New Business List: Where to Get Newly Opened Companies, and How Many Appear in 10 US Metros

A new business list comes from a free state or city file, a list vendor, or a B2B database that logs first appearances. The free files give you names, addresses and dates. Vendors and databases add the phones and emails.

Spona's index recorded 286,713 US companies for the first time in a recent month. Of those, 120,420 are headquartered in ten large metros.

The harder question is what "new" means on the list in front of you. Count tax ID applications and you get 534,947 in a recent month. Count projected new employers from those applications and you get 29,022.

Get thousands of leads in 4 minutes.

Stop stitching tools together.
Start with verified sales data, delivered in minutes.

SCALE SALES NOW

No contracts · No setup · No onboarding

New business list: what counts as new

Six events get called "new", and each one gives a different count. Pick the definition before you pick the source.

The top row is the biggest number because an EIN is easy to get. The IRS charges no fee for an EIN and issues it immediately online. The Census Bureau's business formation statistics counted 534,947 applications in a recent month. Only 147,331 of them, or 27.5%, were high-propensity applications, the kind likely to become an employer.

The bottom row is the smallest because most new firms never hire. From the same month's applications, the Census projects 29,022 employer formations within four quarters. The SBA counts 36.2 million small businesses, and 82.3% of them have no employees.

A list built from registrations is mostly one-person firms. That is fine if you sell to owners. It is a waste if you sell to HR.

Vendors use the fifth definition: new to our database. Selectabase flags a UK record as new when it has "not appeared before" in its file. Outscraper filters on the date a company was added to its data. Spona's first-seen signal works the same way: it marks the first time a company appears in Spona's index, whatever its incorporation date.

A firm that has traded for a decade can still show up as first seen. The signal says "new to the index", not "founded this month".

In the UK, "registered an entity" means incorporated at Companies House, which recorded 193,789 incorporations in a recent quarter against 214,754 dissolutions. Funding is a seventh kind of new, with a list of its own: see recently funded startups.

First-seen companies and new locations in 10 US metros

Spona records two signals that sellers read as "new". First seen is the first appearance of a company's HQ legal entity in Spona's index. New location is the first observed additional operating site at an existing company, counted at that company's HQ metro.

The table shows both for ten large US metros over a recent month. Each metro is a separate HQ area. The two signals overlap, so read the columns separately and never add them. The last column is our arithmetic: first seen divided by new location.

Boston leads on first seen with 17,451 companies, and Chicago has the widest gap between index arrivals and expansions. Houston, Miami and Dallas-Fort Worth lead on new locations. In Houston and Atlanta the two columns run closest together, which points to growth by companies already in the index.

Those ten metros hold 120,420 first-seen companies, 42% of the US total. Nationally that is about 9,600 first-seen companies a day. Both figures are our arithmetic.

Two caveats. These are ten large metros, not the ten largest. The Census puts Phoenix at 5,228,938 residents, ahead of Boston's 5,034,221. And a new location is counted at its company's HQ metro. The Houston row means Houston-headquartered companies that added a site, wherever that site is.

Both signals are buying signals, not formation records. A first-seen company may be ten years old. A new location means an existing company has added another site. That is often a better moment to sell than a formation, because the company has revenue.

How fast a new company reaches a list

Freshness is the other thing no city page measures. Spona's observed median lag from a first-seen event to the company being available is 6.4 hours. That is a measured median across the 286,713 companies, not a service promise. Most other sources refresh on a clock.

A business in the Los Angeles monthly file may be a month old when you see it. A vendor's "new" filter can reach back a year. The Census totals land about two weeks after month end and name no companies at all. If your pitch depends on being the first call, the refresh cycle picks your source before the price does.

Free list of new businesses: registries, city files and libraries

Three free routes exist, and none includes an email address. State registries record every entity formation. City offices publish license lists. Public libraries such as Fort Bend County's give cardholders a business database with a new-business file, which the FAQ covers.

Registries and city files give you the company name, an address and a date. The library database adds a phone and an executive's name. Registries name the registered agent and, in New York, the CEO; finding the owner is a separate step.

State business registries

Colorado publishes every entity registered with the Department of State since 1864 as one open dataset. It refreshes every day after midnight and sits in the public domain. Each record carries the formation date, the principal and mailing addresses and the registered agent's name and address. It carries no email or phone.

Florida's Sunbiz offers free daily files of "the filings added to our record that day", plus quarterly full files. They cover corporations, LLCs, limited partnerships and fictitious names, and the state offers them "as is".

New York's Active Corporations file holds about 4.3 million records, refreshed monthly, with the initial filing date, the CEO's name and the registered agent. Texas publishes Active Franchise Taxpayers: about 3.5 million rows with a responsibility beginning date, the Secretary of State charter date and a NAICS code.

The method is the same in each state that publishes a file. Download the file, sort by the formation or filing date and keep the newest rows. Rows filed this week are newly registered businesses. Rows filed last year are not, whatever a vendor calls them.

City business license lists

Chicago's business licenses dataset runs from 2002 to the present, updates daily and holds more than 1.2 million rows. Filter the application type to "ISSUE" to keep initial licenses and drop renewals. Los Angeles lists about 630,000 active businesses under a CC0 license, refreshed monthly, with a location start date and a self-reported NAICS code. Neither file names an owner, a phone or an email.

Smaller cities publish shorter lists. Arvada, Colorado, posts a monthly new business list and lets businesses opt out of it. Lexington, South Carolina, posts monthly PDFs of in-town licenses, with some months missing. A city file covers one city, so a seller that works a whole metro needs several of them, or a vendor.

Companies House for UK companies

Every UK limited company sits on one register, and three free tools read it. The advanced search filters on incorporation date and SIC code, so newly incorporated companies in one sector take a minute to pull. The free data product is a CSV of live companies, refreshed within five working days of the previous month end. The streaming API pushes changes in real time to anyone with an API key.

The register's gap is the sole trader. The UK has 3.1 million sole proprietorships, 55% of its private businesses, and none of them files at Companies House. A Companies House list misses the plumber, the consultant and the cafe. Leaving them out also sidesteps a consent problem, which the rules section explains.

Paid lists of new businesses: what vendors charge

Vendors sell what the free files lack: phone numbers, some emails and a national footprint. Each defines "new" its own way.

Four questions sort them.

• What does "new" mean, and is there a date field you can filter? LeadsPlease's recency filters run from daily to yearly, so a "new" record can be a year old.
• How often does the file refresh? LeadsPlease's page says monthly, weekly and daily in three places, so ask for one answer.
• How many records carry an email? LeadsPlease says not all new businesses have an email address yet, so ask every vendor for the share.
• Are the accuracy badges audited? LeadsPlease's "98%+" and Data HQ's "95%" are vendor statements, not audits.

Is it legal to email or call new businesses?

In the US, yes, if you follow CAN-SPAM for email and the telemarketing rules for calls. In the UK, it turns on who the recipient is: a company or a sole trader.

US email. CAN-SPAM covers every commercial message, and the FTC says the law makes no exception for business-to-business email. Each message needs a valid postal address and a working opt-out, honored within 10 business days. You cannot sell or transfer the addresses of people who opted out. Each separate email in violation can cost up to $53,088.

US calls. The Telemarketing Sales Rule's do-not-call provisions mostly stay out of the way. The FTC states that most calls to a business made to solicit sales from that business are exempt. Other violations of the rule still carry fines of up to $53,088 each. Before you text or autodial a mobile number, check the TCPA.

UK email. Under PECR, the ICO says you can email or text any corporate body without consent. You must say who you are and give an opt-out address. Sole traders and some partnerships count as individuals: they need consent, or the soft opt-in.

A Companies House company list holds corporate bodies, so it clears that first test. A vendor list of local shops may not.

UK calls. Screen every number against the CTPS and TPS registers and your own do-not-call list.

UK data. A named contact is personal data under UK GDPR, and the ICO says legitimate interests is "likely" to be the lawful basis for B2B marketing. The right to object "is absolute". If you bought the list, tell people where you obtained their data.

Reaching new businesses in their first 90 days

A new business list ages fast, so the order of work matters. Five steps.

1. Match the signal to your offer. A registration file catches a company before it has a bank account, so it suits banks, accountants, payroll and insurance. A city license suits point-of-sale, signage and local services. A new location suits fit-out, telecoms and staffing. A first-seen company suits any seller that wants companies that have just entered a B2B database.
2. Follow the launch order. The SBA's launch guide runs location, structure, name and registration, then tax IDs, licenses and permits, a bank account and insurance. A registration-date list reaches the owner while insurance is still on the to-do list; commercial insurance leads covers that play. A license-date list reaches them later.
3. Qualify on survival, not on age. Of establishments opened in one recent year, the BLS found 77.7% still open after one year and 66.6% after two. The SBA puts the five-year rate at 49.2%. Most registrations are one-person firms, so a second site or a first hire is a stronger qualifier than a formation date.
4. Reach the owner, not the agent. The free files name registered agents and, in New York, the CEO. Neither name comes with an email address. Run the file through an enrichment tool for a verified work email, or pick a vendor whose records carry one. Email the owner by name rather than a shared info@ address.
5. Refresh weekly, not quarterly. The daily files from Colorado, Florida and Chicago reward a weekly pull. A quarterly download hands your competitors a 12-week head start. In Spona, a search session costs 1,000 credits to open. New leads that match it then appear every week at the same price per lead. For prospecting in one area beyond new businesses, see local lead generation.

Spona and new businesses: fit and limits

Spona fits when you want the people, not just the entity. Its US first-seen companies carry 463,927 verified contacts, about 1.6 per company. The median lag of 6.4 hours from event to availability compares with a monthly cycle at many city files.

Data Enrichment adds a work email to a registry file you already downloaded. A lookup that returns nothing costs nothing, and a credit costs $0.008 to $0.01 by plan. Signal Search, which is coming soon, is the way to pull these signals directly. Today you cannot filter a search by first seen or new location; see Spona's pricing for what each search type costs.

Four limits. A Spona first-seen date is not a formation date. The state file is the legal record of when a company was formed, and it costs nothing. Pull the registry when compliance needs the date.

Spona's counts are recorded events, not official registrations, and they will not reconcile with Census or Companies House totals. LeadsPlease and Salesgenie sell postal records for mailers, and Spona is not a direct-mail tool. To email UK sole traders you need consent or the soft opt-in, whatever the source.

Get thousands of leads in 4 minutes.

Stop stitching tools together.
Start with verified sales data, delivered in minutes.

SCALE SALES NOW

No contracts · No setup · No onboarding

New business list FAQ

How do I find a list of new businesses?

Start with the free files for your state and city: the Secretary of State's registry, the city's license list and the library's Data Axle access. Sort by filing or issue date and keep the newest rows. For phones and emails, buy a vendor list, such as LeadsPlease's from $99.75, or enrich the free file. In the UK, use Companies House advanced search filtered by incorporation date.

Is there a free database of US business listings?

No single national government file exists. The Census counts EIN applications but publishes totals only. The nearest things are the state registries and city license files above, each a separate download. Some public libraries, such as Fort Bend County's, offer cardholders Data Axle Reference Solutions, a national business database.

Is there a list of new businesses in Texas?

Download the Texas Comptroller's Active Franchise Taxpayers file and sort by the Secretary of State charter date. The NAICS column narrows it to one sector, and the responsibility beginning date is a second date to sort on. The file names the taxpayer and its address, not the owner's phone or email.

Can the library give me a list of new businesses?

Yes, where the library subscribes. Data Axle Reference Solutions, which libraries license for cardholders, includes 2.2 million New Business records and lets users download and print lists. Sign in with your card number from the library's online resources page. Not every library subscribes, so check your own system's database list first.

How new are the businesses on a list?

As new as the definition and the refresh cycle allow. A monthly city file can show a business a month after its license issued, and a vendor's "new" filter can reach back a year. Spona's first-seen signal has an observed median lag of 6.4 hours, but first seen means first in the index, not newly formed. Check the date field before you trust the label.