https://www.coloradosos.gov/biz/BusinessEntityDetail.do?quitButtonDestination=BusinessEntityResults&fileId=19931121425",
  "openDataRecordUrl": "https://data.colorado.gov/resource/4ykn-tg5h.json?%24select=entityid%2Centityname%2Centitytype%2Centitystatus%2Centityformdate%2Cjurisdictonofformation&entityid=19931121425",
  "registrySearchUrl": "https://www.coloradosos.gov/biz/BusinessEntityCriteriaExt.do",
  "matchScore": 100,
  "rank": 1,
  "query": "Microsoft Corporation",
  "queryType": "name",
  "matchType": "fuzzy",
  "dataset": "Business Entities in Colorado (Colorado Secretary of State)",
  "license": "Public Domain",
  "coverage": "all",
  "updateFrequency": "daily",
  "dataAsOf": "2026-10-09T11:15:09+00:00"
}

• statusClass is one of active, not_in_good_standing (for example CO "Delinquent"), inactive (dissolved, withdrawn, revoked, forfeited, merged...) or unknown. The state's own wording is in status.
• matchScore (0–100) is the name similarity, ignoring legal forms. Records are ranked best match first, then active before inactive.
• resultType is record (charged), or one of the free rows: no_match, invalid_input, error. A per-search summary is saved in the key-value store as SUMMARY.

Coverage and freshness

Every search is a live query against the state's current published dataset. Nothing is cached on our side, so results are as fresh as the state's last upload. Each record carries dataAsOf, which is read from the portal's metadata on every run.

State	Official dataset	Statuses	State refreshes it	License
Colorado	data.colorado.gov 4ykn-tg5h, Business Entities in Colorado (Secretary of State), 3.1M entities since 1864	all (active, delinquent, dissolved...)	daily	Public Domain
Connecticut	data.ct.gov n7gp-d28j, CT Business Registry, Business Master (Secretary of the State), 1.3M	all	daily	Public Domain
New York	data.ny.gov n9v6-gdp6, Active Corporations: Beginning 1800 (Department of State)	active only	monthly	NY Open Data terms (commercial use allowed)
Pennsylvania	data.pa.gov xvd7-5r2c, Registered Businesses in PA (Department of State)	current only	monthly	Public Domain (U.S. Government)

New York and Pennsylvania publish active or current entities only. A business that isn't found there may be dissolved, or newer than the last monthly update. "Not found" doesn't mean "never existed".

Official record links. Colorado has a stable record page per entity (recordUrl). Connecticut, New York and Pennsylvania use search applications without stable record links, so recordUrl is empty there. Use openDataRecordUrl, the entity's row on the state's official portal, or registrySearchUrl.

Limitations

• Four states only: CO, CT, NY and PA. Other states aren't searched.
• NY and PA list active or current entities only (see above).
• No officers, registered agents, owners or addresses. This Actor returns business entity fields only. It never requests or returns them, even where the state dataset includes them. If you need officers or registered agents, this isn't the tool.
• No filing history or documents. You get the entity record, not its filings, annual reports or UCC liens.
• Fuzzy isn't spell-checking. Every word must appear in the registered name (plurals are tolerated); misspelled words won't match.
• Speed: exact and starts-with searches take about 0.2 s per state. Fuzzy search scans every name in the state's registry for each word, which takes about 3–6 s per name (the four states run in parallel). For bulk lists of exact legal names, use exact. We also send at most 1 request per second to each state portal.
• Is it legal? Yes. Each state publishes these datasets for reuse (Public Domain for CO, CT and PA; NY Open Data terms allow commercial use), and we use the official open-data API rather than scraping the search websites.

FAQ

Which states do you plan to add?

States that publish their business registry as official open data under a reuse-permitting license. We won't scrape state search portals whose terms forbid automated access.

Why didn't my search find a company I know exists?

It may be registered in a different state, or (in NY and PA) it may be inactive. In fuzzy mode every word must appear in the registered name, so try fewer words, e.g. "Acme" instead of "Acme Widget Holdings Group".

Is this a KYB or compliance product?

It's a fast, cheap lookup of official registry data. For regulated KYB/AML checks, use the official record and a licensed provider. To also check domains, LEI, EU VAT and US screening lists in one call, see Counterparty Check below.

Do I need an API key?

No.

How much does it cost?

$0.003 per business record returned, plus Apify's small per-run start fee. For example, 1,000 name lookups that each find one match in one state cost about $3. Searches with no results are free.

Related tools by WorkAlong

• Company Verification & Counterparty Check: this registry status, plus domain age, SSL, GLEIF LEI, EU VAT and OFAC/US screening-list matches, with a consistency summary. $0.03 per company.
• Bulk WHOIS Domain Lookup: domain age, DNS and SSL, $0.003 per domain.