The fastest way to find newly opened businesses is to filter a city's public business-license register by issue date. Cities such as Chicago, New York and San Francisco publish these registers on open-data portals, and you can pull the newest rows yourself or let an actor do it weekly. This guide shows what the data contains, what it leaves out, and how to turn it into a call sheet.
Why are new business licenses a good lead source?
A business that just received a license is about to buy: point-of-sale software, insurance, signage, payroll, equipment, marketing. Most lead databases lag behind because they rely on directories that update slowly. A license register is the official record, so the date it was issued is the earliest public signal that a business is real.
Typical buyers of this data are local B2B sales teams, agencies, SDRs, franchise scouts and market researchers who want to count new-business formation by trade.
Where does the data come from?
Many cities publish licenses on open-data portals. According to the search results we reviewed, NYC publishes DCWP Issued Licenses on data.cityofnewyork.us, Chicago publishes Business Licenses on data.cityofchicago.org, and San Francisco publishes Registered Business Locations on data.sfgov.org. Many of these portals run on Socrata, which offers an API that returns rows in pages of 1,000 and accepts date and keyword filters on the server side.
The City of Chicago catalog describes its dataset as business licenses issued by the Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection from 2002 to the present (data.gov catalog entry). Third-party listings say it refreshes daily, but check the dataset page for the current schedule, because we did not verify it directly.
How do you pull the newest licenses yourself?
- Open the portal's dataset page and find the API tab. Confirm the dataset ID there, since sources we found disagree on older IDs.
- Sort by the issue-date column, newest first, and filter to active licenses.
- Page through the results 1,000 rows at a time.
- Filter by license type or keyword so you only keep the trades you sell to.
- Store the license ids you have seen, so next week you only process new ones.
That last step is where most DIY scripts fail. If you re-run a query weekly without remembering what you already saw, you get the same rows again. Each city also formats dates differently and some include future-dated licenses, which pollute a "newest first" list.
What does a license record contain, and what is missing?
| Field | Usually there | Often missing |
|---|---|---|
| Business name and legal name | Yes | |
| License type and activity | Yes | |
| Issue date | Yes | |
| Street address | Yes | |
| Phone number | Many cities do not publish it | |
| Almost never published |
The honest limitation is contact data. Registers give you a name, address and license type, not a verified decision maker. In Chicago, the City says owner information sits in a separate "Business Owners" dataset linked by account number, so you have to join two datasets to get it. Plan your outreach around the address and business name first, for example a visit, a letter or a phone lookup, and enrich later.
What is the easier way to run it every week?
The New Business License Feed actor covers Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Seattle and New Orleans from each city's official open data. You choose keywords such as restaurant, food or liquor, and with onlyNewSinceLastRun on it returns only licenses it has not sent before under the same watchlist name. It handles each city's date format and ignores future-dated rows. According to its listing, Seattle, New Orleans and New York publish a phone number on many records, while Chicago and Los Angeles rows carry name and address only.
Pricing from the actor page: $0.002 per new license returned, plus $0.002 per Slack, Discord, Telegram or webhook digest. At that rate 1,000 new licenses cost about $2. New Apify accounts receive $5 of free credit.
Other authors also publish license-lead actors on the Apify Store, some starting around $1.80 to $3 per thousand results, so compare coverage for your city before choosing.
How do you turn the feed into a call sheet?
- Pick two or three trades you sell to, such as restaurants, salons or contractors.
- Schedule the actor weekly and send results to Google Sheets or your CRM.
- Add a column for "opening status" and reach out within days of the issue date.
- Enrich the best rows with phone and website using a Maps or LinkedIn lead workflow.
- Add warm intent signals from Reddit buying-intent posts to prioritise.
If you sell to companies that hire, job postings are another early signal. For more lead tools see the lead generation hub.
Is it legal and ethical to use license data for outreach?
The records are public, but each Socrata dataset carries its own license and terms of use on its landing page, so read them before commercial use. Some vendors add third-party contact data that you may not be allowed to reuse. If you email or call people, you remain responsible for local rules such as CAN-SPAM and GDPR, and for a clear opt-out. This is not legal advice.
FAQ
Search your city's open-data portal for a business license dataset, sort by issue date and filter to active licenses. If your city is Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Seattle or New Orleans, an actor can do this weekly.
Rarely. Registers usually hold the business name, license type, issue date and address. Some cities add a phone number. Emails and owner names generally need a second dataset or an enrichment step.
It depends on the city. A third-party listing says Chicago's dataset refreshes daily, but check each dataset page for its schedule before relying on it.
With the New Business License Feed actor it is $0.002 per new license returned, about $2 per 1,000, plus $0.002 per alert digest if you use one.
Try it: start with the Apify actors by fayoussef and use your free $5 credit on a first run for your city and trade.
Sources: data.gov business licenses, City of Chicago data portal flyer, actor listing.
Last updated: October 2026
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