Secretary of State API Pricing Compared: 14 Providers (2026)

Here's a fun game. Open ten Secretary of State API pricing pages and count how many tell you the price.

We played it. Out of the 14 providers in this post, almost half of them won't put a number on the page. You get "Contact sales," "Book a demo," or our personal favorite, a /pricing URL that returns a 404. Nothing says "affordable" like a pricing page that doesn't exist.

So we did the annoying part for you. We went through every Secretary of State API we could find, from the KYB giants to the scrappy new entrants to the one-person scrapers on Apify, and priced them all at two real-world volumes: 1,000 lookups a month and 10,000 lookups a month.

Full disclosure: we make SOSfinder, and yes, it's #1 on this list. We'll show our math so you can check whether we earned it. Where a competitor is cheaper or better at something, we'll say so. (It hurts. We'll live.)

Prices were checked on each vendor's own site on November 8, 2026. They change. If you're reading this in 2027, check again.

TL;DR: the best Secretary of State APIs in 2026

How we compared them

A Secretary of State API sounds like a simple thing: send a company name and a state, get back the record. But "the record" can mean very different things depending on who's selling it. We scored every provider on six things:

1. Price you can actually see. Can a developer find out what it costs without a calendar invite?

2. Live or stored data. Does it check the state registry when you ask, or read from a database that was refreshed at some point?

3. Coverage. All 50 states plus DC? (DC gets forgotten a lot. DC has feelings.)

4. Free tier. Can you test it on real data before paying?

5. Monitoring. Will it tell you when a company's status, agent, or address changes, or do you have to keep asking?

6. AI-agent support. Can Claude, Cursor, or ChatGPT call it directly over MCP?

Live versus stored matters more than it looks. A stored database is fine for research. But if you're about to wire $40,000 to a vendor, you want what the state says today, not what it said when someone last ran the import.

The big comparison table

What it actually costs: 1,000 and 10,000 lookups a month

This is the table every other comparison skips. Starting prices are cute. What you pay at your real volume is what goes on the invoice.

A few things jump out:

• The cheapest options are stored or unsupported. GovFiles and Apify really are cheaper per row. You're paying for a snapshot (GovFiles) or for a scraper someone maintains on weekends (Apify). That's fine for research. It's a gamble for a payment decision.

• KYB suites price per business verified, not per lookup. Enigma and Middesk bundle TIN checks, watchlists, and risk data into each verification. If you need all of that, the price makes sense. If you just need "is this LLC active in Texas?", you're buying a five-course meal to get a glass of water.

• SOSfinder is the cheapest live, all-51-jurisdiction option with monitoring included. That's the lane we built for.

Now let's meet everyone.

1. SOSfinder: best Secretary of State API overall

Pricing: sosfinder.com/pricing

That works out to $0.049 per lookup on Starter, $0.040 on Pro, and $0.030 on Scale.

What you get: one REST endpoint for all 50 states plus DC. You send a name (or a file number) and a state, and get back one normalized JSON record: status, entity type, formation date, registered agent, addresses, and officers and filings where the state publishes them. We fetch it live from the state, then cache it, and you're never billed twice for the same record inside your cache window.

Why it's #1:

• You can see the price. Every plan, every overage rate, on one page. No demo call, no "let's find a time that works."

• The free tier is real. 50 lookups a month, every month, not a 14-day countdown.

• Monitoring is on every plan, even Free. Watch 5 companies weekly for free, up to 250 daily on Scale. You get alerted when a status, registered agent, or address changes. Most competitors keep this behind an enterprise contract.

• It's built for AI agents. SOSfinder runs as an MCP server, so Claude, Cursor, and other MCP clients can look up a business in plain English.

• Bulk CSV checks. Upload a vendor list, verify it across states, and flag the weird ones.

• Webhooks on Pro and up, plus UCC and officer lookup (beta).

• Credits that never expire. Seasonal or bursty usage? Buy a pack and stop paying a monthly fee for lookups you don't use.

Where it's not the best fit (honestly): if you need non-US registries, look at OpenCorporates. If you need an all-in-one KYB stack with TIN matching and sanctions screening under one contract, Middesk or Baselayer bundle more. And if you need screenshot images of the state page for an audit file, that's Cobalt's thing.

[AUTHOR: Add one concrete detail only you know: a latency number you trust, a state you're proud of cracking, or a customer story.]

Best for: developers, AP and procurement teams, fintechs, and AI-agent builders who want live state data without a sales cycle.

2. Cobalt Intelligence: best for screenshot evidence

Pricing: not public. Cobalt's help center says monthly plans range from 400 to 100,000 lookups, the per-lookup rate drops as volume rises, and annual plans are "pay for 10 months, get 12." There's no dollar figure anywhere we could find.

Free trial: 20 lookups at signup, plus 80 more after a demo call.

The good: Cobalt was one of the first in this space, and it checks the state site live. Each result can come with a timestamped screenshot of the state page, which lenders like for compliance files. It also does TIN verification and UCC searches, and slow states can call you back via webhook.

The less good: you can't budget without talking to sales. Per Cobalt's own blog, multi-state searches cost 3 credits and unused credits don't roll over. Some third-party reviews also report that slow states can take 30+ seconds [VERIFY].

Best for: small-business lenders and MCAs that want screenshots in the loan file.

3. Middesk: best enterprise KYB suite

Pricing: sales-only. middesk.com/pricing returns a 404 (we checked, twice). Vendr buyer data puts it around $2–$5 per verification at 1,000–5,000 requests a month [VERIFY].

The good: Middesk searches all 50 states plus DC and adds IRS TIN matching, federal watchlists, liens, monitoring, and AI-assisted investigations. If you're a bank onboarding businesses at scale, it's a serious, well-respected platform.

The less good: it's a full KYB product, and it's priced like one. If all you need is entity status and registered agent, you'll pay for a lot you won't use. Their MCP server is for their docs, not their data.

Best for: banks and fintechs that need TIN match, watchlists, and a compliance team on the vendor side.

4. Baselayer: best self-serve KYB with risk scores

Pricing: baselayer.com/pricing

• Start-up: from $150/month (500 credits), month-to-month

• Growth: from $750/month (3,000 credits)

• Enterprise: custom, annual contract

The good: business search with registration, TIN, sanctions, officers, and risk scores, plus lien and docket (litigation and bankruptcy) search. It has webhooks and an MCP server, and you can start without a sales call.

The less good: the pricing page doesn't say how many credits a search uses, so $150 for 500 credits could mean 500 searches or far fewer. Portfolio monitoring is Enterprise-only. No free trial, just a sandbox.

Best for: fintechs that want fraud and risk signals on top of registry data.

5. OpenCorporates: best for companies outside the US

Pricing: opencorporates.com/pricing

The good: the world's biggest open database of companies: US states plus roughly 140 other jurisdictions. If your vendors are in Germany, Singapore, and Delaware, nobody else on this list comes close.

The less good: it's a stored database, not a live query, and it's pricey per call (about £0.24–£0.45 at plan caps). Free access exists only for journalists, NGOs, and universities who apply.

Best for: global due diligence, investigations, and research.

6. Enigma: best for business data beyond the registry

Pricing: enigma.com/pricing

• Free: $0 (console, search, summaries)

• Pro: $20/month (2,100 credits, API access)

• Max: $200/month (25,000 credits, adds MCP)

• Enterprise: custom

The catch is in the credit math: 1 credit = $0.01, a KYB Identify costs 150 credits ($1.50) per match, and KYB Verify costs 250 credits ($2.50). So the $20 Pro plan covers about 14 identifies. You only pay on a match, which is nice.

The good: 50 states plus DC and Puerto Rico, 100M+ registrations, plus card-revenue and firmographic data most providers don't have. A genuinely useful free tier for poking around.

The less good: it's a stored graph, not a live state query, and Enigma itself says the officers it shows aren't a verified ownership list.

Best for: underwriting and sales-intelligence teams that want "how big is this business?" as well as "does it exist?"

7. Filed.dev: best for adding federal data

Pricing: filed.dev/pricing: Developer $49/month (1,000 credits), Business $199/month (10,000), Scale $499/month (50,000). 14-day free trial; 2 months free on annual.

The good: 50 states plus DC and federal sources: SEC EDGAR, USASpending, lobbying, IRS exempt organizations, and SBA PPP loans. Developer-friendly and self-serve.

The less good: detail calls cost 1–3 credits, so the real per-lookup price depends on what you pull. Officer coverage is thin in third-party testing [VERIFY], and we didn't see monitoring or MCP.

Best for: developers who want state records and federal filings from one API.

8. OpenSOSData: best budget live option (if you're brave)

Pricing: opensosdata.com, all prepaid:

• $50 for 500 live lookups ($0.10 each)

• $100 for 1,333 ($0.075)

• $250 for 5,000 ($0.05)

• $500 for 15,923 ($0.0314)

Cached subscriptions start at $100/month, and bulk datasets at $2.50 per 1,000 records.

The good: live scraping across 50 states plus DC, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands, with results cached for 7 days. Batch up to 1,000 entities per call. At big volumes, it's cheaper per live lookup than we are. Credit where it's due.

The less good: it's new and unproven, there's no monitoring or MCP that we could find, and you prepay before you know if it fits.

Best for: price-sensitive teams with a tolerance for a young vendor.

9. GovFiles: best for cheap stored records

Pricing: govfiles.dev: $0.01 per returned result, and searches with no results are free. 1,000 free credits to start. Bulk datasets (Parquet, Snowflake, BigQuery, Databricks) are custom priced.

The good: the cheapest per-result price on this list, with officers, registered agents, and filing PDFs included.

The less good: it's a dataset with an "as of" date, not a live check, and the refresh schedule isn't published. DC isn't mentioned. No monitoring or webhooks.

Best for: data teams loading entity data into a warehouse, where "recent enough" is fine.

10. Bizapedia Pro API: best for bulk research on a fixed budget

Pricing: the Pro API page allows up to 180,000 calls a year. The price isn't on the page we saw; third parties list it at $999/year [VERIFY].

The good: 118M+ US and Canadian entities, weekly new-company lists, and a new MCP server.

The less good: stored data, a yearly commitment, and a call cap.

Best for: researchers and lead-gen teams who want a big flat-fee dataset.

11. Signzy: best if you already buy everything from one vendor

Pricing: demo only.

Signzy advertises real-time entity search across all 50 states, with officers, filing history, liens, UCC, bankruptcy, watchlists, EIN, and UBO checks. Signzy itself says going live takes 2–4 weeks, which tells you who it's built for.

Best for: large enterprises consolidating KYB vendors.

12. Apify marketplace actors: best for hobby projects

Pricing: pay per record on Apify. The most complete actor we found covers 50 states plus DC at $0.002 per basic record and $0.005 per detailed record. Others cover 16–25 states. One serves Hawaii from a 2022 snapshot. (Hawaii has changed since 2022. We checked.)

The good: absurdly cheap, and Apify's $5/month free credit goes a long way.

The less good: these are mostly maintained by one person. There's no SLA, coverage is uneven, field depth varies a lot by state, and when a state redesigns its website, the scraper breaks until someone notices.

Best for: prototypes, one-off research, and anyone who enjoys debugging scrapers at midnight.

13. The enterprise KYB suites: Persona, Trulioo, Alloy, LexisNexis, D&B, Kyckr

These are big identity and risk platforms where Secretary of State lookup is one feature among many. All of them are sales-only.

• Persona: plans reportedly start around $250/month, with KYB on higher tiers [VERIFY].

• Trulioo and Kyckr: global business verification across many countries.

• Alloy: an orchestration layer that pulls SOS data from partners rather than running its own lookups.

• LexisNexis and Dun & Bradstreet: large proprietary databases on annual contracts. One competitor puts D&B Direct+ at "typically $25,000+ a year" [VERIFY].

If you're already a customer, check whether SOS search is in your contract before buying anything new. If you're not, you probably don't need a five-figure contract to check LLC status.

14. Topograph: worth a look for global KYB

Topograph is a global KYB API that bills per data block, per country, and doesn't re-bill repeat requests within 24 hours. US pricing wasn't visible publicly when we checked.

How to choose (without a 45-minute demo)

Ask yourself three questions:

1. Do you need what the state says right now? If a payment, a loan, or an account opening depends on it, yes. Use a live API: SOSfinder, Cobalt, OpenSOSData, or Middesk. If it's research or enrichment, a stored dataset (GovFiles, OpenCorporates, Enigma, Bizapedia) is fine and can be cheaper.

2. Do you need more than the registry? TIN match, sanctions, UBO, and risk scores push you toward Middesk, Baselayer, or Enigma. If you need the registry record plus monitoring and an API your developers can ship this afternoon, that's SOSfinder.

3. Will the companies change after you check them? They will. A vendor in good standing at onboarding can be forfeited six months later. Pick a provider with monitoring you can actually afford. On SOSfinder it starts on the free plan; on several others it's an enterprise add-on.

Our honest rule of thumb:

• Under 50 lookups a month: SOSfinder Free. Or just use the free state websites, honestly.

• Hundreds to tens of thousands a month, US only, live: SOSfinder.

• Global registries: OpenCorporates.

• Full KYB compliance program at a bank: Middesk.

• A Snowflake table of every LLC in America: GovFiles bulk.

FAQ

What is a Secretary of State API?

An API that looks up US business entity records (LLCs, corporations, LPs) from state registries. It returns status, entity type, formation date, registered agent, addresses, and often officers and filings in a format your code can use. There are 51 registries (50 states plus DC), each with its own website and format, so a good API's main job is turning them into one consistent schema.

How much does a Secretary of State API cost in 2026?

Anywhere from a fraction of a cent to several dollars per lookup. Scrapers and stored datasets run $0.002–$0.01 per record. Self-serve live APIs like SOSfinder run about $0.03–$0.09 per lookup. Enterprise KYB suites that bundle TIN matching and watchlists can reach $1.50–$5 per business verified.

Is there a free Secretary of State API?

SOSfinder includes 50 free lookups a month, every month, plus monitoring for 5 companies. Enigma has a free plan for search and summaries, GovFiles gives 1,000 free credits once, and Cobalt gives 20 lookups at signup. OpenCorporates' free API access is only for public-benefit organizations.

What's the difference between live and cached Secretary of State data?

Live means the provider checks the state registry when you ask. Stored or cached means it reads from its own copy, refreshed on a schedule. SOSfinder fetches live and then caches each record, so repeat lookups are fast and aren't billed twice, while new lookups reflect what the state says now.

What's the best Cobalt Intelligence alternative?

If you want public pricing, a permanent free tier, monitoring on every plan, and MCP support for AI agents, SOSfinder. If screenshots of the state page are a hard requirement, Cobalt is still the specialist.

What's the best Middesk alternative?

For entity status, registered agent, and monitoring without an enterprise contract, SOSfinder. For KYB with risk scores and self-serve signup, Baselayer.

Can I use a Secretary of State API from Claude or Cursor?

Yes. SOSfinder runs as an MCP server, so you can ask your AI assistant "Is Brightline Freight LLC active in Texas?" and get the state record back. Baselayer, Enigma (on the Max plan), and Bizapedia also offer MCP.

Ready to stop reading pricing pages? Your first 50 lookups are free, every month. Try a search with our LLC name search, read the API docs, or grab an API key. No demo call required. We promise our pricing page loads.