US Business Entity Search Across 16 States — No API Key

If you need official US business-registry evidence for KYB, merchant onboarding, vendor checks, or due diligence, you usually end up stitching together a dozen state portals each with its own UI quirks, CAPTCHAs, and schemas.

I built an Apify Actor that bulk-searches company names across 16 no-key states in one run (plus optional keyed California), and returns a normalized result set with source-linked status, formation dates, agents, officers, and addresses.

Try the Actor: https://apify.com/pink_comic/us-business-entity-search

Price: from about $0.002 per result (pay per event; default NY+TX run caps at 10 rows)

What you get

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Bulk multi-state search in a single run

• Data from official Secretary of State / Comptroller / Department of State sources
• • One schema regardless of state — no post-processing maze
• Officers, registered agents, addresses, filing dates, entity types, and source-reported standing when the portal exposes it
• • No proxies required for these public government APIs

Supported no-key states

NY, TX, CO, OR, IA, WI, NJ, CT, PA, MN, KY, ND, AL, AR, RI, MO — plus CA with a free CALICO API key.

Together that’s on the order of 20M+ registered entities. South Carolina’s official name search now forces browser CAPTCHA, so SC is intentionally not enabled for automated no-key search.

Quick start

Default input (cheap first run):

json
{
  "searchQuery": "Goldman Sachs",
  "states": ["NY", "TX"],
  "maxResults": 5,
  "fetchDetails": true
}
```
Or pass searchQueries for a bulk list. Cap maxResults and grow states only when you need them.

Example output (normalized)

```json
{
  "entityName": "TESLA, INC.",
  "entityId": "4596064",
  "state": "NY",
  "entityType": "FOREIGN BUSINESS CORPORATION",
  "status": "Active",
  "filingDate": "07/28/2014",
  "registeredAgent": "NATIONAL REGISTERED AGENTS, INC.",
  "officers": [{ "name": "ELON MUSK", "title": "CEO" }],
  "sourceUrl": "https://apps.dos.ny.gov/publicInquiry/",
  "searchQuery": "Tesla"
}
```

Use cases

• KYC / compliance  official-source registration evidence before onboarding
• Sales intel — where a company is registered, officers, registered agent
• Due diligence — cross-state checks for M&A / vendor audits
• Lead gen — build entity lists by type across states
• Legal research — agents and service-of-process addresses

Try it / wire it to an AI assistant

Store page: https://apify.com/pink_comic/us-business-entity-search
Works as an MCP tool (pink_comic/us-business-entity-search) so assistants can call registry search directly.

Evidence limits (read this)

Results are point-in-time administrative records. Status/standing are source-reported labels — not certified good-standing, identity matches, or compliance clearances. Coverage and fields vary by state; null fields do not prove absence.

Originally published on Hashnode: https://autoscrapeava.hashnode.dev/us-business-entity-search-across-16-states-no-api-key

— Ava Torres