Where the data comes from and how we work with it

Sources for Florida

The Florida Business Database is built from public records and from information that businesses publish about themselves. No purchased contact lists and no consumer data.

Scroll sideways to see the whole table.

What the state offers in bulk

• Division of Corporations. The division states that it “offers free data downloads for informational purposes,” with daily files of new filings and quarterly files that “contain all active data at the time the file is generated”; the downloads “are offered as is and may be changed, replaced or deleted at any time” (Sunbiz, Data Downloads, as read on October 11, 2026). We found no further license terms on those pages; what “for informational purposes” means for a commercial dataset is a question we leave to an attorney. The published corporate file definitions list the fields: corporation number, name, status (“A” active, “I” inactive), filing type, principal and mailing address, file date, FEI number, dates of the last three annual reports, registered agent, and up to six officers with title, name and address. The division notes that addresses and officers in the files “may not reflect the most current information on sunbiz.org because of the limited space in the file.” There is no phone, email, website or industry field.
• DBPR. The public license search offers searches by name, by license number, by city or county and by license type. The department also publishes download files by profession on its Instant Public Records pages. Its public records disclaimer states that, to meet its obligations under Chapter 119, the department “provides copies of electronic records to the public through free download,” as quote-and-comma-delimited text files, and that “data is refreshed weekly,” although system maintenance may delay an update (as read on October 11, 2026). We have not yet examined the individual files, so we make no statement about how complete or how usable they are.
• Department of Health. Besides the public license verification, the department points to a data portal for “organizations or individuals who want to obtain general license information about multiple practitioners under specific board regulation.” The portal requires signing in (as of October 11, 2026); we have not seen its contents.

Two gaps are built into the sources. Neither the statutory content of an annual report nor the state’s corporate data file includes a phone number, a website or an industry classification, so contact fields and NAICS codes have to come from other sources and will be missing for some records. And businesses run by individuals without a registered entity are not in the corporate registry at all.

Why these records are public

Florida law makes government records open by default. The statute says: “It is the policy of this state that all state, county, and municipal records are open for personal inspection and copying by any person” (Fla. Stat. § 119.01(1)). Public records include documents and data “regardless of the physical form, characteristics, or means of transmission, made or received pursuant to law or ordinance or in connection with the transaction of official business by any agency” (§ 119.011(12)).

The fact that a record is public does not mean it may be used for any purpose. Telemarketing, email and privacy rules apply to what is done with the data afterward; they are described below.

How a record is built

1. Starting point: the corporate registry. A record starts with the registered entity: name, entity type, document number, status, filing date and principal address.
2. License attributes. For licensed industries, a license record is attached only when the name and address match the registered entity; otherwise the field stays empty.
3. Contact details from public websites. Phone number, general email address and website are added from the company's own website. Websites that state that their contact details must not be collected or passed on are left out.
4. Cleaning. Phone numbers are put into one format, email addresses checked for valid syntax, and duplicates removed. Email addresses shared by three or more entities (typically registered agents or incorporation services) are excluded.
5. Classification. Each record is assigned to one of the 15 industries and, where it can be derived, to a NAICS 2022 code; the county (67 in Florida) is derived from the principal address.

Matching is automated and cannot be error-free. Where names are similar and there is no shared identifier, the risk of a wrong match is higher.

Legal framework for using the data

You, the buyer, are responsible for the compliance of your own campaign. The data contains no consent. We do not provide legal advice, and this overview has not been reviewed by an attorney; the links lead to the primary sources, which we last read on October 11, 2026.

• Email – CAN-SPAM Act. Federal law does not make prior consent a condition for commercial email, but each message must meet the requirements of the CAN-SPAM Act, and “the law makes no exception for business-to-business email”: accurate header information, no deceptive subject line, identification as an ad, a valid physical postal address, and an opt-out that is honored within 10 business days (FTC, CAN-SPAM Act: A Compliance Guide for Business).
• Email – Florida. The Florida Electronic Mail Communications Act prohibits unsolicited commercial email with falsified routing information or a false or misleading subject line (Fla. Stat. §§ 668.60–668.610).
• Calls and texts – TCPA. Calls and texts to cell phones made with an automatic telephone dialing system or an artificial or prerecorded voice require prior express consent, and prior express written consent if they include an advertisement or constitute telemarketing (47 CFR § 64.1200). The FTC states that the National Do Not Call Registry “is for personal phone numbers” and that business phone numbers are not covered (FTC, Do Not Call Registry FAQs); a number on a business list can nevertheless be a personal cell phone number.
• Calls and texts – Florida. The Florida Telephone Solicitation Act covers telephone calls, text messages and voicemail transmissions and prohibits unsolicited sales calls made with an automated system for the selection and dialing of numbers without prior express written consent (Fla. Stat. § 501.059). Florida keeps its own Do Not Call list for residential, mobile and paging device numbers (FDACS, Florida Do Not Call) and limits calling hours (§ 501.616(6)).
• Do Not Call screening: our own open question. Section 501.059(4) requires a person who offers for sale “any consumer information which includes residential, mobile, or telephonic paging device telephone numbers” to screen out the numbers on the Florida list. Our data is not screened against any do-not-call list, including the National Do Not Call Registry and the Florida Do Not Call list. How Fla. Stat. § 501.059(4) applies to business records that include phone numbers is a question for an attorney, and no Florida dataset with phone numbers will be released until that question is resolved.
• Advertising claims. Section 5 of the FTC Act declares “unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce” unlawful (15 U.S.C. § 45). That is why this website states figures only with a source and a date and makes no promises about accuracy or about whether a business can be reached.

Personal data and European privacy law

The operator of flfirms.com is a sole proprietor established in the Czech Republic. The EU General Data Protection Regulation therefore applies to our processing “regardless of whether the processing takes place in the Union or not” (GDPR, Art. 3(1)); according to the European Data Protection Board, this holds regardless of the location or nationality of the individuals whose data is processed (EDPB Guidelines 3/2018).

• What counts as personal data. Data about corporations and LLCs as such does not; the GDPR does not cover legal persons (Recital 14). Data about sole proprietors and about named officers, directors, managers and registered agents is personal data.
• Legal basis. We process such data on the basis of legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f)).
• Information. The information required when data is not collected from the individual concerned (Art. 14) is published in our data notice.
• Right to object. Anyone whose personal data we process can object at any time (Art. 21) on the page Remove my data. The supervisory authority is the Czech Office for Personal Data Protection (ÚOOÚ).
• Florida Digital Bill of Rights. Its obligations for “controllers” apply to businesses with more than $1 billion in global gross annual revenues that also meet further criteria, and its definition of a consumer excludes individuals acting in a commercial or employment context (Fla. Stat. § 501.702). The operator's revenue is far below that threshold. We do not sell sensitive personal data.

Other U.S. states and the European Union

We hold no dataset for other U.S. states, such as Texas, California, New York or Georgia, or for countries of the European Union, and we publish no counts of our own for them; the market pages for Texas, California, New York, Georgia and the European Union show official market size figures from the U.S. Census Bureau and Eurostat. When you request such data, we check which public sources exist for the market and the industry you name, for example a state's business registry and licensing records or a country's company registers, and tell you before you order what we can deliver, from which sources and as of which date. Rules on the use of the data differ by state and country; the legal notes on this page cover Florida and federal U.S. law only. Send a request.

Known limits

• Contact details go out of date. Businesses change phone numbers, email addresses and websites, and time passes between a change and the update of a source.
• No deliverability check. A count of email addresses is not a count of verified mailboxes; a phone number is no confirmation that anyone answers the line.
• General addresses. Addresses such as info@ or office@ are not the personal contact details of decision makers.
• Registered is not operating. An entity can have an active status without doing business, and its principal address can be an agent's office or a home.
• County by address. The county is derived from the principal address, not from the area a business serves or its other locations.
• A corporate record is not a license. Whether a business holds a valid license must be checked with the licensing agency.

Report an error or have data removed

If you find incorrect information about your own business, write to us and we will correct it.

• Remove my dataFor sole proprietors, officers and other individuals who want their data corrected or removed.
• Contact formState the business name, the address and the incorrect information.
• info@flfirms.comDirect email to the operator.

Information in public records is maintained by the responsible agency. We correct our dataset; a permanent correction also requires a change in the agency's own records.