Direct links to official government portals — organized, explained, and always free. No subscriptions. No paywalls.
Curated by the Searchadex editorial team — researchers with backgrounds in commercial banking, underwriting, and compliance due diligence. Last verified: June 2026.
A business entity lookup is a free search of an official state government database that confirms the legal status of an LLC, corporation, limited partnership, or other formally registered business. Every state maintains its own Secretary of State (or equivalent) portal, and every active entity must appear in its home state's database to remain in good standing. Searchadex links directly to these official portals — no aggregators, no paywalls, no resold data.
Business entity records are most often searched by commercial lenders verifying borrowers before closing, attorneys conducting due diligence, compliance teams onboarding new vendors, small business owners vetting partners or suppliers, journalists tracing corporate ownership, and job seekers confirming employer legitimacy. A few minutes on a Secretary of State portal can reveal whether a counterparty is actually a real, active entity — or a forfeited shell.
Official portals return entity status (active, suspended, dissolved, or forfeited), formation date, entity type, registered agent name and address, principal office address, and in many states, filed documents like Articles of Incorporation, Articles of Organization, and annual reports. What they won't show you is beneficial ownership beyond listed officers, financial statements, tax filings, bank accounts, or litigation history — those require separate searches or paid services.
Click any state to see the portal details and direct link.
Searchadex is built and maintained by an editorial team with hands-on experience in commercial lending, underwriting, and regulatory compliance — the same professionals who use these portals daily for real due diligence work. We know which Secretary of State databases are slow, which require exact-name matching, and which have undocumented quirks (like California's "Agent for Service of Process" terminology or Delaware's separate File Number search). Every portal link is hand-verified before publication, and we update broken URLs within 48 hours of being reported. We never resell records, never charge fees, and never link to third-party aggregators that obscure the original source. The goal is simple: if a government portal exists for a public record, you should be able to find it here in one click — no paywalls, no upsells, no middlemen.