Govfiles Companies

Overview

GovFiles Companies provides core entity records sourced directly from U.S. state Secretary of State registries, covering corporations, LLCs, partnerships, nonprofits, and trade names, both active and dissolved, across all 50 states in a single normalized schema. The dataset aggregates U.S. business-entity records from state Secretary of State registries into one normalized dataset of more than 75 million entities, covering both historic and active companies.

This is the central table of the GovFiles U.S. Business Entity dataset; seven other CORP tables (addresses, parties, filings, identifiers, names, relationships, and industry codes) attach to it. The grain is one row per registered legal entity, uniquely identified by the composite key (JURISDICTION_CODE, ENTITY_NUMBER). The dataset includes 16 fields covering legal name, normalized and verbatim status, normalized and verbatim legal form, domicile, formation and dissolution dates, websites, phone, fax, source registry links, and a retrieval-date vintage marker.

Data Description

Observation level: One row per registered legal entity, uniquely identified by the composite key (JURISDICTION_CODE, ENTITY_NUMBER), sourced from a U.S. state Secretary of State registry.

The composite key (JURISDICTION_CODE, ENTITY_NUMBER) uniquely identifies an entity and serves as the join key to every other CORP table.

Coverage

Geographic coverage: All 50 U.S. states, each identified by a two-letter jurisdiction code (e.g. us_tx). Coverage and field availability vary by state because each registry publishes a different set of fields. Most states have complete coverage; a number are still being collected (partial); and a few have known limitations — Alaska (active entities only), Hawaii (entities registered up to 2022 only), and Ohio (only entities created after May 2026). Current per-state coverage is documented at https://docs.govfiles.dev/bulk/coverage.

Temporal coverage: The earliest records date to the 19th century and the most recent are from the latest calendar month. The AS_OF date on each entity records when that row was retrieved.

Universe of entities: More than 75 million entities, covering both historic and active companies. Coverage includes corporations, LLCs, partnerships, nonprofits, and trade names.

Methodology

Data is collected directly from U.S. state business registries (Secretary of State offices) and mapped to a single normalized schema so fields align across all 50 states. The data comes directly from the official registries.

Each entity record in this table preserves both a normalized value and the verbatim source string for status (STATUS, STATUS_RAW) and legal form (LEGAL_FORM, LEGAL_FORM_RAW), and records the date it was retrieved from the source registry in AS_OF.

Additional Notes

Coverage varies by state and field — the data reflects what each registry publishes, so optional fields are sparsely populated in some states. For this table, fields such as WEBSITES, PHONE, FAX, ENTITY_URL, and DISSOLVED_ON are null where the source registry does not release them or where they do not apply (DISSOLVED_ON is null for non-dissolved entities).

Field availability varies by state because each registry publishes a different set of fields.

Per-state coverage depth is documented at https://docs.govfiles.dev/bulk/coverage.