Navigating the Iowa and Louisiana Business Entity APIs

Iowa and Louisiana represent two fundamentally different approaches to providing business entity data to developers. Iowa offers a proper API with JSON responses and subscription pricing. Louisiana provides a web portal with CAPTCHA challenges and no programmatic access.

Understanding these differences illustrates why normalized business data across all 50 states requires more than just connecting to individual state systems. Each state makes its own decisions about data access, format, and pricing—creating a patchwork that's costly to navigate.

Iowa's "Business Entity Data API" vs. Louisiana's "Commercial API"

The contrast between these two states couldn't be starker, despite both maintaining substantial business registries.

Iowa's Subscription-Based API

The Iowa Secretary of State offers a fee-based API with structured data access.¹ The system provides:

• JSON-formatted responses with consistent field names • Authentication via token issued to subscribers • Well-documented endpoints including search and entity detail retrieval • Two subscription tiers: Monthly updates at $2,400/year or weekly updates at $10,400/year

The API covers business entity data that would otherwise require manual searches through the state's HTML interface. Iowa maintains records on over 600,000 business entities—both active and inactive—with information on filings, stock, addresses, agents, officers, and directors.²

For developers, Iowa's approach is refreshingly straightforward. The API returns JSON with a defined schema, authentication is simple token-based basic auth, and the documentation includes code samples showing how to make requests.

Sample Iowa API Response Structure:

{
  "businessNumber": "19862",
  "businessName": "ACME CORPORATION",
  "status": "Active",
  "type": "Domestic Profit",
  "formationDate": "1995-03-15",
  "registeredAgent": {
    "name": "John Smith",
    "address": "123 Main St, Des Moines, IA 50309"
  }
}

Louisiana's Web-Only geauxBIZ Portal

Louisiana takes a completely different approach. The state provides business entity searches through the coraweb portal and the geauxBIZ system, but neither offers API access for third-party verification.³

Key characteristics of Louisiana's system:

• Web interface only with no programmatic endpoints • CAPTCHA verification required for searches, blocking automated access • HTML response format that must be parsed if scraped • No subscription tier for bulk or commercial access • Manual process required for each lookup

The geauxBIZ platform serves Louisiana businesses well for registration and filing purposes—it's a collaborative system between the Secretary of State, Department of Revenue, and Workforce Commission.⁴ But for verification use cases, developers face significant obstacles.

Louisiana Search Limitations:

• No search filters to refine results
• 25 records per page with pagination required
• CAPTCHA on every search submission
• No bulk download or API access
• Results sorted alphabetically, not by relevance

[TABLE: Iowa vs. Louisiana API Comparison]

The Challenge of Normalizing Response Data

Even when states provide API access, the data they return doesn't follow a standard format. Building a verification system that works across multiple states means solving the normalization problem repeatedly.

Format Inconsistencies

Consider how different states structure the same basic information:

Iowa (JSON):

{
  "businessNumber": "19862",
  "status": "Active"
}

California (JSON with different field names):

{
  "entityNumber": "C1234567",
  "entityStatus": "ACTIVE"
}

Louisiana (HTML parsed into structure):

Entity Name: ACME LLC
Charter Number: 12345678
Status: Active

Each integration requires mapping these different formats to a common internal schema. The field names differ, the status terminology differs, and the data structures differ.

Status Term Translation

Status terminology varies significantly across jurisdictions:

• Iowa uses "Active," "Inactive," "Administratively Dissolved" • Louisiana uses "Active," "Inactive," "Delinquent," "Forfeited" • California uses "Active," "Suspended," "Dissolved," "Forfeited," "Surrendered" • Delaware uses "Good Standing," "Void," "Forfeited"

A verification system needs to understand that Louisiana's "Forfeited" and California's "Forfeited" may have similar implications, while Iowa's "Administratively Dissolved" maps to a specific set of lending risk considerations.

For guidance on building vs buying verification infrastructure, see our analysis of the engineering tradeoffs.

Data Completeness Varies

States publish different amounts of information:

• Iowa provides officer and director information • Louisiana provides officer and agent details • Some states restrict officer data for privacy reasons • Filing history depth varies from full historical records to recent filings only

Normalization must handle not just format differences but also data availability differences—returning null or placeholder values when states don't provide certain fields.

Unified Schema: One Response Format for All 50 States

The normalization challenge is precisely why unified API providers exist. Instead of building and maintaining 50+ individual integrations with their own mapping logic, a unified approach provides:

Consistent Field Names

Regardless of source state, you receive:

• entityName — Legal name as registered • entityNumber — State-assigned identifier • entityStatus — Normalized to Active/Inactive with raw status preserved • formationDate — Date of initial registration • registeredAgent — Name and address of agent for service • jurisdiction — State of registration

Standardized Status Interpretation

A unified API can translate state-specific terminology into consistent risk signals:

• Active/Good Standing: Entity can conduct business • Suspended/Administrative Hold: Entity has compliance issues but may be reinstateable • Dissolved/Void: Entity no longer exists as a legal entity • Forfeited: Rights have been revoked, often permanently

The raw status from the state is preserved for audit purposes, but the normalized interpretation enables consistent decision logic.

Handling Missing Data Gracefully

When states don't provide certain fields, a unified response:

• Returns null rather than omitting the field entirely • Maintains consistent schema structure across all queries • Indicates data availability per state for transparency • Allows downstream systems to implement fallback logic

Why State-by-State Integration Doesn't Scale

The Iowa and Louisiana comparison illustrates a fundamental truth about multi-state verification: each state is its own integration project.

Iowa Integration Requirements

Even with Iowa's developer-friendly API:

• Subscription costs: $2,400-$10,400 annually depending on update frequency • Authentication implementation: Token-based auth with secure storage • Response parsing: JSON schema understanding and validation • Error handling: API availability, rate limits, timeout scenarios • Maintenance: Schema changes, endpoint updates, pricing changes

Louisiana Integration Requirements

Without API access, Louisiana requires:

• Web scraping infrastructure: Headless browser capability for CAPTCHA handling • HTML parsing: Extracting structured data from unstructured pages • Session management: Maintaining state across multiple page interactions • Anti-bot circumvention: Residential proxies or CAPTCHA solving services • Constant maintenance: DOM changes break scrapers frequently

The Multiplication Effect

For a lender verifying businesses across all 50 states:

• States with good APIs (like Iowa): ~5-10 states, relatively straightforward • States with limited APIs: ~10-15 states, varying quality and access • States with web-only access (like Louisiana): ~25-35 states, scraping required

The total integration burden grows linearly with state count, but the maintenance burden grows worse as scrapers for web-only states break more frequently.

Practical Implications for Lenders

Understanding the Iowa/Louisiana contrast helps frame verification infrastructure decisions:

For Regional Lenders

If your business operates primarily in states with good API access:

• Direct integration may be feasible with manageable complexity • Subscription costs are predictable and reasonable for the data value • Maintenance burden is lower with well-documented APIs

For National Lenders

If you need coverage across all jurisdictions:

• State-by-state integration is impractical at scale • Scraping infrastructure requires dedicated engineering for web-only states • Unified API providers handle the complexity internally • Total cost of ownership favors the buy decision in most cases

For Growing Lenders

If you're expanding geographic coverage:

• Plan for heterogeneous access methods across your target states • Evaluate unified APIs early before building technical debt • Consider maintenance costs not just initial development

The Data Quality Equation

Both Iowa and Louisiana maintain accurate business registries. The difference isn't data quality—it's data accessibility.

Iowa's API makes high-quality data easy to consume programmatically. Louisiana's portal makes the same quality data available but imposes friction that doesn't scale.

For verification purposes, both states provide the authoritative answer about business registration status. The engineering question is how to access those answers efficiently across all the jurisdictions where your borrowers operate.

CTA: Need coverage across all 50 states? See how Cobalt normalizes data from every jurisdiction → Learn More

Sources:

• Iowa Secretary of State | Data API

• Iowa Secretary of State | Business Entities Search Help

• Louisiana Secretary of State | Commercial Search

• Cobalt Intelligence | Louisiana Business Search Guide 2024

• Cobalt Intelligence | Iowa Business Search Guide 2024

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