California - Topograph

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This guide contains public integration notes for California. Use it for identifier formats, search behavior, and country-specific caveats. The live source of truth for coverage, pricing, data sources, documents, legal forms, roles, and status values is the pricing page.

California coverage, pricing, and sources

Open the current catalog for supported datapoints, documents, sources, identifiers, and availability.

This jurisdiction may be in preview or limited availability. Check the live pricing page or contact support before relying on it in production.

Country details below are preserved as integration notes. If a table or example conflicts with the live pricing page, use the pricing page as the source of truth and contact support.

Data Sources
Company Identifiers
Search Capabilities
Quirks & Gotchas
Mappings
- Legal Forms
- Officer Roles
Data Availability

API access: US-CA is not yet part of the public countryCode enum. Contact us to enable it on your workspace. Requests sent with countryCode: "US-CA" will otherwise return 400 until the enum is expanded.

Data Sources

California data is read live from the California Secretary of State bizfileOnline portal (bizfileonline.sos.ca.gov). The register covers domestic and foreign corporations (stock, non-profit, professional, statutory close, cooperative), limited liability companies, limited partnerships, limited liability partnerships, and registered general partnerships. The free public portal exposes: legal name, entity number, entity type, status, formation date, jurisdiction, registered agent (name, type, and address), principal office address, and mailing address.

Officer and manager rosters. v1 returns the registered agent only. Corporate officers, LLC managers, and member rosters require parsing the paid Statement of Information document and are not yet extracted. See the Data Availability table for the roadmap item.

LLC manager visibility. California required LLC Statements of Information to be filed through bizfileOnline starting 2022. LLC entities that have not refiled since then carry only their formation cover sheet with no manager or member data. Corporations are not affected.

Fast / onboarding mode. v1 serves all requests from the live portal (verification mode). A fast non-authoritative path backed by the Secretary of State bulk extract is on the roadmap for a future release.

Company Identifiers

Query Identifiers

Identifier Type	Format	Example	Notes
California Entity Number	4–12 alphanumeric characters, optional letter prefix	`C0806592`	Primary identifier assigned by the California Secretary of State. Corporations use a 7-digit number often prefixed `C`; LLCs use a 12-digit number starting with the formation year.

Pass the legal name when searching by entity number. bizfileOnline’s name-search index is the only way to resolve an entity number to its internal record. A bare numeric query returns zero results. See Search Capabilities for details.

Identifiers in API Response

Identifier	Format	Example	Found In
`entityNumber`	4–12 alphanumeric characters	`C0806592`	All entities

Search Capabilities

Search Type	Pattern	Example	Match Type	Expected Results
By Name	2–250 chars	`"Acme Corporation"`	Contains (case-insensitive)	Multiple results
By Entity Number	4–12 alphanumeric	`C0806592`	Resolved via name variants, then exact suffix match	Single result when found

Entity number search. bizfileOnline’s search index is name-based only. Searching by entity number works by expanding the number into name-stem variants and filtering results for an exact entity-number match. This means lookup by entity number is slower than lookup by name and may return no result if the entity’s legal name cannot be reconstructed from the number alone. Prefer name-based queries where possible.

Best-match picker. When multiple entities share the same legal name (for example an older merged-out entity and the current active one), the API prefers the entity with an exact name match and an Active status. If no Active match exists, it falls back to any exact name match, then to the first result.

Quirks & Gotchas

Quirk	Details
Entity number is not a direct lookup key	bizfileOnline has no endpoint that maps a public entity number to its internal record directly. The API resolves entity-number queries through name-search variants. If only the entity number is available, pass it via `/v2/search` first to retrieve the legal name, then use the legal name for the profile call.
Duplicate entity numbers under different internal records	A bare numeric entity number (stripped of the `C` prefix and leading zeros) may collide with an unrelated internal record on the portal. The API always resolves through name-search to avoid returning the wrong entity.
No state-wide open-data feed	California publishes no free statewide register extract equivalent to the open-data feeds available for New York or Pennsylvania. v1 reads the live portal only.
LLC managers are dark for pre-2022 entities	Entities that have not filed a Statement of Information through bizfileOnline since 2022 carry no manager or member data on the portal. The API returns an empty `legalRepresentatives` array for these entities rather than an error.
No shareholder or UBO register	California does not publish shareholders or beneficial owners for any entity type. Federal FinCEN beneficial ownership records under the Corporate Transparency Act are access-restricted to authorized recipients.
No activity codes	Industry classification codes (NAICS, NACE, ISIC) are not collected by the California Secretary of State.
Paid documents not yet available	Certified Certificates of Status and certified copies of filed documents are available from the Secretary of State at a fee. These are not yet offered through Topograph. The Trade Register Extract (printed portal detail page) is included at no extra charge with the company-data block.

Mappings

Legal Forms

Legal form is read from the Entity Type field on the bizfileOnline detail page. bizfile renders the label in <Type> - <Jurisdiction> - <Sub> form (for example Stock Corporation - CA - General). The full label is preserved in legalForm.localName; standardization matches on the leading category.

California entity types and standardized forms

bizfile Entity Type (leading category)	Standardized	ISO 20275
Stock Corporation	Corporation	`ECSB`
Professional Corporation	Corporation
Statutory Close Corporation	Corporation
Non-Profit Corporation	NonprofitOrganization
Cooperative Corporation	Cooperative
Limited Liability Company	LimitedLiabilityCompany	`2HBR`
Limited Partnership	Partnership	`LPNL`
Limited Liability Partnership	Partnership	`LLP`
General Partnership	Partnership
Other / unrecognized label	Other

bizfile occasionally surfaces niche entity types (Land Trust, Massachusetts Trust). These fall through with standardized: Other and the full local label preserved. For the complete and current list of legal forms, see the pricing page.

Officer Roles

v1 returns the registered agent only. When officer and manager data becomes available in a future release, role titles will be free-text strings from the Statement of Information. Topograph normalizes each raw title through AI enrichment to produce a standardized role label, English translation, and ISO 5009 code where one exists.

Common Title	Standardized	Notes
Chief Executive Officer	ChiefExecutiveOfficer	CA corporations
President	President
Secretary	Secretary	Statutory corp officer
Chief Financial Officer	ChiefFinancialOfficer
Manager	Manager	LLC manager-managed
Managing Member	Member	LLC member-managed
General Partner	GeneralPartner	Limited partnerships
Registered Agent	Other	Receives service of process; no authority to bind the entity

Data Availability

Data Point	Available	Notes
Company name	Yes	Current legal name
Company status	Yes	Active, Suspended (FTB), Dissolved, Cancelled, etc.
Standing flags	Yes	SOS, FTB, Agent, and VCFCF standing returned separately
Registration date	Yes	Initial filing date
Legal address	Yes	Principal office address and mailing address
Jurisdiction (formed in)	Yes	CA for domestic entities; state or country of formation for foreign qualifications
Legal form	Yes	bizfile entity-type label, standardized to Topograph category
Registered agent	Yes	Name, type (Individual or Corporation), and address
Legal representatives	Roadmap	v1 returns the registered agent only. Officers, LLC managers, and members require the Statement of Information and are not yet extracted.
Trade Register Extract	Yes	Printed bizfileOnline detail page, included at no extra charge with the company-data block
Certified Certificate of Status	No	Available from the Secretary of State at a fee; not yet offered through Topograph
Activity codes	No	Not collected by the California Secretary of State
Shareholders	No	Not published
UBOs	No	No public state-level beneficial ownership register
Financial data	No	Not collected

Example API Responses

Search by Name

curl -X POST "https://api.topograph.co/v2/search?country=US-CA&query=Acme+Innovations" \
  -H "x-api-key: YOUR_API_KEY"

[
  {
    "id": "C1234567",
    "legalName": "ACME INNOVATIONS, INC.",
    "countryCode": "US-CA",
    "matchReason": {
      "matchType": "default"
    },
    "address": {
      "region": "CA",
      "countryCode": "US"
    }
  }
]

Search by Entity Number

curl -X POST "https://api.topograph.co/v2/search?country=US-CA&query=C1234567" \
  -H "x-api-key: YOUR_API_KEY"

[
  {
    "id": "C1234567",
    "legalName": "ACME INNOVATIONS, INC.",
    "countryCode": "US-CA",
    "matchReason": {
      "matchType": "id"
    }
  }
]

Company Profile

curl -X POST "https://api.topograph.co/v2/company" \
  -H "x-api-key: YOUR_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"countryCode": "US-CA", "id": "C1234567", "dataPoints": ["company", "legalRepresentatives"], "mode": "verification"}'

{
  "company": {
    "id": "C1234567",
    "countryCode": "US-CA",
    "identifiers": { "entityNumber": "C1234567" },
    "legalName": "ACME INNOVATIONS, INC.",
    "registrationDate": "2005-03-14",
    "status": {
      "localName": "Active",
      "active": true
    },
    "legalForm": {
      "localName": "Stock Corporation - CA - General",
      "standardized": "Corporation"
    },
    "legalAddress": {
      "addressLine1": "123 MARKET STREET SUITE 400",
      "city": "SAN FRANCISCO",
      "postalCode": "94105",
      "region": "CA",
      "countryCode": "US"
    }
  },
  "legalRepresentatives": [
    {
      "role": {
        "localName": "Agent",
        "standardized": "Other"
      },
      "name": "CALIFORNIA AGENT SERVICES LLC",
      "address": {
        "addressLine1": "500 CORPORATE DR",
        "city": "SACRAMENTO",
        "postalCode": "95814",
        "region": "CA",
        "countryCode": "US"
      }
    }
  ]
}

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California coverage, pricing, and sources

​Table of Contents

​Data Sources

​Company Identifiers

​Query Identifiers

​Identifiers in API Response

​Search Capabilities

​Quirks & Gotchas

​Mappings

​Legal Forms

​Officer Roles

​Data Availability

​Example API Responses

​Search by Name

​Search by Entity Number

​Company Profile

Start here

Table of Contents

Data Sources

Company Identifiers

Query Identifiers

Identifiers in API Response

Search Capabilities

Quirks & Gotchas

Mappings

Legal Forms

Officer Roles

Data Availability

Example API Responses

Search by Name

Search by Entity Number

Company Profile