A US business license list you can open in Excel
Every big US city publishes its business licenses, but each one lives behind a different open-data portal with its own columns, export caps and quirks. If you want one clean list of businesses by city, category or issue date, you are stitching several portals together by hand.
Preview a filtered business-license list See the business-license dataset
Worked example: Chicago business licenses
Choose US business licenses, set Source: Chicago, and you have Chicago's licensed businesses. Add a category, NAICS-code prefix or issue date to narrow it to your list.
| Business name | License category | License number | Status | Issued on | City |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 600 SOUTH CICERO INC | Package Goods | 1000 | AAI | 2025-04-02 | Chicago |
| JEWEL FOOD STORES, INC. | Retail Food Establishment | 1000572 | AAI | 2026-02-23 | Chicago |
| CHICAGO DROPCLOTH & TARPAULIN CO. | Manufacturing Establishments | 1000678 | AAI | 2025-09-04 | Chicago |
| THE IMMORTAL TEACUP COMPANY | Outdoor Patio | 1000723 | AAI | 2025-10-20 | Chicago |
| ARTISAN FOR HIRE INC. | Limited Business License | 1000744 | AAI | 2025-03-27 | Chicago |
The table shows 6 selected columns. The free CSV includes all 18 public columns for these first 5 rows. Blank source values stay blank in the CSV. Coverage in this example is Chicago; DataScoop also carries New York City, San Francisco and Los Angeles.
Source: City of Chicago open data. DataScoop import: 2026-09-17. Rows can change after a new import.
Download 5 example rows freeBuild this list with your own filters
What is happening
US search suggestions ask for business license lists, business license databases, new business licenses by city, and CSV or Excel downloads of them. These are lead lists, market maps and territory plans, not one-off lookups.
The official portals are free and authoritative. The obstacle is that each city exposes its licenses differently, so a single multi-city list is a data-joining project rather than a download.
What it disrupts
- A list of new or active licenses by city, category or NAICS code becomes a portal-by-portal export and merge job.
- Each city's export cap, column names and status codes differ, so the files do not line up without cleaning.
- Sales, expansion and research teams fall back to paid lead brokers for something the public record already contains.
Why it happens
- Each city runs its own open-data platform for local transparency, not to hand you a national, spreadsheet-ready business list.
- Licensing schemas, category vocabularies and status codes are set locally and are not standardised across cities.
- The portals are built for browsing and small exports, not for a filtered bulk list across several cities at once.
Checks to make now
- Decide which cities you need, and whether you want all active licenses or only those issued since a date.
- Write down the category, NAICS-code prefix, ZIP and status filters that define your list before exporting.
- For a compliance or credit decision on a single business, confirm the current record on the issuing city's portal.
Where DataScoop fits
DataScoop keeps a filtered copy of several US cities' business-license registers under one schema. The current catalog contains 719,895 records and was last imported on 2026-09-17.
Filter by city, category, NAICS-code prefix, ZIP, status and issue or start date. Preview 25 rows free, then the explorer shows the enabled one-off export price for your currency.
Where it fits, and where it does not
Good fit
- Territory planning, market sizing and organisation-level prospecting from public licensing facts.
- Developers and agents that need the same multi-city license data through CSV, REST API or MCP.
Not the right fit
- Owner names, phone numbers, home addresses or personal-contact enrichment.
- A real-time compliance or licensing-status decision on one business; check the issuing city's live record.
Proof and boundaries
Coverage is the cities DataScoop has imported, currently Chicago, New York City, San Francisco and Los Angeles, not every US city.
Each city's categories and status codes are reproduced from the source, so they are not identical across cities.
The address is the licensed business location as recorded by the city, not a verified trading address.
Sole-trader business names can be personal names; they are reproduced only as the official business-license registration, and no personal-contact fields are mapped.
There is no customer outcome claim yet. The proof is the official row scale, the visible filter schema, a free preview, a dated import and the source attribution.
Questions people ask
Which cities are included?
Currently Chicago, New York City, San Francisco and Los Angeles, kept under one schema so you can filter them together. More cities are added from the public roadmap.
Is this official data?
Yes. Each city's business-license register comes from its official open-data portal, and DataScoop keeps the source attribution and import date with the result.
Can I get only newly issued licenses?
Yes. Filter by issue or start date to get licenses issued since a date, by city and category.
Does the export include owner names, phones or emails?
No. DataScoop carries organisation-level license facts and excludes personal-contact fields.
Is the license status real-time?
No. Status reflects the last import shown on the page. For a live compliance decision, confirm the current record on the issuing city's portal.
Build your business-license list before you export
Choose a city and category and inspect 25 matching licenses free before downloading the full list.
Preview a filtered business-license list