What 50 state business registries (and DC) actually tell a KYB analyst

A business registry is the first stop in almost every KYB review, and most onboarding policies treat "check the Secretary of State" as one step. It is really 51 different steps. We checked every state business registry and the District of Columbia on the same day, 2026-09-30, and recorded, field by field, what a KYB analyst can see for free, what costs money, and what sits behind a CAPTCHA. The full dataset is free to download: data.csv.

Key findings

• Searching is almost always free, but the free record varies enormously. At least 41 of 51 registries let anyone search and open a record at no charge. New Jersey's free search returns little more than the name, entity ID, city, type and incorporation date. Status and agent details cost money there. In Delaware, current status costs $10.
• Most registries block automation, and 13 challenge real people too. 36 of 51 registries blocked plain scripted requests. In 23 of them a normal browser passed without any visible challenge. In 13 (Alaska, Arizona, California, DC, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Nebraska, Nevada, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah and Vermont), a person in a normal browser met a CAPTCHA, a checkbox or an outright block.
• People are often missing. 22 registries showed officers, directors, managers or members on the free record for at least some entity types. 12 showed none: Colorado, Delaware, Idaho, Maine, Maryland, Missouri, New Jersey, North Dakota, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee and Wisconsin. Eight more showed people only partially, for example corporations but not LLCs.
• Only 11 registries give the full picture for free: status, filing history, the people who run the entity, and free document images. They are California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Michigan, Mississippi, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Virginia and Washington.
• A certificate of good standing costs from $0 to $50. Across the 40 registries with a verifiable published fee, the median was $11. Colorado and Wyoming issue them free. Delaware's short form and Nevada's certificate of existence cost $50.
• Registries are changing under reviewers' feet. Nevada replaced SilverFlume with the ORION portal on September 14, 2026, and Texas replaced SOSDirect with SOSPortal on September 29, 2026. A procedure written in August may already point at a dead system.

Method

We built one row per jurisdiction (50 states plus DC) with the fields a KYB analyst needs: whether search is free, login requirements, bot walls, and whether the free record shows status, formation date, registered agent, officers or managers, principal address and filing history. We added document image access, the published fee for a certificate of good standing (or its local equivalent), and bulk data availability.

Evidence rules:

1. Official sources only. Every cell comes from the registry itself or the state's own help pages, fee schedules or statutes. We did not use formation-service sites, data vendors or search-engine summaries as evidence. The sources column lists the URLs behind each row.
2. Live first. For each registry we first tried plain HTTP requests. Where those were blocked, we opened the official search in a normal browser session, ran one name search for a large, well-known company registered there, and opened one entity record.
3. No bypassing. We did not solve CAPTCHAs, click "I am human" boxes, log in, create accounts or pay. Where a challenge stopped us, we recorded it and used the registry's help pages and fee schedules instead.
4. "Not verified" means not verified. If we could not confirm a cell from an official source, it says so. 115 of the 612 coded cells (19%) are not verified, concentrated in the states behind interactive challenges.

Each coded cell starts with a value (yes, no, partial, free, paid, none found or not verified) followed by a short note. For the bot-wall column, yes means an interactive challenge or a block that also stopped a normal browser, partial means scripted requests were blocked but a normal browser passed without a visible challenge, and no means nothing was blocked.

The matrix, summarised

Bot walls: 15 registries answered scripted requests without a challenge, 23 blocked scripts but let a normal browser through, and 13 challenged or blocked a normal browser.

The partial search cells are New Jersey (free search, paid status) and Texas (the Comptroller's account status search is free, the Secretary of State charges $1.00 per search). The partial login cells mostly mean the search is open but ordering certificates or copies needs an account.

The hardest states for KYB

We ranked difficulty by what an analyst can establish from the registry alone, for free, in a normal browser. Seven registries stood out.

Delaware. The free search gives the entity name, file number, formation date and registered agent, and nothing else. Status is a paid online check ($10, or $20 with the last five filings). Officer and director names sit on annual report images that are not returned by the status service, and LLCs file no annual report at all. The search terms prohibit automated tools. A Delaware LLC can be in good standing with no natural person on any public record. See how to verify a Delaware business.

New Jersey. The free name search returns only basic identifiers. Status, agent details and officer information come from paid reports and certificates through the Business Records Service. Every meaningful fact about a New Jersey entity is pay-per-view.

South Carolina. Every name search is gated by a visible reCAPTCHA. Behind it, the Secretary of State says it does not hold officer or director names or addresses. Document copies are paid.

Nevada. Nevada law is generous: corporations must file an annual list naming the president, secretary, treasurer and directors, and LLCs must name their managers or managing members (NRS 78.150 and 86.263). On 2026-09-30, though, the new ORION search answered our requests with an "Access denied" page, including in a standard desktop browser. See how to verify a Nevada business.

Kansas. An "are you human" verification page stood in front of the search form itself, even in a normal browser. We could not open a record.

Indiana. A visible reCAPTCHA sits on the business search form. We could not open a record, and certificates are ordered inside INBiz after logging in.

Tennessee. The search is open and the record shows status and several standing flags, but no officer, director, member or manager names and no document images. Copies are ordered by request at $20 per set.

Two more groups deserve a mention because the gap is by design rather than by technology. Wyoming LLC records usually name no people: the law requires only a name and registered agent in the articles, and the LLC annual report lists no managers (see how to verify a Wyoming business). New York LLC records show where legal process is forwarded but no members or managers, and the state's new beneficial ownership filings are confidential (see how to verify a New York business).

At the other end, Florida's Sunbiz shows authorized persons, a free PDF of every filing, the FEI/EIN when reported, and offers free daily and quarterly bulk downloads. See how to verify a Florida business. For Texas and California, the guides cover the Comptroller record and the Statement of Information.

What this means for review time

We did not time reviews for this study, and we make no claim about minutes per file. The structure of the data still shows where time goes.

The formation state decides the workload. A Florida or Washington entity can often be confirmed from the registry in one sitting, with the people and filings in hand. A Delaware, New Jersey or Wyoming LLC needs the same registry check plus a document request to the applicant, because the record will not name anyone. That request is where files stall: the applicant has to find an operating agreement, the analyst has to read it, and the answer often raises the next question. Routing files by formation state, and sending the document request at intake rather than after the registry check, removes a round trip.

Paid lookups add friction as well as cost. $10 for a Delaware status check is trivial per file. Needing a card, an account or an order workflow is not, especially overnight and at weekends. Budget for it and give reviewers the means to pay.

Automation has hard limits. With 13 registries challenging real browsers and 23 more blocking plain scripts, a KYB process that depends on unattended scraping will fail unpredictably. Some states offer a better route: free open datasets (Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, New York, Ohio, Oregon and Alaska among them) or paid bulk products. Neither replaces a live record check on the day of the decision, because datasets lag and often exclude inactive entities.

Certificates are cheap to check and easy to fake. Several registries (Delaware, Wyoming, Florida, Texas and Nebraska among them) let anyone validate a certificate online. A reviewer who validates rather than trusts the PDF closes an easy fraud path at no cost. See what a certificate of good standing proves.

Procedures go stale. Two states changed systems in the two weeks before this study, and Nebraska says it plans to move to a new system before the end of 2026. State playbooks need an owner and a review date.

If you want to model what those extra steps do to your own queue, the onboarding backlog calculator takes your own volumes and handling times.

Limitations

• One day, one record. Everything reflects 2026-09-30. For most states we opened a single record for a single large company, usually a corporation. LLC records, which often show less, were not checked everywhere.
• Walls depend on context. Bot protection responds to network, browser and behavior. A registry that challenged us may not challenge you, and the reverse.
• Help pages are not records. Where we could not open a record, cells rely on the registry's own description of its fields. These are marked in verification_method.
• Fees change. Several fee pages were undated. Expedite fees, card surcharges and convenience fees are mostly excluded.
• Not verified is not "no". 115 cells are not verified. Treat them as unknown.
• We did not test paid products, including status reports, bulk subscriptions and document orders.

The dataset

Download: /research/state-business-registries/data.csv (51 rows, one per state plus DC). Columns:

You may reuse the data under CC BY 4.0 with attribution to Sweat AI. If you find a cell that is wrong or out of date, tell us and we will correct it with a dated note.

How Sweat AI uses this

Sweat AI is an AI-native BPO for banks and fintechs, starting with back-office workflows like KYB, onboarding and fraud reviews. Our analysts work with these registries every day, so each file we review records exactly what the registry showed, when we captured it, and which facts had to come from the applicant instead. You receive an evidence packet and one consolidated list of what is still missing, and your team makes the decision. See our KYB review service or the step-by-step guide to verifying a business for KYB.

Download the dataset: US state business registry fields for KYB (2026-09-30) · 51 rows · CC BY 4.0