The 12 Best B2B Data Providers in the USA: No National Register (2026)

Here is the fact that shapes the entire US market: there is no national business register. A US business registers with one of 50 state authorities, each with its own system, formats, fees and rules, and there is no single identifier that ties it all together. A company can carry a federal tax number, several state entity numbers, a Dun & Bradstreet number and more, with no authoritative crosswalk between them.

So in America you are never really buying the register, because there isn't one. You are buying the work of stitching 50 states together and adding the layers the states never held: credit and payment behaviour, verification, revenue signals and contacts. That is what separates the providers on this page, from the century-old credit bureaus to the API-first startups verifying businesses in real time.

This guide ranks {count} providers on merit. We sell US business data ourselves, so our pitch sits in a marked box rather than at number one.

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1. Dun & Bradstreet: the identifier everyone references

The closest thing the US has to a universal business ID, and still the deepest trade-payment file.

Founded in 1841, Dun & Bradstreet assigns the D-U-N-S number that has become the de facto US business identifier, and it holds one of the largest contributory trade-payment files anywhere, which powers its PAYDEX score. In a country with no national register, that private numbering system does a job the government never took on. D&B was taken private by Clearlake Capital in August 2025, so it is no longer listed. Everything from credit to master data to prospecting sits under one roof, priced accordingly.

Jacksonville, Florida · Enterprise and self-serve tiers · Built on: D&B Data Cloud, Trade-payment contributors, Public records

3. Experian Business: credit at national scale

The broadest US business-credit file, claiming near-total coverage, and one you can partly buy self-serve.

Experian's commercial arm holds credit data on more than 25 million US businesses, with its Intelliscore Plus score built on trade payment data, public records and its participation in the Small Business Financial Exchange. For a lender or supplier assessing US counterparties, it is one of the two names, alongside D&B, that everyone knows. Single business-credit reports are sold self-serve for a few tens of dollars; the enterprise products are quoted.

Costa Mesa, California · Single reports from about $40, enterprise quoted · Built on: Trade-payment data, Public records, SBFE

4. Equifax Business: the small-business lender's bureau

Strongest where small-business lending decisions get made, deepened by the Ansonia acquisition.

Equifax's commercial unit built its position partly by managing the Small Business Financial Exchange database, and it bought Ansonia Credit Data in 2020, adding strong coverage of trade receivables in transportation and logistics. It blends commercial data with the consumer-credit signals lenders lean on when a young business has no track record of its own. For small-business lending and decisioning, this is the bureau to shortlist.

Atlanta, Georgia · Enterprise, quoted · Built on: SBFE, Trade-receivables data, Public records

5. Middesk: the modern KYB standard

The API that turned verifying a US business into a real-time call, and a fintech favourite for onboarding.

Founded around 2018, Middesk verifies US businesses in real time against the IRS, all 50 Secretaries of State, licensing bodies and watchlists, returning a clean identity decision through an API. It became the default KYB layer for a wave of fintechs and lenders precisely because the underlying state data is such a mess to assemble yourself. If your problem is onboarding a business account without a week of manual checks, this is the modern answer.

San Francisco, California · API, quoted · Built on: IRS, 50 Secretaries of State, Watchlists

6. OpenCorporates: the open-data unifier

The one place that unifies official records from all 50 states, with provenance, under an open licence.

OpenCorporates set out to do what the US government does not: unify official company records from all 50 states, and 140-plus jurisdictions worldwide, into one queryable file with clear provenance back to the source registry. Pricing is published and tiered, and it is free at scale for journalists, academics and NGOs. It maps registered entities cleanly; what it does not do is resolve who ultimately controls them or score their credit.

London, United Kingdom · API from about £2,250/yr, free for public benefit · Built on: 50 state registries, 140+ jurisdictions

7. Enigma: the revenue-signal specialist

Reads small-business health from card transactions, which no register or bureau can see.

Enigma covers roughly 49 million US businesses and, unusually, derives revenue and growth signals from aggregated card-transaction data, so it can estimate how a small business is actually trading rather than what it filed. That makes it valuable for underwriting the long tail of SMBs that have thin or no formal financials. It also sells identity and firmographic data for verification and prospecting.

New York, New York · API, quoted · Built on: Card-transaction data, Public records, Firmographics

8. LexisNexis Risk Solutions: the compliance heavyweight

The enterprise choice when KYB, AML and fraud all have to run off one deep public-records spine.

Part of RELX, LexisNexis Risk Solutions sits on one of the largest public-records and identity assets in the country, linked together by its proprietary identifiers. It covers business verification, beneficial ownership, watchlist and sanctions screening and business risk analytics, and it is a fixture in large financial institutions that need KYB and KYC on the same platform. Heavy and enterprise-priced, but hard to match on breadth.

Alpharetta, Georgia · Enterprise, quoted · Built on: Public records, Proprietary linking, Contributory data

9. Thomson Reuters CLEAR: the investigator's tool

Built for due diligence and investigations, not bulk data, and very good at connecting the dots.

CLEAR aggregates public and proprietary records across businesses, people, assets, licences, court and UCC filings and sanctions, with entity linking that surfaces the associations a plain lookup misses. It is built for investigators, due-diligence teams and fraud units rather than for prospecting or bulk enrichment, and its newer AI layer speeds up the research. If your question is who is really behind this business and what are they connected to, this is the tool.

US operations, Thomson Reuters · Enterprise, quoted · Built on: Public records, Court and UCC filings, Proprietary data

10. Creditsafe USA: the flat-rate challenger

Competes on the pricing model as much as the data: unlimited reports for a fixed subscription.

The US arm of the Creditsafe Group, founded in Allentown in 2012, brings the group's signature move to America: a flat annual subscription with unlimited reports rather than paying per pull, drawing on a global file of more than 400 million businesses. For a credit team running high volumes of checks, that changes the maths against the incumbents. Domestic depth is still growing against D&B and Experian, but the commercial model is genuinely different.

Allentown, Pennsylvania · Flat-rate subscription · Built on: Registry data, Financial statements, Trade-payment data

11. Data Axle: the prospecting compiler

The veteran marketing-list house, right for prospecting and enrichment, wrong for credit or KYB.

Founded in 1972 and known for years as InfoUSA and then Infogroup, Data Axle compiles US business and consumer marketing data from public records, directories and phone verification, and sells it through the Salesgenie brand and enterprise licences. It is a prospecting and enrichment source, not a credit bureau or an official register, so shortlist it for building outreach lists and cleaning a CRM rather than for risk decisions.

Papillion, Nebraska · Salesgenie subscriptions, enterprise quoted · Built on: Public records, Directories, Phone verification

12. Cobalt Intelligence: the real-time state-registry API

A focused API that pulls live from all 50 Secretary of State sites, popular with alternative lenders.

Cobalt Intelligence does one thing well: it pulls business records directly and in real time from each state's Secretary of State site, returning entity status, formation date, registered agent, filing history and officers across all 50 states. It found a niche with alternative business lenders and merchant-cash-advance underwriters who need current state-registration facts fast. Narrow, current and API-first, with no scoring layer.

United States · API subscription, usage-based · Built on: 50 Secretaries of State

Why US company data is so fragmented

None of this is an accident. The US never built a national register, and recent attempts to add one keep getting rolled back. The story in four moments:

The two kinds of US provider

The US market splits less by nationality than by era: century-old bureaus versus API-first startups verifying businesses in real time.

50 states, no register, no single ID

The thing to internalise about the US is that the register you are looking for does not exist. Businesses register with one of 50 state authorities, each with its own system and rules. Some states, like New York and Colorado, publish their whole file as free open data; others, like California and Texas, restrict or charge for bulk access; and Delaware, where two thirds of the Fortune 500 are incorporated, sells no bulk data and offers no API at all. Assembling a national picture means assembling 50 different ones.

There is no single identifier either. A business carries a federal tax number from the IRS, one or more state entity numbers, very likely a D-U-N-S number, possibly a government contracting ID and possibly a global LEI, with no authoritative crosswalk between them. And the one federal database people reach for, the securities regulator's EDGAR system, only covers public filers, which is a tiny slice of the roughly 40 million US businesses. Everything commercial on this page exists to bridge those gaps.

• State Secretaries of State : Each state runs its own business search. Free basic lookups; bulk access and APIs vary widely by state.
• SEC EDGAR : Free filings and financials, but only for public companies and other SEC filers, not private businesses.
• FinCEN Beneficial Ownership : The beneficial-ownership register. As of 2026, domestic US companies are exempt; only foreign reporting companies file.

Four questions before you sign anything

1. Do you need risk, or identity, or reach? These are three different buys. Credit and trade-payment risk points to D&B, Experian or Equifax. Real-time verification points to Middesk or Cobalt. Broad prospecting reach points to a compiler or a platform like ours. Very few teams need all three from one vendor.

2. How current does the state data have to be? State filings change constantly, and providers refresh at different speeds. If you are onboarding or lending, real-time pulls from the states matter. If you are building a marketing list, a periodic refresh is fine and far cheaper.

3. Are you assuming a single identifier exists? It does not. If you need to match records across sources, decide early whether you are keying on D-U-N-S, a state number or a tax number, and budget for the fact that none of them covers everything cleanly.

4. Does your target even appear in a formal source? Millions of small US businesses are registered only at state level with thin or no financials, and never appear in EDGAR or credit files. If they are your market, favour providers that model activity, like Enigma, over those that resell filings.

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