Frequently Asked Questions

Sunbiz Daily is a free web application that tracks newly registered Florida businesses. It transforms raw data from the Florida Division of Corporations into an interactive experience with maps and search. You can explore new business filings and find businesses using natural language queries like "restaurants in Miami."

All business data comes from the Florida Division of Corporations (Sunbiz) public FTP server. Each day the state publishes new filing records, and our automated pipeline downloads, parses, and processes this data. You can see how current the data is on our Statistics page.

Every day. The Florida Division of Corporations publishes a file of new filings each calendar day — including weekends — and our pipeline processes it automatically, so new records typically appear within hours. Weekend files are much smaller than weekday ones, and files published on public holidays are usually empty.

The underlying business data is official government data published by the Florida Division of Corporations. However, Sunbiz Daily is an independent project and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or operated by the State of Florida. We present the data as-is from the state's public records. For the most authoritative information, visit sunbiz.org directly.

When you type a natural language query like "restaurants in Miami" or "plumbers near 33101," our AI (powered by Anthropic's Claude) interprets your intent and extracts structured filters such as industry type, city, and zip code. These filters are then applied to the database to find matching filings. If the AI is unavailable, the system falls back to a keyword-based search.

You can search using natural language or specific terms. Some examples:

• By industry: "restaurants," "plumbing companies," "hair salons"
• By location: "businesses in Tampa," "companies near 33139"
• Combined: "restaurants in Miami," "tech companies in Orlando"
• By name: Search for a specific business name directly

You can also use the sidebar filters on the Filings page to filter by filing type, city, date range, and more.

If the AI doesn't return the results you expected, you can try rephrasing your query or using more specific terms. The search results page shows the filters the AI applied, so you can see how your query was interpreted. You can also use the Filings page to apply manual filters directly.

There are a few reasons a search might return no results:

• The specific industry or business type may not have any recent filings in the selected location
• The AI may not have recognized an uncommon industry term
• The date range may be too narrow

Try broadening your search terms, removing location filters, or expanding the date range.

The interactive map plots each new filing at its principal address. Addresses are geocoded with the U.S. Census Bureau geocoder, which resolves most of them to a street-level position; where it can't match an address, the pin falls back to the centre of the ZIP code or city. Zoom out and nearby pins group into numbered clusters — click a cluster to break it apart, or a pin to see the filing. Use the time period filter to see filings from yesterday, the last 7 days, the last 30 days, or a custom date range.

It varies by address, because it depends on what the U.S. Census Bureau geocoder could match. Most addresses resolve to a street-level position. The rest — typically addresses the geocoder couldn't match, such as a newly built street or a malformed address in the state's record — fall back to the centre of the ZIP code or city, so those pins indicate the general area rather than a building.

A pin marks the address on the filing, which is not necessarily where the business operates. Many entities register at their registered agent's office, an accountant's address, or the owner's home, so a cluster of pins at one address usually means a service provider, not a business park.

If a filing's address is a home and the owner has asked us to redact it, we remove that filing from the map altogether rather than move its pin. You can request that through support.

The map is built for seeing what's new, so its longest preset is 30 days (plus a custom date range). Plotting the whole registry at once would mean re-aggregating millions of geocoded rows on every pan and zoom, which is too slow to be usable, so we don't offer it.

If you want the full registry rather than a recent view, use the filings table, which searches everything and has no date restriction, or the API. You can see how many records we hold, by entity type, on the Statistics page.

A filing appears on the map only if its principal address could be geocoded. Filings may be missing from the map if:

• The address is malformed or incomplete in the state's record
• The principal address is outside the United States
• The filing has no principal address on record
• The owner has requested a privacy redaction, which removes the filing from the map entirely

These filings are still available through search and the filings table.

Each filing includes the following information as available from the state records:

• Corporation name and number
• Filing type (e.g., Domestic Profit, Foreign LLC)
• Filing date and status (Active/Inactive)
• Principal address and mailing address
• Registered agent name and address
• Officers (up to 6 per filing)
• Industry category (derived from the business name)

Florida recognizes several business entity types. The most common include:

• FLAL — Florida Limited Liability Company (LLC)
• DOMP — Domestic Profit Corporation (Florida-based, for-profit)
• DOMNP — Domestic Non-Profit Corporation
• FORP — Foreign Profit Corporation (out-of-state, registered in FL)
• FORL — Foreign Limited Liability Company
• FORNP — Foreign Non-Profit Corporation
• DOMLP — Domestic Limited Partnership
• FORLP — Foreign Limited Partnership

"Domestic" means the entity was formed in Florida. "Foreign" means it was formed in another state but registered to do business in Florida.

Industry categories describe the likely industry of a business based on its name. We assign them by matching a curated set of keyword rules against the business name — a business named "Joe's Pizza Palace LLC" matches the "Restaurant" rules. These categories power industry filtering in search, on the filings table, and in the API.

Because they come from the name alone, they describe what a name suggests rather than what a business verifiably does, and they will be wrong for businesses with generic, ambiguous, or unusual names. A name that matches no rule is categorized "General Business", which means "no signal in the name" rather than a positive classification.

Yes. You can export search results and filing data to CSV, Excel, or JSON from the Filings page. Apply your desired filters first, then use the export button to download the matching records. Exports require a free account; larger exports are generated in the background and emailed to you as a download link.

In Florida business terminology, "Domestic" and "Foreign" don't refer to countries — they refer to where the business was originally formed:

• Domestic: The business was formed (incorporated or organized) in Florida
• Foreign: The business was formed in another U.S. state (or country) but has registered to do business in Florida

For example, a Delaware LLC that opens an office in Miami would file as a "Foreign LLC" (FORL) in Florida.

Lead Mining is a prospecting workspace built on the full Florida business registry — all 13.6 million records across corporations and LLCs, fictitious names (DBAs), and partnerships. Search with structured filters, open a dossier on any business, tag leads into working sets, log your outreach, and export mailing lists. It’s free with a Sunbiz Daily account.

The main search covers recent filings with AI-powered natural language queries. Lead Mining covers the entire registry — including older and inactive entities — with structured prospecting filters: officer/owner/partner and registered agent names, city and county (matched through ZIP codes to catch the registry’s inconsistent city spellings), filing dates, entity types, and active/inactive status. It also adds workflow: tags, outreach tracking, pipeline stages, follow-ups, and exports.

Yes. Each lead’s dossier has an outreach timeline where you log touches — direct mail, email, phone, LinkedIn, or Facebook — with timestamps and notes. Officers have per-platform social statuses (Found, Message sent, Connection sent, Connected) that log themselves on the timeline. Contacted leads get a badge in search results, and an “exclude contacted” filter keeps them out of your next pass. You can also move leads through pipeline stages (New, Working, Replied, Qualified, Dead) and schedule follow-up reminders.

Tags are named working sets — “June mailer,” “Orlando roofers” — that you apply to leads with one click from the dossier or in bulk from search results. You can filter searches to include or exclude a tag, log outreach against every lead in a tag at once, and export a tag to CSV.

Yes. Any search or tag exports to CSV (up to 10,000 rows) with addresses and your contacted state included. Exports generate in the background — you’ll get an email with a download link, and every export also appears under My account → Exports.

Yes. Save a search, then click its bell in the Saved panel. Every morning we re-run the search over the previous day’s new filings and email you any matches. Alerts respect your email preferences and include one-click unsubscribe.

No. All core features — search, map, and filing details — are available without an account. Creating a free account gives you access to additional features like saved searches and data exports.

You can sign in using a magic link (passwordless email login) or with a traditional email and password. Click "Sign In" in the top-right corner to get started. If you don't have an account yet, you can create one from the sign-in page.

Saved searches let you bookmark your favorite search queries so you can quickly re-run them later. When signed in, you'll see a save button on search results pages. Your saved searches are accessible from the user menu in the top-right corner.

Yes. Every feature is free — search, the map, filing details, exports, saved searches, email alerts, and full REST API access. There is nothing to buy and no paid tier to upgrade to. Some features require a free account, which is the only thing you need to sign up for.

All features are free for every user: browse and search filings, view record details, interactive map, data exports (CSV, Excel, JSON), saved searches and daily email alerts, and full REST API access.

Yes. Sunbiz Daily offers a free public REST API that gives developers, researchers, and data teams programmatic access to Florida business filing data. Responses are JSON, and access is free for any registered user. Full documentation, example requests, and an interactive explorer are on the Developers page.

The API exposes the complete Florida business registry across three datasets, each with its own endpoint:

• Corporate filings (12.8 million+) — corporations and LLCs, with officers, registered agents, and addresses
• Fictitious names (750,000+) — "doing business as" (DBA) registrations and their owners
• Partnerships (30,000+) — Florida general partnerships and their partners

This covers every corporation, LLC, fictitious name, and partnership on file with the state — not just recently registered businesses. New filings are added daily. See the Developers page for the full field list and filters.

The interactive map and search pages focus on recently registered businesses, enriched with extras like map coordinates and industry categories. The API goes broader: it serves the complete Florida business registry — the full historical record of corporations, LLCs, fictitious names, and partnerships on file with the state. If you need the entire dataset rather than a curated recent view, the API is the place to get it.

Create a free account, then generate a key from your API Keys dashboard. Send it with each request in the X-API-Key header. The full key is shown only once at creation time, so store it securely. There's no cost and no approval step — any registered user can create a key.

The API is free. Requests are rate limited per key on a sliding one-hour window (1,000 requests/hour), and every response includes X-RateLimit-Limit and X-RateLimit-Remaining headers so you can pace your usage. If you need a higher limit, reach out through support.