Free public sources for local businesses
The no-key public registers behind the Leads lens for local businesses and licensed professionals, what each one supplies, the rules OmniLead follows for each, and how to filter by them.
The Leads lens can find local businesses and licensed professionals, such as plumbers, HVAC contractors, dentists or real estate brokers, from official public registers and OpenStreetMap. These sources are free, need no account or API key, and work in every workspace.
Every value keeps the link to the record it came from and the date OmniLead fetched it, the same as every other source. See Provenance explained.
The sources
Florida publishes its licensee lists as large files rather than a search API, so OmniLead imports them in the background each week. Florida results appear in ordinary directory search without a live lookup.
OpenStreetMap takes longer to answer than a live search waits, so OmniLead asks it in the background. While it runs, the results say Searching local businesses… and refresh on their own. Its listings usually appear within a minute. Each page of results still costs 1 credit once, and a page with no results costs nothing.
Filter by category, license and place
The Leads lens has filters for these sources:
- Business category: plumbers, HVAC contractors, electricians, roofers, real estate, dentists, restaurants and more. A category searches the matching OpenStreetMap tags, NPI specialties and license types together.
- License type and License status: for records from state license data. Status is Active unless you choose otherwise; OmniLead only collects active licenses from these sources.
- State and City: where the business or licensee is. City matches the city in the listing, in any capitalization, and cities whose name contains it.
You can also type a plain search such as plumbers in Denver, CO or real estate brokers in Albany, NY. OmniLead reads the category, city and state from it.
People in some states aren't collected
OmniLead doesn't collect person-level data from these sources for individuals whose published address is in California, Vermont, Texas or Oregon. Businesses and organizations in those states are listed normally.
Where a source allows it, the rule is applied in the request itself, so those rows are never fetched. For example, the NPI Registry is only asked for individual providers when your search names a state outside those four. Any such row that still arrives is dropped before it's stored.
For people who are listed, OmniLead keeps the city, state and ZIP code from the record, never a street address, since a licensee's mailing address can be a home.
Rules for each source
- NPI Registry. CMS publishes this data under the Freedom of Information Act. OmniLead reads the practice-location phone, never fax numbers, and asks for at most four pages per search.
- OpenStreetMap. Data is © OpenStreetMap contributors and licensed under the Open Database License. OmniLead shows that credit wherever OpenStreetMap data appears. A search needs a category and a city, so it never scans a whole state. Requests are spaced at least a second apart, and the city boundary lookup is cached.
- New York. The OPEN-NY terms allow any lawful use. The datasets hold active licenses only.
- Washington. Washington law (RCW 42.56.070(8)) limits providing lists of individuals for commercial purposes, so OmniLead only lists contractor businesses. Sole proprietors and the names of principals are never collected.
- Colorado. The Colorado Information Marketplace asks apps that use its data to show the State's disclaimer, which OmniLead shows with Colorado records. The separate Colorado dataset for electricians and plumbers says it's intended for research purposes only, so OmniLead doesn't use it.
- Florida. DBPR provides these files as public records under Chapter 119, Florida Statutes. Only active licenses are imported.
Duplicates across sources
The same business often appears in more than one source, for example a plumbing contractor's license and its OpenStreetMap listing. OmniLead merges them into one profile when they share a phone number, a website domain, or the same normalized name in the same city and state. Each field keeps its own source, so you can still see which register said what.
Removing data
These records follow the same opt-out rules as everything else in OmniLead. Anyone can remove their data through the public opt-out portal. See Where our data comes from.