How do you verify a US business entity against Secretary of State records?

To verify a US business entity against Secretary of State records, look it up by its state registry number, not its name, and read that state's status label. The name is not a unique key: at least 20.8 million US entities share their exact legal name, so the registry number is what confirms you have the right one.

What verifying against Secretary of State records means

A US company is chartered by a state, not the federal government, so the authoritative record of whether it exists and is in good standing lives in that state's registry. There is no national business registry to query. The record you verify against is held by the Secretary of State, or an equivalent office such as a Department of State or Secretary of the Commonwealth, in the one state where the entity is registered.

Verifying an entity means confirming three things against that record: that the entity exists as filed, that it is currently in good standing, and that the record you found is the specific company you meant. The last point is the one most checks get wrong, because they match on the name.

Why a name is not enough to verify a business

A legal name does not uniquely identify a US business entity. At least 20.8 million entities, more than one in five of the 91.9 million on file across the 50 state registries, share their exact legal name with at least one other entity. Nearly 3.9 million (4.3%) share a name with another entity registered in the same state. State offices only guarantee a name is distinguishable within their own state and only among currently active entities, so the same name gets reused from one state to the next and over the years.

The effect is easy to see in common names.

A search for "JOHN SMITH LLC" returns six different companies in six states, each a separate legal entity with its own filing. MARSH USA INC., a national insurance brokerage, is the opposite case: that one name appears as 117 separate registry records across 36 states, most of them registrations to do business in a new state. Either way, the name alone cannot tell you which record is the company you are verifying.

These are floor figures. The counts come from exact, case-sensitive matches on the normalized legal name across 91,852,971 entity records on file as of July 2026, one record per state registry number. Near-matches such as "Smith, L.L.C." are counted as different names, so the real collision rate is higher, not lower.

The registry number is the identifier that verifies

Every state assigns each entity a registry number when it is formed. That number is unique within the state, it stays with the entity, and it is what distinguishes two same-named companies. It is the join key you verify on.

The formats do not agree across states, so read the number as the state writes it: Delaware issues a plain seven-digit number like 856429, Georgia prefixes a letter (H950810), Washington spaces its digits (601 291 585), Nevada packs the year into the string (NV20232807283), and Wyoming leads with the formation year (1994-000291097). When you record an entity for later re-verification, store the pair of jurisdiction code and registry number, never the name.

THE HOME DEPOT, INC. shows why. Search that name and you find 19 separate registry records across 17 states, each with its own registry number: Georgia's H950810, Delaware's 856429, New York's 893553, and so on. Two of those states hold two records apiece under the name. To verify a particular registration you have to name the state and match on its number. The shared legal name gets you to a pile of records, not to one company.

"Active" does not mean one thing across states

Once you have the right record, confirming it is in good standing is not a simple yes or no, because each registry uses its own status wording. Across Home Depot's 19 records, Georgia reads "Active/Compliance," Florida "Inactive," Rhode Island "Revoked Authority," and New Hampshire "Admin. Suspension." California packs five separate flags into one string: "Terminated; SOS:Good; FTB:Good; Agent:Not Good; VCFCF:Good."

None of these are errors. They are each state's vocabulary for a genuine regulatory condition, from voluntary withdrawal to administrative dissolution for an unpaid annual fee. Verifying status means reading the label the state assigns and mapping it to what you need to know, rather than looking for a single word like "active."

The state you search may not be the state of formation

A company registered in the state you searched may have been formed somewhere else. When a business operates outside its home state, it registers there as a foreign entity, which is why Marsh appears in 36 states and Home Depot in 17. A foreign registration is a real, verifiable record, but its status reflects that company's standing in that one state, not whether the company exists.

To verify the entity itself, find the domestic registration in its state of formation. The domicile field on the record marks whether a registration is domestic or foreign, and points you toward the chartering state. A foreign registration confirms a company is authorized to do business in that state; the domestic one, in the state that chartered it, confirms the company exists at all.

How to verify a US business entity, step by step

1. Identify the state where the entity is registered. For a foreign-qualified company, note that its state of formation may differ from where it operates.
2. Search that state's Secretary of State registry. The NASS corporations directory links all 50 official portals, and searching them is free.
3. Confirm identity by the registry number, not the name. Record the jurisdiction code and registry number together as the durable key.
4. Read the status in the state's own wording and map it to what it means, whether active, dissolved, or something in between, rather than assuming a shared vocabulary.

Verifying entities at scale with an API

Verifying one company is a free registry search. Verifying thousands, or re-checking them every month, means doing that across many states at once and reconciling their formats. GovFiles normalizes all 50 state registries into one schema keyed by jurisdiction code and registry number, so a verification lookup is a single request and the status field is normalized across states while the state's original wording is preserved.

# Look up one entity by jurisdiction code + registry number
curl -H "X-API-Key: $KEY" \
  "https://api.govfiles.dev/v2/companies/us_ga/H950810"

{
  "jurisdiction_code": "us_ga",
  "entity_number": "H950810",
  "legal_name": "THE HOME DEPOT, INC.",
  "status": "active",
  "legal_form": "corporation",
  "formed_on": "1979-03-26",
  "parties": [
    { "name": "CSC of Cobb County, Inc.", "roles": [{ "kind": "registered_agent" }] }
  ]
}

To resolve a name to the right entity first, POST /v2/companies/search with q and an optional jurisdictions filter returns the candidate records so you can pick by registry number.

Frequently asked

How do you verify a US business entity against Secretary of State records? Find the state where the entity is registered, look it up by that state's registry number rather than by name, and read the status label that state assigns. A name match is not enough: at least 20.8 million US entities share their exact legal name with another entity, so the registry number is the identifier that confirms you have the right company.

Can two businesses have the same name? Yes, and it is common. At least 20.8 million US business entities, more than one in five of the 91.9 million on file, share their exact legal name with at least one other entity. Nearly 3.9 million share a name with another entity registered in the same state. Names are unique only within a state and only against currently active entities, which is why the state registry number, not the name, is the reliable key.

Is a name match enough to confirm a company is legitimate? No. Because millions of entities share a name, a name match can point at the wrong company or at a dissolved record. Confirm the entity by its state registry number, check that the status in that state's own wording means active, and confirm the state of formation, since a company you find in one state may be a foreign registration of a company formed elsewhere.

Is Secretary of State business information public? Yes. The legal name, registry number, status, formation date, and registered agent are part of the public record filed with each state's Secretary of State or equivalent office. Searching a single state's registry is free. The National Association of Secretaries of State maintains a directory of the 50 state business-registry portals.