Short answer: yes. Looking up a business on Sunbiz is free, and the Florida Division of Corporations also offers its data in bulk at no charge. What costs money is filing documents and ordering certificates and certified copies. This article separates the three and shows what the free data contains and where it stops.
What is free: searching the records
Sunbiz is the website of the Division of Corporations of the Florida Department of State. Its records are public under Florida's general policy that “all state, county, and municipal records are open for personal inspection and copying by any person” (Fla. Stat. § 119.01(1)). The Search Records page offers these searches with no account and no fee:
- Corporations, LLCs, limited partnerships and trademarks: by entity name, officer or registered agent, registered agent name, trademark name or owner, FEI/EIN, document number, ZIP code and street address.
- Fictitious names: by fictitious name, owner name, owner charter number or FEI/EIN, registration number, and by county for the prior week.
- General and limited liability partnerships, judgment liens, federal lien registrations and cable franchises, each with its own search.
According to the division's FAQ, the database records are updated daily; images of electronic filings appear within three business days after processing, and images of non-electronic filings within five business days of examination.
What is free: bulk data downloads
Less well known is that you do not have to search one record at a time. The division states: “The Division of Corporations offers free data downloads for informational purposes. Downloads are offered as is and may be changed, replaced or deleted at any time” (Sunbiz, Data Downloads). There are two kinds of files:
| File | When it is generated | What it contains |
|---|---|---|
| Daily files | On work days; no file on days with no filings | “The filings added to our record that day” |
| Quarterly files | In January, April, July and October | “All data on record at the time the file is generated” |
The division's overview page describes the quarterly files slightly differently, as containing “all active data at the time the file is generated.” Both kinds exist for several registers: corporate data (which “includes corporations, limited liability companies and limited partnerships” and “does not include trademarks”), fictitious names, general partnerships, federal tax liens and marks. The files are available through a browser or a secure FTP client; the division posts the public access details on the download pages themselves.
Two notes from the division are worth knowing before you build a process around the files. First, “some corporate filings such as annual reports or address changes, are not considered events and are not included in the downloads.” Second, the quarterly corporate file has “been broken into 10 smaller files,” each containing the records whose number ends in a given digit, and these files “are very large and may not open with standard text editors.”
What costs money: filings and certificates
The division charges for changing the register, not for reading it. From the LLC fee schedule as it read on October 11, 2026:
- New Florida or foreign LLC: $100.00 filing fee plus $25.00 registered agent fee, $125.00 in total.
- LLC annual report: $138.75; if received after May 1: $538.75.
- Certificate of status: $5.00. Certified copy of a record: $30.00.
Corporations have their own schedule. On the same date, the corporate fee schedule listed a $35.00 filing fee and a $35.00 registered agent designation fee for a new profit or non-profit corporation, $150.00 for the annual report of a profit corporation ($550.00 if received after May 1) and $8.75 for a certificate of status. Fees change, so check the current page before you rely on a figure.
What a record in the free corporate file looks like
The corporate file definitions describe a fixed-length text file without column headers, with one 1,440-character record per entity. A record holds:
- the document number, the name and the status (“A” for active, “I” for inactive),
- the filing type, for example domestic profit corporation, Florida limited liability company or foreign limited liability company,
- the principal address and the mailing address,
- the file date of the formation filing and the date of the last filing,
- the FEI number, and the years and dates of the last three annual reports,
- the registered agent with an address, and up to six officers with title, name and address.
The division adds that addresses and listed officers “may not reflect the most current information on sunbiz.org because of the limited space in the file.” Its data usage guide explains that the document number, 6 or 12 characters long, is the unique identifier of a record, and that files of 1 GB or larger may not open at all in a standard text editor or spreadsheet program.
For scale: the division reported 4,129,182 active business entities as of July 8, 2026 (Sunbiz, Yearly Statistics).
What the free data does not contain
This is where “free” stops being the whole story for anyone who wants a prospect list rather than a registry extract.
- No industry. The corporate file has no NAICS code and no description of the business. You cannot filter it for contractors, restaurants or dentists.
- No phone number, email address or website. The file definitions list no such fields.
- No county. The corporate record carries addresses with city and ZIP code; the county has to be derived. The fictitious name file, by contrast, does have a county field (fictitious name file definitions).
- No sign of activity. “Active” is a filing status, not evidence of operations. Holding entities, dormant companies and entities that never did business can all be in the file.
- No license information. Licenses are recorded by the licensing agencies; see Florida professional license lookups.
How to read a single record, and what “inactive” really means, is explained in How to search Florida business records on Sunbiz.
Free data, real work
If you want to check a few businesses, Sunbiz is all you need. If you want newly formed entities, the daily files give you those; see How to find new business filings in Florida. If you want “independent insurance agencies in Orange County with a phone number,” the free files are the starting material, and the work lies in what they lack: assigning an industry, deriving the county, finding public contact details and removing entities without operations. The steps are described in How to build a Florida B2B prospect list by industry and county.
That is also an accurate description of what we built with the Florida Business Database: selections by industry and county built on these public records. The sources and their limits are described under data sources and methodology.
Frequently asked questions
Is Sunbiz free to use?
Searching and viewing records is free and needs no account. Filing documents and ordering certificates costs money: forming an LLC, for example, costs $125.00 in total according to the division's LLC fee schedule (as of October 11, 2026).
Is Sunbiz legit?
Sunbiz is the website of the Florida Department of State, Division of Corporations, which describes itself as “the State of Florida's official business entity index and commercial activity website.” The official addresses end in dos.fl.gov and sunbiz.org. In its consumer notices, the division itself warns about unofficial websites and mailings that imitate it.
Is a Sunbiz registration a business license?
No. Registering a corporation or an LLC creates or registers the legal entity. Whether a business needs a professional license depends on what it does and is a matter for the licensing agencies; in addition, counties and municipalities issue local business tax receipts under Chapter 205 of the Florida Statutes (Fla. Stat. § 205.053).
Can I download the whole Sunbiz database?
Yes. The quarterly files are generated in January, April, July and October and, according to the division, contain all data on record at the time the file is generated (Sunbiz, Quarterly Data). The corporate file is split into 10 parts, and the division warns that the files may not open in a standard text editor.
Does Sunbiz have an API?
The data download pages, as we read them on October 11, 2026, describe two ways to get the files: through a browser and through a secure FTP client. They do not describe a programming interface. If you need current data for many records, the daily files are the documented route.
May I use Sunbiz data for marketing?
The division offers the downloads “for informational purposes” and “as is”; we found no further license terms on its download pages, and we do not interpret that phrase for you. Whatever the source, email, phone and text campaigns have their own federal and Florida rules, and a public record carries no one’s consent. This is not legal advice.
This article is for general information and is not legal advice. The pages of the Division of Corporations were read on October 11, 2026; fees, files and wording can change, so check the current pages before relying on a fee or a file description.
