# GovFiles, free: Business verification API

> Search every Secretary of State registry through one API. Look up a business by name or filing number. Get its legal name, status, formation date, officers, and registered agents in a consistent format across all 50 states. [...] Only pay for results. [...] Company & officer search: 1 credit per result

GovFiles's business verification API on its Pay as you go plan. It costs $0.00 per 1,000 companies. It returns 10 of the 11 key fields we check: Registered name, Entity number, Tax ID, Entity type, Status, Formation date, Registered agent, Principal address, Officers, Filings.
We rank 646 plans by price. [cnpjob's R$349 monthly plan](https://datacircle.dev/business-verification-apis/cnpjob/r-349-monthly/llms.txt) is the cheapest paid plan per 1,000 companies: as little as $0.023. cnpjob's plan covers companies in Brazil only. cnpjob's R$349 monthly plan covers up to 3,000,000 companies a month at no extra cost.
[INSEE](https://datacircle.dev/business-verification-apis/insee/free/llms.txt), [CZ Agents](https://datacircle.dev/business-verification-apis/cz-agents/free/llms.txt) and [ARES](https://datacircle.dev/business-verification-apis/ares/free/llms.txt) are the best business verification API providers in our benchmark.

- This page: https://datacircle.dev/business-verification-apis/govfiles/free
- [Best business verification API in 2026: pricing compared](https://datacircle.dev/best-business-verification-api.txt)
- Get it: https://govfiles.dev/pricing?utm_source=datacircle.dev&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=business-verification-api-pricing
- Request: `POST https://api.govfiles.dev/v2/companies/search`
- API key: with the plan, on https://govfiles.dev/pricing?utm_source=datacircle.dev&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=business-verification-api-pricing
- Its API docs: https://docs.govfiles.dev/api-reference/endpoints/searchcompanies?utm_source=datacircle.dev&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=business-verification-api-pricing
- Sold by: GovFiles (https://govfiles.dev?utm_source=datacircle.dev&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=business-verification-api-pricing)
- Checked: 2026-11-01

## In the answer

- Completeness: 91%
- Registered name: ✓
- Entity number: ✓
- Tax ID: ✓
- Entity type: ✓
- Status: ✓
- Formation date: ✓
- Registered agent: ✓
- Principal address: ✓
- Officers: ✓
- Filings: ✓

## Price

- $ per 1,000 companies: $0.00
- Per: result
- Billing: free

## Aggregators

- Aggregators: none

## Charges

- Also pays for: from the same budget: Search officers · Get a company by id · Start an ownership search

## Not found

- $ per 1,000: $0.00

## In their words

- Their pitch: Search every Secretary of State registry through one API. Look up a business by name or filing number. Get its legal name, status, formation date, officers, and registered agents in a consistent format across all 50 states. [...] Only pay for results. [...] Company & officer search: 1 credit per result

## Data

- Freshness: stored
- Keep data: no limit
- Use data: Subject to these Terms and your payment of fees, we grant you a non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable license to use the data you retrieve from the Service for your internal business purposes, and to incorporate it into your own products and analyses. You may: store retrieved records, cache them, enrich them with your own data, and surface derived insights to your customers. You may not: resell, redistribute, sublicense, or otherwise make retrieved data available to third parties as a standalone dataset or data product without our prior written permission, systematically extract the Service in order to reconstruct or offer a substantially similar bulk dataset or competing company-data API. You agree not to: Circumvent metering, rate limits, or authentication, or share keys to evade per-account limits, Interfere with or unduly burden the Service, or probe it for vulnerabilities outside a good-faith security report, Use the Service to harass, stalk, dox, defraud, or threaten anyone, Use the data in violation of any law, including anti-discrimination, telemarketing, anti-spam, and consumer-protection law, Misrepresent GovFiles data as sourced from, or endorsed by, a government agency, Resell, redistribute, or sublicense the data except as section 5 permits. [...] BYOQ is not a consumer reporting agency, and GovFiles data is not a consumer report as those terms are defined in the Fair Credit Reporting Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1681 et seq. We do not collect the data for, and you may not use it for, any purpose that would make it a consumer report. In particular, you may not use GovFiles data, in whole or in part, as a factor in establishing an individual’s eligibility for credit or insurance for personal, family, or household purposes, for employment, for housing or tenancy, for a government license or benefit, or for any other purpose enumerated in 15 U.S.C. § 1681b.

## Plan

- Pay: $0
- You get: 1,000 credits
- Enough for: 1,000 results

## Rate limit

- Batch: 1

## Speed

- Answer: in the call

## The call

- You send: q. Optional: match_alternative_names, match_previous_names, jurisdictions, status, order_by, limit, page
- Method: POST
- Path: /v2/companies/search

## About the plan

- Plan: Pay as you go
- Who can get it: users in the United States, at least 18 years old, with an account and an API key, no card required to start

## The 63 fields the plan's answer can hold

matched field, matched value, record kind, jurisdiction code, entity number, legal name, status, raw status, legal form, raw legal form, domicile, formation date, dissolution date, registered address, headquarters address, mailing address, names, name kind, name start date, name end date, parties, party type, party name, party address, role kind, role title, ownership percentage, role start date, role end date, filings, filing ID, filing title, filing date, filing type, filing URL, filing description, relationships, relationship kind, related entity name, related entity jurisdiction code, related entity number, relationship effective date, websites, phone, fax, industry code, industry code scheme, industry code description, EIN, SEC CIK, LEI, other identifiers, identifier scheme, identifier value, entity URL, registry search URL, as of date, total results, total results capped, results returned, next page, jurisdictions searched, page

## GovFiles's plans (3)

- [GovFiles, free](https://datacircle.dev/business-verification-apis/govfiles/free/llms.txt): $0.00 per 1,000, 91% complete, stored
- [GovFiles, top-up](https://datacircle.dev/business-verification-apis/govfiles/top-up/llms.txt): $10.00 per 1,000, 91% complete, stored
- [GovFiles, contact us](https://datacircle.dev/business-verification-apis/govfiles/contact-us/llms.txt): 91% complete, stored

## GovFiles's calls (1)

- `POST /v2/companies/search`: [GovFiles, free](https://datacircle.dev/business-verification-apis/govfiles/free/llms.txt)

## GovFiles's APIs (1)

- [GovFiles: business verification API pricing, 3 plans](https://datacircle.dev/business-verification-apis/govfiles/free/llms.txt)

## GovFiles: business verification API alternatives

- [Prometiam, €99.90 yearly, Starter, GET /companies/search](https://datacircle.dev/business-verification-apis/prometiam/99-90-yearly-starter-get-companies-search/llms.txt): $9.368 per 1,000, 64% complete, stored
- [OpenSOSData, $100 monthly, Starter Cached, POST /v1/lookup](https://datacircle.dev/business-verification-apis/opensosdata/100-monthly-starter-cached-post-v1-lookup/llms.txt): $10.00 per 1,000, 100% complete, stored
- [CNPJa, R$755.89 yearly](https://datacircle.dev/business-verification-apis/cnpja/r-755-89-yearly/llms.txt): $10.327 per 1,000, 36% complete, stored
- [CompanyLens, £39 monthly](https://datacircle.dev/business-verification-apis/companylens/39-monthly/llms.txt): $10.401 per 1,000, 45% complete, stored

## Sources

From each provider's own pricing page and docs, and from what providers tell us. We read this row from these pages on 2026-11-01.

- https://docs.govfiles.dev/api-reference/endpoints/getcredits?utm_source=datacircle.dev&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=business-verification-api-pricing
- https://docs.govfiles.dev/api-reference/endpoints/searchcompanies?utm_source=datacircle.dev&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=business-verification-api-pricing
- https://docs.govfiles.dev/api-reference/endpoints/searchcompanies.md?utm_source=datacircle.dev&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=business-verification-api-pricing
- https://docs.govfiles.dev/guides/company-schema?utm_source=datacircle.dev&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=business-verification-api-pricing
- https://docs.govfiles.dev/openapi.json?utm_source=datacircle.dev&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=business-verification-api-pricing
- https://govfiles.dev?utm_source=datacircle.dev&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=business-verification-api-pricing
- https://govfiles.dev/legal/terms?utm_source=datacircle.dev&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=business-verification-api-pricing
- https://govfiles.dev/pricing?utm_source=datacircle.dev&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=business-verification-api-pricing