About the data

How each signal is built

Every state page names one of a few signals, read from whatever the state itself publishes:

• Pending application -- a license application has been filed and is awaiting action. Pulled from the agency's own applications list or queue, not from a news report or a reseller.
• Newly licensed -- a license has been issued. Some states publish an application or issue date directly; others publish only a current roster, in which case "new" means "not present in our last pull" -- see the freshness note below.
• Hearing / notice scheduled -- a public hearing or comment-period notice has been posted, which is itself a public record ahead of a license being issued or denied.

The method varies by state -- an open-data portal, a downloadable file the agency itself publishes, a public search form, a public dashboard, or a posted notice -- because every state shapes its own public record differently. Each state's page names its exact source.

Sourcing rules

• Every row traces back to a state, county or municipal government's own public record -- never a third-party reseller or aggregator.
• Nothing is fabricated. An empty page says so plainly ("no rows collected yet") instead of showing placeholder rows.
• Each state page links its official source so you can verify any row yourself.

Freshness

• States marked “municipal” (for example Massachusetts and Georgia) have no single statewide list -- licenses are issued by hundreds of local boards. Those states are covered by an ongoing local-authority crawl, not a daily statewide feed, and coverage grows a handful of authorities at a time rather than all at once.
• States whose “new” signal comes from comparing today's pull to what we saw before (rather than a native application or issue date) mark every row as first-seen on the very first run for that state, with is_new recorded as false. That is expected seeding behavior the first time a state goes live, not a sign of a sudden burst of activity.
• Reporting cadence varies by state and is outside our control. Wisconsin's data depends on municipal clerks reporting to the state, which some towns do as infrequently as once a year, so “newly licensed” there can lag real-world issuance by months. Each state's own last-run timestamp is shown so this is visible rather than hidden.
• A state can move backwards (built -> blocked) if a source changes without notice. This page reflects the last successful run, not a guarantee the source will stay up.

Every state page, the weekly pages, and the coverage page show the last successful run for that state, plus a cadence badge -- daily, weekly or monthly -- that reflects how often the underlying source itself refreshes, not just how often we poll it.

What redaction means

Anyone can see the shape of recent activity for a state -- city, county, license type, status and date -- without an account. On a state's page and its weekly pages, the three oldest rows in the visible window are shown in full so you can confirm the data is real; every newer row has the business name and street address hidden until you subscribe with a plan that includes that state, or sign in with an active API key entitled to it.

Kansas

Kansas is not covered. Kansas law (K.S.A. 45-230) restricts selling lists of names and addresses drawn from public records for solicitation, and the state's own lookup tool requires a certification to that effect. We don't ship data we can't stand behind -- see the Kansas row on the coverage page.