Quickstart - LicenseSearcher

This guide walks you from creating an account to your first successful API call. You’ll need about five minutes.

Prerequisites

Before you begin, you must have:

A LicenseSearcher account. Create one or talk to sales.
An API key scoped to at least one supported state.
A tool for making HTTP requests (cURL, or any HTTP client in your language of choice).

Get started

Get your API key

Sign in to your Dashboard and create an API key. Keys are scoped to specific states — make sure your account is subscribed to the states you want to query.

Treat your API key like a password. Requests are billed per call (including 4xx responses), so never expose your key in client-side code, public repositories, or shared links.

Authenticate your request

Pass your key as a bearer token in the Authorization header on every request. All calls must be made over HTTPS.

Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY

Make your first request

Search for a license by business name in a state your key is scoped to. This example searches New York for “bernardin”:

curl "https://api.licensesearcher.com/v2/search?state=ny&name=bernardin" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY"

const res = await fetch(
  "https://api.licensesearcher.com/v2/search?state=ny&name=bernardin",
  { headers: { Authorization: "Bearer YOUR_API_KEY" } }
);
const data = await res.json();
console.log(data);

import requests

res = requests.get(
    "https://api.licensesearcher.com/v2/search",
    params={"state": "ny", "name": "bernardin"},
    headers={"Authorization": "Bearer YOUR_API_KEY"},
)
print(res.json())

Read the response

A successful search returns an array of up to 10 license objects:

{
  "data": [
    {
      "license": "1026288",
      "object": "license",
      "business": "LE BERNARDIN",
      "state": "ny",
      "status": "active",
      "address": {
        "line_1": "787 7TH AVENUE",
        "city": "NEW YORK",
        "state": "NY",
        "zip": "10019"
      }
    }
  ]
}

Already have a license number? Retrieve it directly with Retrieve a License.

Next steps

Authentication

Learn how API keys, state scoping, and billing work.

Search by name or address

Fuzzy-match licenses by business, owner, or address.

The license object

Understand every field a license returns.

Supported states

See which states are available today.

Introduction Authentication

​Prerequisites

​Get started

​Next steps

Authentication

Search by name or address

The license object

Supported states

Prerequisites

Get started

Next steps