New York business entity search: free lookup and open API

Every endpoint on this page was live-probed on 2026-07-29 by the Aidenix Atlas catalog.

What is the New York business entity search?

The New York business entity search is the public lookup over the Department of State's corporation register, and the same data is available as a keyless API that most guides never mention. In our data — the Aidenix Atlas catalog, endpoint live-probed on 2026-07-29 — the register holds 4,254,600 entity records with filing dates running from 1800-02-16 to 2026-07-27, which means it was current to within two days of our probe. Two routes reach it:

• The official web form at the NY Department of State, built for one lookup at a time.
• The state's open-data API at data.ny.gov, which returns the same records as JSON with no key and no signup.

Key facts at a glance

A key-facts table is the 60-second version of this page. In our data: 4,254,600 records, 2 free routes, 0 API keys required, and one significant field that simply is not there. Every row from our own probe run of 2026-07-29, according to the Aidenix Atlas catalog logs:

How do you search New York business entities?

A New York entity search is one HTTP GET against the state's open-data API, and the same query that powers a name lookup also powers a bulk export. According to our probe of 2026-07-29:

# exact-name lookup, keyless
curl "https://data.ny.gov/resource/n9v6-gdp6.json?current_entity_name=GOOGLE%20LLC"

We ran that on 2026-07-29 and the register returned one record, unedited:

That single record already teaches the most useful thing in the dataset. Google appears in New York as a foreign limited liability company whose home jurisdiction is Delaware — the register records where a company operates and where it was actually formed as two separate facts. In our data that jurisdiction field is the cheapest way to see that a company you think of as local is incorporated somewhere else entirely.

What entity types does the register contain?

An entity type in the New York register describes both the legal form and whether the company was formed in-state, and 6 types cover 97% of the file. Distribution from our probe run of 2026-07-29, counted across all 4,254,600 records:

«Domestic» means formed under New York law and «foreign» means formed elsewhere and registered to do business here — a distinction that trips up every first-time user, because a foreign entity in this register is usually an American company from Delaware rather than an overseas one.

Why does a New York entity search return the wrong company?

Substring matching is the single most expensive failure in registry work, and this dataset demonstrates it perfectly. We searched the 4,254,600 records for TESLA on 2026-07-29 using a standard LIKE filter; the first row returned was this:

A film company named 10minu-TESLA-ter matched, because a substring filter has no idea where words end. In our data this breaks more pipelines than any authentication problem, and the fixes are mechanical:

• Query on exact name first, as in the Google example above, and widen only when nothing returns.
• Carry the DOS ID forward the moment you have one — it is the stable key, and names change.
• Confirm every fuzzy name hit against a second source before treating it as an answer.

What this dataset cannot tell you

The New York file is a register of active corporations, which means its most important limitation is structural rather than technical. In our data, of the nearly 4,000 sources the Aidenix Atlas catalog tracks, this is among the largest free company files, and it still leaves 4 questions unanswered:

• No status field. Every record in the file is active by definition, so a dissolved company does not appear as «dissolved» — it simply vanishes, and you cannot distinguish «never existed» from «closed last year».
• No officers or owners. Directors, members and beneficial owners are not published in this dataset at any price.
• No financials. State registers record existence, not revenue.
• No employee counts or industry codes. There is no SIC or NAICS field, so industry has to come from elsewhere.

Frequently asked questions

Is the New York business entity search free? Yes, both routes. The official DOS web form is free for one-at-a-time lookups, and the data.ny.gov API returns the same records as JSON with no key, no registration and no quota — which is what makes bulk work possible at all.

How current is the data? Current to within days. Our probe on 2026-07-29 found the most recent filing dated 2026-07-27, and the oldest record in the file goes back to 1800-02-16 — the register carries more than two centuries of New York incorporations.

Can I check whether a business name is available in New York? You can see whether an identical name already exists, which is the factual half. The Department of State is explicit that its database is a preliminary screen only and does not determine name acceptability — that takes a formal request, and the same caution applies to the API.

How we verify these claims

Our verification method is a live probe, not a citation chain — every count, sample and limitation on this page comes from requests we sent ourselves on 2026-07-29. What the probe run covers, in our data:

• Endpoint liveness: the API answered HTTP 200, out of the nearly 4,000 sources the Aidenix Atlas catalog tracks.
• Live samples: the Google record, the entity-type distribution and the wrong-match table are unedited API output.
• Missing fields checked, not assumed: the absent status field was verified against the live record schema.
• Freshness contract: when a source drifts, the probe fleet flags it and this page gets re-verified — the «last probed» date above is that promise.

Neighbouring registers with the same access model: Colorado and Connecticut. The full free stack across states, SEC and international registers: our company data API guide.

Source facts from the Aidenix Atlas catalog, probed 2026-07-29. Found an error? The catalog re-probes on every report.