There is no national company registry in the United States. There are fifty state registries plus the District of Columbia, each with its own portal, its own filing requirements and its own view on how much of a company’s ownership the public gets to see. A business entity search will reliably tell you a company exists, its number and its status. Whether it tells you who runs or owns the company is close to a coin flip, and the odds depend entirely on the state of formation. This is a working directory of where to search and what each search returns.
01What every state search gives you
The common floor across all fifty-one jurisdictions is the same short list: the entity’s exact legal name, its state file number, its type (corporation, LLC, limited partnership), its status (active, in good standing, delinquent, dissolved), its formation or registration date, and its registered agent and registered office. This is enough to confirm you are looking at the right entity and that it is in good standing. It is not enough to tell you who owns it.
Every state search is also free at this level. Certified copies, historical filings and detailed status reports usually carry a small per-document fee.
02What varies from state to state
Three things differ, and together they decide whether a search reaches a person:
- Whether people are named at all. Some states publish officers and directors for corporations and managers or members for LLCs. Others publish only the registered agent. A few — Delaware is the standard example — publish nothing but the agent even for the formation document.
- Whether there is an annual report. States with a periodic report (annual or biennial) keep officer and manager data reasonably current. States without one freeze the public record at whatever was filed at formation, which may be nothing.
- Whether “member-managed” changes the disclosure. In several states an LLC that is member-managed must name at least one member, while a manager-managed LLC of the same company can name only a hired manager. The management election, not the ownership, drives what you see.
“Names an officer or manager” is not “names the owner.” An officer is an employee; a manager can be a professional; a listed member can be another LLC. Every entry in the table below is a starting point.
03The state directory
Twenty-one states, ordered roughly by how often people search them. Confirm the current portal and requirements against the state’s own site — agencies rename systems and change rules regularly.
| State | Where to search | What the public record shows | Reaches a person? |
|---|---|---|---|
| California | bizfileonline.sos.ca.gov | Name, number, status, agent, type; a Statement of Information adds officers, and managers or at least one member | Officers; managers or a member |
| Texas | Comptroller Taxable Entity Search / SOSDirect | Status, registered agent, and governing persons – directors, or managers/members if member-managed | Governing persons |
| Florida | Sunbiz (dos.fl.gov/sunbiz) | Officers and directors, managers and managing members, registered agent, annual report | Officers, managers, managing members |
| New York | apps.dos.ny.gov Corporation & Business Entity Database | Name, status, date, county, DOS process address; no officers or members. LLC beneficial owners now filed with the state, non-public | Registered agent equivalent only |
| Illinois | apps.ilsos.gov business entity search | Corporations: officers and directors. LLCs: managers, or members if member-managed, on the annual report | Officers; managers or members |
| Georgia | ecorp.sos.ga.gov | Officers, registered agent, principal office; annual registration | Officers |
| Ohio | businesssearch.ohiosos.gov | Statutory agent and incorporators or organisers; little ongoing officer data, no general annual report | Registered agent only |
| Michigan | LARA Business Entity Search (COFS) | Resident agent and, on the annual report or statement, officers and directors or managers | Officers or managers |
| North Carolina | sosnc.gov business registration search | Company officials (officers), registered agent; annual report updates officials | Officers |
| Pennsylvania | file.dos.pa.gov Business Filing Services | Registered office, officers via periodic filings; an annual report requirement phased in from 2025 | Officers (limited) |
| Washington | ccfs.sos.wa.gov | Registered agent and governors – officers, or members/managers of an LLC; annual report | Officers or members/managers |
| Colorado | sos.state.co.us business database | Registered agent and principal office; periodic report; limited officer detail | Registered agent only |
| Virginia | cis.scc.virginia.gov | Registered agent and, for corporations, officers and directors; LLC members and managers not required | Officers (corporations) |
| Arizona | ecorp.azcc.gov (Corporation Commission) | Statutory agent and, for LLCs, members or managers; for corporations, officers and directors | Members or managers |
| Massachusetts | corp.sec.state.ma.us | Officers and directors, managers, resident agent; annual report | Officers, managers |
| Maryland | Maryland Business Express (egov.maryland.gov) | Resident agent and, for corporations, officers and directors; annual report and personal property return | Officers (corporations) |
| New Jersey | njportal.com business records service | Status and a business entity report; officer and director detail in the paid standing/status report | Officers (paid detail) |
| Indiana | inbiz.in.gov | Registered agent and governing persons; a business entity report every one to two years | Governing persons |
| Minnesota | mblsportal.sos.state.mn.us | Registered agent and, for an LLC, its governors (managers or governing members); annual renewal | Governors |
| Tennessee | tnbear.tn.gov | Registered agent and officers; annual report | Officers |
| Delaware | icis.corp.delaware.gov General Information Name Search | Entity name, file number, status, formation date and registered agent – and nothing else. No officers, no members, no annual report of people | Registered agent only |
04The states that show nothing
Four states are chosen specifically because their public record is thin: Delaware (agent and file number only), New Mexico (agent and organiser, no annual report), Wyoming (agent and organiser; the annual report names the filer, not the owner) and, for LLCs, Nevada beyond its list of managers. A company with all of its people, property and business in one state but formed in one of these was formed there for the disclosure rules. That is not proof of anything on its own, but it changes where you look next: property deeds, UCC filings, litigation and the counterparty’s own documents rather than the registry.
05Why some states disclose more
Company registration is a competitive business for a state. A small number of states — Delaware, New Mexico and Wyoming among them — draw a large share of national formations by keeping fees flat and disclosure minimal; the deeper mechanics are in the economics of anonymous LLCs. States that ask for more information generally charge more to fund the processing of it.
This is not evidence that any state is doing something improper. It explains why the same business entity search returns very different amounts of information purely because of where the company happened to be formed — a decision usually made for legal and tax reasons that have nothing to do with where the business actually operates.
06How to read a thin result
When a state search returns only a registered agent, the search is not finished — it has just moved off the registry. The next steps are the same everywhere: county property and deed records, UCC financing statements, court dockets and corporate disclosure statements, business-credit reports, and, for a transaction, the operating agreement and a signed ownership chart from the counterparty. The full sequence is in how to find out who owns a business, and the LLC-specific version in how to find out who owns an LLC.
Where the chain runs to an entity in another state or country, a tool that resolves ownership across registries collapses the state-by-state hopping into one query — the options are compared in the tools guide.
Zavia connects directly to official company registries in 173 countries — including the US states — and resolves each corporate shareholder or member to the next layer, returning the full ownership chain to the natural person at the top, with sanctions and PEP flags applied.
In Zavia’s dataset, analysed September 2026, fewer than one company in twenty yields a named natural-person owner from the public record alone. See how it works · The global ownership data index
Fifty-one registries, one query
US state filings and 173 countries of official registry data, with corporate shareholders resolved to the person and screening applied at every node.
07Glossary
08Frequently asked questions
Is there a national US business entity search?
No. Company formation is a state function, so there are fifty-one separate registries with no single search across them. Aggregators such as OpenCorporates index many states at once, but the authoritative record for any given company is its state of formation’s registry.
Which states show LLC members on a business entity search?
Several show a member or manager, though rarely all owners: Arizona, California (member-managed LLCs), Florida, Washington, Massachusetts, Illinois and Minnesota among them. Delaware, New Mexico, Wyoming and New York publish only the registered agent for LLCs.
Does a business entity search show who owns the company?
Usually not directly. It shows the registered agent everywhere, and officers or managers in some states. Owners — shareholders of a corporation, members of an LLC — are held in private records in most states, and no state registry publishes a verified beneficial owner.
How do I search a company in a state that shows only the registered agent?
Move off the registry. Pull county property and deed records, UCC financing statements and court dockets, which name signing members and parent entities; check business-credit reports for corporate linkage; and for a transaction, request the operating agreement and an ownership chart from the counterparty.
Are US state business searches free?
Yes, at the basic level — name, number, status, formation date and registered agent. Certified copies, full filing histories and detailed standing or status reports typically cost a few dollars per document.
Why do companies form in Delaware, New Mexico or Wyoming?
For a mix of corporate law, tax treatment and low disclosure. New Mexico and Wyoming in particular publish very little about a company’s people, and neither requires an ownership-revealing annual report. That opacity is a legitimate feature for many businesses and a warning sign when the company’s actual operations are entirely somewhere else.
