## OpenCorporates Alternative Scraper
**💰 $5.00 / 1 000 results** · pay only for results · no credit card to try
*We do the dirty work so your dataset stays clean.* 😈
Batch-verify US company names against official state Secretary-of-State business registries (NY, CO, CT, OR) — get status, incorporation date, entity type, registered agent, and officer data (CT) as structured KYB / lead-gen rows. No API key, no login.
***
### 🎯 What this scrapes
This Actor batch-verifies company names against **official state
Secretary-of-State open-data registries** — New York, Colorado,
Connecticut, and Oregon in v1 — and returns one structured row per
matched entity per state. Each row carries the state's on-file entity
name, status, entity type, formation date, principal address,
registered agent, and (Connecticut only) officer/principal names.
We built this as a self-serve alternative to subscription KYB/registry
tools: feed it a list of company names, get back structured,
Pydantic-validated rows you can pipe straight into a CRM, a
compliance workflow, or a spreadsheet. It queries the states' own
free, keyless Socrata open-data APIs directly — not
opencorporates.com, and not a scrape of any paywalled search UI.
### 🔥 What we handle for you
- 🛡️ **Browser fingerprint rotation** — `curl-cffi` impersonates real Chrome / Firefox / Safari TLS handshakes so every request looks like a browser, not Python.
- 🔁 **Retries with exponential backoff** on `408 / 429 / 5xx` — up to 5 attempts per request, `Retry-After` honoured.
- 🧱 **Graceful degradation per state** — if one state's dataset hiccups, that state is skipped with a warning; your batch keeps running.
- 🧊 **Clean, typed dataset rows** — Pydantic-validated, ISO-8601 timestamps, a shared cross-state schema despite each state publishing wildly different raw field names.
- 🔒 **Privacy-conscious by design** — Connecticut's principals dataset also publishes home addresses; we never surface them, only business addresses.
- 💰 **Pay-Per-Event pricing** — you only pay for matched entity rows that land in your dataset. No data, no charge (beyond the small warm-up fee).
### 💡 Use cases
- **KYB / onboarding checks** — batch-verify a list of business names before onboarding a new customer or vendor.
- **Sales & lead-gen prospecting** — confirm a prospect list is made of real, active, on-file entities before outreach.
- **Due-diligence research** — pull incorporation date, entity type, and registered-agent data for a target list of companies.
- **Journalism & investigations** — cross-check company names against official state filings, batch-style.
- **List hygiene** — drop companies whose `status_normalized` comes back `inactive` before you spend outreach budget on them.
### ⚙️ How to use it
1. Click **Try for free** at the top of the page.
2. Paste your company names into **Search queries** — one name per line (up to 500).
3. Optionally narrow **Jurisdictions** to just the states you care about, and adjust **Max results per query** / **Status filter**.
4. Click **Start**. Rows stream into the run's dataset as each name is resolved.
5. Export from **Storage → Dataset** as JSON, CSV, or Excel — or fetch via the API.
### 📥 Input
| Field | Type | Required | Default | Notes |
|---|---|:--:|---|---|
| `searchQueries` | `array` | **yes** | — | Company names to verify (1-500 entries, 1-200 chars each). |
| `jurisdictions` | `array` | no | `["NY","CO","CT","OR"]` | Which state registries to query per name. |
| `fetchOfficers` | `boolean` | no | `true` | Resolve officer/principal data (CT only in v1; 1 extra request per matched CT row). |
| `maxResultsPerQuery` | `integer` | no | `5` | Cap on matches returned per name, summed across jurisdictions (1-50). |
| `statusFilter` | `string` | no | `"any"` | Post-filter on normalized status: `any`, `active`, or `inactive`. |
| `proxyConfiguration` | `object` | no | `{"useApifyProxy": false}` | Optional — these are public open-data APIs, not known to fingerprint clients. |
#### Example input
```json
{
"searchQueries": ["Acme Robotics LLC"],
"jurisdictions": ["NY", "CO", "CT", "OR"],
"fetchOfficers": true,
"maxResultsPerQuery": 5,
"statusFilter": "any",
"proxyConfiguration": {"useApifyProxy": false}
}
```
### 📤 Output
Every row is one matched entity for one `(query, jurisdiction)` pair.
| Field | Type | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| `query` | `string` | The input name this row matched. |
| `entity_id` | `string` | State's internal id (`dos_id` / `entityid` / `id` / `registry_number`). |
| `entity_name` | `string` | State's on-file entity name. |
| `jurisdiction` | `string` | `NY`, `CO`, `CT`, or `OR`. |
| `entity_type` | `string \| null` | e.g. `DOMESTIC BUSINESS CORPORATION`, `DLLC`. |
| `status` | `string \| null` | Raw state status label (e.g. `Good Standing`). |
| `status_normalized` | `string` | `active`, `inactive`, or `unknown` — derived per-state. |
| `formation_date` | `string \| null` | ISO `YYYY-MM-DD`. |
| `dissolution_date` | `string \| null` | ISO `YYYY-MM-DD`, when the state publishes it. |
| `principal_address` | `string \| null` | Flattened single-line address. |
| `registered_agent_name` | `string \| null` | When published. |
| `registered_agent_address` | `string \| null` | Flattened single-line address. |
| `officers` | `array` | Officer/principal list — CT rows only, when `fetchOfficers=true`. |
| `source_record_url` | `string` | Direct link to the raw SODA record. |
| `registry_url` | `string` | The state's open-data dataset landing page. |
| `scraped_at` | `string` | ISO 8601 UTC timestamp this row was written. |
#### Example output
```json
{
"query": "Acme Robotics LLC",
"entity_id": "20251664337",
"entity_name": "ACME ROBOTICS LLC",
"jurisdiction": "CO",
"entity_type": "DLLC",
"status": "Good Standing",
"status_normalized": "active",
"formation_date": "2025-06-15",
"dissolution_date": null,
"principal_address": "9159 Anasazi Indian Trl, Highlands Ranch, CO 80129",
"registered_agent_name": "ACME ROBOTICS LLC",
"registered_agent_address": "9159 Anasazi Indian Trl, Highlands Ranch, CO 80129",
"officers": [],
"source_record_url": "https://data.colorado.gov/resource/4ykn-tg5h.json?entityid=20251664337",
"registry_url": "https://data.colorado.gov/d/4ykn-tg5h",
"scraped_at": "2026-07-18T12:00:00+00:00"
}
```
### 💰 Pricing
Pay-Per-Event — you pay only when these events fire:
| Event | USD | What it is |
|---|---:|---|
| `actor-start` | $0.005 | One-off warm-up charge per run |
| `result-row` | $0.005 | Per matched entity row written to the dataset |
Example: 1 000 matched rows ≈ **$5.00**. No subscription, no minimum,
no card to start — Apify gives every new account $5 of free credit.
### 🚧 Limitations
This is a **v1 with 4 confirmed states** (NY, CO, CT, OR) — not the
18-state coverage some incumbents advertise. We picked these four
because each publishes a free, keyless, machine-readable dataset
sourced from the state's own Secretary of State; adding a state is a
per-state adapter, not a schema break, so more are on the roadmap.
Officer/principal data is genuinely sparse: only Connecticut publishes
a separate principals dataset in v1, so `officers` is `[]` for
NY/CO/OR rows by design, not a bug. Dataset freshness varies by state
(New York's snapshot is explicitly "as of the last business day of the
month," not real-time). This Actor has no relationship with, and is
not affiliated with, opencorporates.com — it queries the states'
official open-data portals directly.
### 🔗 Use with n8n
Wire this Actor into your [n8n](https://n8n.io) automations with the official [Apify node](https://www.npmjs.com/package/@apify/n8n-nodes-apify):
1. Add the **Apify** node and pick the **Run Actor** operation.
2. Set the Actor to `devilscrapes/opencorporates-alternative-scraper` and pass your input as JSON.
3. Chain a **Get Dataset Items** step to read the structured rows into the rest of your workflow (Sheets, Slack, your CRM, an AI agent, …).
Because n8n runs on a schedule or trigger, you get fresh company registry records on autopilot — for example, KYB onboarding checks that automatically flag dissolved or delinquent entities before you sign a customer.
### ❓ FAQ
**Is this the same data as OpenCorporates?**
No. We query each state's own free, keyless Secretary-of-State
open-data API directly — not opencorporates.com. Same category of
buyer, different (and, for these four states, more current) data
source.
**Why only 4 states in v1?**
Those are the states we've confirmed publish a genuinely free, keyless
Socrata dataset sourced from their own Secretary of State — not a
scrape of a login-gated or Cloudflare-protected search UI. Adding a
5th state is a contained code change, not a rewrite; more states are
on the roadmap.
**Why is `officers` empty for most rows?**
Only Connecticut's registry publishes a separate officer/principal
dataset in v1. For NY, CO, and OR, `officers` is always `[]` — that's
documented behaviour, not a missed field.
**Can I search by entity ID instead of company name?**
Not in v1 — this release is name-search only. Direct ID lookup is a
straightforward addition without a schema break; let us know if you
need it.
**How current is the data?**
It's exactly as current as each state's own open-data snapshot. New
York's is explicitly monthly; Colorado, Connecticut, and Oregon appear
to update more frequently based on observed timestamps, but none of
these are real-time transactional lookups.
### 💬 Your feedback
Spotted a bug, hit a weird edge case, or need a 5th state added? Open
an issue on the Actor's **Issues** tab on Apify Console — we ship
fixes weekly and we read every report.
***
Built by **[Devil Scrapes](https://apify.com/DevilScrapes)** 😈 — a small fleet of
opinionated public-data Actors. Honest pricing, real engineering, zero fine print.
# Actor input Schema
## `searchQueries` (type: `array`):
Company names to verify against state business registries (1-500 entries, 1-200 chars each).
## `jurisdictions` (type: `array`):
Which state Secretary-of-State registries to query per name.
## `fetchOfficers` (type: `boolean`):
Resolve the companion officer/principal dataset per matched entity. Only Connecticut publishes one in v1 (1 extra request per matched CT row).
## `maxResultsPerQuery` (type: `integer`):
Cap on candidate matches returned per input name, summed across jurisdictions.
## `statusFilter` (type: `string`):
Client-side post-filter on the normalized status\_normalized field.
## `proxyConfiguration` (type: `object`):
Optional — state open-data portals are public REST APIs and aren't known to fingerprint clients. Leave off unless you see 403/429.
## Actor input object example
```json
{
"searchQueries": [
"Blue Sky Consulting LLC"
],
"jurisdictions": [
"NY",
"CO",
"CT",
"OR"
],
"fetchOfficers": true,
"maxResultsPerQuery": 5,
"statusFilter": "any",
"proxyConfiguration": {
"useApifyProxy": false
}
}
```
# Actor output Schema
## `datasetItems` (type: `string`):
All dataset items as JSON.
## `datasetItemsCsv` (type: `string`):
Same data exported to CSV.
## `datasetView` (type: `string`):
Open the run dataset in the Console.
# API
You can run this Actor programmatically using our API. Below are code examples in JavaScript, Python, and CLI, as well as the OpenAPI specification and MCP server setup.
## JavaScript example
```javascript
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';
// Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
// Replace the '