Cannabis License Radar: New-Licensee Alerts by Type & County

Cannabis License Radar watches newly-issued New York cannabis licenses and delivers each new licensee to you as a clean, deduplicated alert row with the full business-development payload, pulled from the New York Office of Cannabis Management (OCM) official open-data feed on your own schedule. Name the license types, county or region you care about; every scheduled run finds the licenses issued since the last run and hands you the new ones. It runs on the Apify platform, so you get API access, scheduling, integrations and monitoring for free, and there is nothing to log into and no key to manage.

What does Cannabis License Radar do?

New York issues adult-use cannabis licenses in a steady, lumpy stream: retail dispensaries, microbusinesses, cultivators, processors and distributors, roughly twenty a month statewide (24 to 38 across the full months measured, self-probed from the OCM feed at data.ny.gov/resource/jskf-tt3q, 2026-07-06). Each new licensee is a fresh business that needs banking, insurance, point-of-sale, security, real estate, packaging and legal help, and just over half of recent issuance is not retail (52%, same probe), so the storefront and menu monitors miss them.

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 in the days after issuance, before the field is crowded.
• The non-retail wedge. Cultivators, processors and distributors are just over half of recent issuance (52%, same probe) and are invisible to retail and menu trackers.
• Deduplicated and forward-looking. You are alerted once per licensee, from the day you start watching, never a wall of old back-catalog.
• 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). This names the watch so its memory persists across your scheduled runs.
3. Run it once. The first run establishes a baseline of the licenses already issued for your filter and charges nothing. It 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 additionally include the storefront street address. Cultivator, processor and distributor alerts identify the licensee by entity name, license type, county and region, issue date, license number and business purpose: OCM publishes a street address for only about a quarter of non-retail licensees, which is why the cultivator above shows address: null.

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/4kt3GZIRJqIFJmJlv/items?format=json&clean=true. It was generated by a live report-mode run over New York non-retail cannabis licenses issued in 2026-04 through 2026-06. The dataset contains one cohort-report row with the nested licensee list, including license number, entity name, license type, issue date, county, region, business purpose, and source URL. It is a representative back-catalog report, not a watch enrollment.

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 (always for retail, about a quarter of non-retail licensees), plus every site the license operates.
county, region	Territory.
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. All are clearly marked.

Modes

• watch (default): the standing filter-watch described above.
• report: a one-off cohort of every license issued in a type, county or region and period (period as YYYY-MM or YYYY-MM..YYYY-MM), billed once. This is the right surface for the recent back-catalog. Registered Organization (OCMRO) licenses are available here.
• 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. New York issuance is modest (the busiest month in the 2026-07-06 probe was 38), so the volume tier effectively never triggers on New York alone.
• Cohort report, $29.00 per report-mode run.
• maxAlertsPerRun (default 50) caps any single run; anything withheld is not billed until delivered and redelivers on the next run.

A typical New York filter costs about $5 per month plus roughly $1.50 per new licensee it finds (tens per month statewide at most).

Baseline-forward behavior

Alerts begin from the day you start watching a filter. The first run seeds the licenses already on file (uncharged) and watches forward, so you are never billed for the historical back-catalog. If you widen a saved filter under the same name (for example dropping the county to go statewide), the actor re-baselines it, again with no back-catalog charge. For the recent back-catalog, use report mode.

Latency and volume, stated plainly

The OCM feed posts on a weekly cadence, so the honest latency is "within about a week of OCM posting," not same-day. New York issuance is a niche new-issuance stream measured in tens of new licensees per month statewide, not a firehose. This actor is built for coverage and first contact, not 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 first; other states are on the roadmap. Use the Issues tab to request one or report a problem.