Cannabis License Radar: New York New-Licensee Alerts & Leads

Cannabis License Radar watches newly issued New York cannabis licenses and delivers each new licensee as one deduplicated alert row: entity name, license type, county and region, issue date, license number and business purpose. It reads the official open-data feed published by the New York Office of Cannabis Management (OCM). Name the license types, county or region you care about and put it on whatever schedule you like; every run finds the licenses issued since the last run and hands you the new ones. It runs on the Apify platform, so API access, scheduling, integrations and monitoring come with it, and because the OCM feed is public there is no login or API key to manage.

What does Cannabis License Radar do?

New York issues adult-use cannabis licenses across retail dispensaries, microbusinesses, cultivators, processors and distributors, and the pace is uneven: about 25 a month on average over 2026's full months, ranging from 6 in June to 39 in February (probed from the OCM feed at data.ny.gov/resource/jskf-tt3q on 2026-08-11). Each one is a new business that has to line up banking, insurance, point-of-sale and real estate. Just over half of recent issuance is not retail (51% across May through July 2026, same probe), and storefront and menu monitors only watch the retail side.

This actor turns the state's own OCM Current Licenses dataset into a standing watch. You define a filter once, put it on a schedule, and each run:

1. Queries the OCM feed for your filter (license types, county or region, optional status).
2. Aggregates the raw feed by license number, so a licensee operating several sites is one alert, not several.
3. Compares the result against your filter's memory and delivers only the newly issued licensees you have not seen before.
4. Optionally POSTs the new alerts to a webhook you choose.

Why use Cannabis License Radar?

• First contact. Reach a new licensee within about a week of OCM publishing the license.
• Non-retail, not just dispensaries. Name the cultivator, processor, distributor or microbusiness license types and you cover the half of new licenses a dispensary or menu tracker does not reach (51%, May through July 2026, probed 2026-08-11).
• Deduplicated and forward-looking. You are alerted once per licensee, starting the day you enroll the filter, so you never get a dump of old licenses.
• Verifiable. Every row carries the OCM source URL so you can confirm any license against the state's own record.

How to use Cannabis License Radar

1. Open the Input tab and choose your filter: pick one or more license types, and optionally a county or region.
2. Set a Filter name (for example ny-nonretail). The name is what carries the watch's memory across your scheduled runs.
3. Run it once. The first run establishes a baseline of the licenses already issued for your filter, charges nothing, and watches forward from that moment.
4. Put it on a Schedule. The OCM feed posts weekly, so a daily schedule catches each new posting promptly; a weekly schedule keeps pace with the source.
5. Each later run delivers the new licensees issued since your last run.

Worked example

Input (also the store default):

{ "mode": "watch", "licenseTypes": ["OCMCULT", "OCMPROC", "OCMDIST"], "filterName": "default" }

The first run returns a single baseline row and charges nothing:

{ "rowType": "baseline-digest", "filterName": "default", "billing": "uncharged",
  "note": "Baseline established: 774 current licensee(s) on file for this filter; watching forward from today." }

A later run, once a new cultivator is issued, returns one alert row (billed once):

{ "rowType": "new-licensee", "licenseNumber": "OCM-CULT-26-000242",
  "entityName": "Sofi Farms LLC", "licenseType": "Adult-Use Cultivator License",
  "licenseStatus": "Active", "issuedDate": "2026-05-11", "county": "Kings", "region": "Brooklyn",
  "address": null, "locations": [{ "address": null, "locationId": "..." }],
  "businessPurpose": "Adult-Use Cultivation", "billing": "included-tier", "sourceUrl": "https://data.ny.gov/resource/jskf-tt3q.json" }

Retail dispensary alerts also carry the storefront street address. Cultivator, processor and distributor alerts do not: OCM publishes no street address for any of those licenses currently on the feed (0 of 824, probed 2026-08-11), which is why the cultivator above shows address: null. Those rows still identify the licensee by entity name, license type, county and region, issue date, license number and business purpose.

You can download the dataset in JSON, CSV, Excel or HTML.

Demo dataset

The public demo dataset is at https://api.apify.com/v2/datasets/Vn4dkBoFucGaGfaOr/items?format=json&clean=true. A report-mode run generated it on 2026-08-11 over New York non-retail cannabis licenses (cultivator, processor, processor type-three, distributor, microbusiness) issued from 2026-05 through 2026-07. It holds one cohort-report row listing 28 licensees, each with license number, entity name, license type, issue date, county, region, business purpose and source URL. That is what report mode returns; a watch enrollment returns one row per new licensee instead.

Output data

Each new-licensee alert row carries:

Field	Meaning
licenseNumber	The license number (also the dedupe key).
entityName, dba	The new licensee and its trade name.
licenseType, licenseTypeCode, licenseStatus	What was licensed and its current status.
issuedDate, effectiveDate, expirationDate	The issuance and validity dates.
address, locations	The primary street address where OCM publishes one (for retail licenses; among non-retail licenses only microbusinesses have one, 139 of 1,323, probed 2026-08-11), plus every site the license covers.
county, region	The county the license sits in and the OCM region it belongs to.
applicationNumber, businessPurpose	Application reference and the licensed purpose.
billing, sourceUrl	How the row was billed, and the OCM URL to re-verify it.

Uncharged event rows (covered by the watch fee) carry a changeType of status-change, expiration-set or appearance-old-issued. A weekly digest row summarizes the filter's activity.

Modes

• watch (default): the standing filter-watch described above.
• report: a one-off cohort of every license issued for the types, county or region you name over a period (period as YYYY-MM or YYYY-MM..YYYY-MM), billed once. Use it for the recent back-catalog. Report mode also covers Registered Organization (OCMRO) licenses.
• unwatch: forget a saved filter's memory.
• list-events: replay a filter's change-event history.

Pricing

This actor is pay-per-event. Actor start is free.

• Filter watch-month, $5.00 per named filter per calendar month. Your account's first month is free (alerts still bill during it). A baseline run and a stale-feed run are never charged.
• New-licensee alert, $1.50 each for the first 40 in a filter-month, then $0.75 each beyond that. The busiest full month in the 2026-08-11 probe was 39 licenses statewide, so even a statewide filter usually stays in the $1.50 tier.
• Cohort report, $29.00 per report-mode run.
• maxAlertsPerRun (default 50) caps any single run. Anything withheld arrives on the next run and is not billed until it is delivered.

So a New York filter costs about $5 per month plus roughly $1.50 per new licensee it finds.

Baseline-forward behavior

Alerts begin from the day you start watching a filter. The first run records the licenses already on file (uncharged) and watches forward, so you are never billed for licenses issued before you enrolled. If you widen a saved filter under the same name (for example dropping the county to go statewide), the actor takes a fresh baseline, again with nothing charged for the older licenses it picks up. For the recent back-catalog, use report mode.

Latency and volume

The OCM feed posts on a weekly cadence, so a new licensee reaches you within about a week of OCM posting the license, not the same day. Statewide issuance runs in the tens of licenses a month (6 to 39 across 2026's full months, 2026-08-11 OCM probe), so this actor is built for coverage and first contact rather than volume.

FAQ and support

• Where does the data come from? The New York OCM Current Licenses dataset on the state open-data portal. It is a public licensee record; the actor reads it without any login or key.
• Is this legal and compliant? It reads a public government record and redistributes public license facts. It is registry information, not advice.
• Can I get another state? New York is the only state today. Use the Issues tab to request another or report a problem.