The Division of Corporations of the Florida Department of State runs what it calls the official business entity index and commercial activity website of the state. Its search records page is not one search but six sets of them. Corporations, limited liability companies, limited partnerships and trademarks come first, searchable by name, by officer or registered agent, by registered agent alone, by trademark name, by trademark owner, by federal employer identification number, by document number, by zip code and by street address.
Beside them sit five further indexes: fictitious names, general and limited liability partnerships, judgment liens, federal lien registrations and cable franchises. That mix matters for research, because a judgment lien against a debtor or a federal tax lien registration can be found in the same place as the company record, rather than in a separate court index. Searching and viewing the filed document images cost nothing. For Florida businesses by place, see the Florida county pages.
- Nine ways into the company index: name, officer, registered agent, trademark, trademark owner, tax number, document number, zip code and street address.
- Liens in the same system: judgment liens and federal lien registrations are searchable by debtor name beside the entity records.
- Eight seventy five: the fee for a certificate of status and for a certified copy, with a plain photocopy ten dollars.
- Three annual reports shown: the detail page lists the year and filing date of the last three annual reports where there are any.
Written by SearchSystems.net from Florida's own systems: the Florida Division of Corporations search records page, the corporation records search guide, the fictitious name search guide, the federal lien registration search guide, the general and limited liability partnership search guide, the division certification pages, the division corporate fee schedule, each read on October 15, 2026 by the SearchSystems editorial team.
Searching the way the index is built
The division publishes its own search technique, and following it saves most of the frustration. For an individual, enter the surname, forename and middle initial, and partial names are acceptable, so Doe, J will find John A. Doe; punctuation is optional. For an entity, a keyword is better than the whole name, so Little Red Sch will reach Little Red School House, Inc. The records are indexed in alphabetical order and the filings closest to the search criteria are listed first, so where no exact match appears the previous list and next list controls walk through the names indexed either side.
Clicking a name opens the detailed record. And one small trap is spelled out twice: in a document number, use the digit zero, because the letter is not accepted, and the message record not found means the number does not exist in the records rather than that the search failed.
What the detail page actually tells you
The record behind a name is fuller than most state registers. It carries the six or twelve digit document number the division assigned when the entity or registration was filed, the federal employer identification number, the date the document was filed, the state of domicile, and the status of the filing, such as active or inactive. It shows the effective date where the entity existence began on a date other than the filing date, and the last event with the owner name, address, federal identification number and charter or document number, together with the dates that event was filed and took effect.
It names the current registered agent with an address, lists the names, addresses and titles of the current officers, directors and managers, and gives the year and date of filing of the last three annual reports where there are any. For a researcher, the annual report history is the quickest read on whether a company is being maintained.
The images, and how to get them
Every record detail page carries a list of the document filings behind it, and each one can be opened. The division offers a view in portable document format for reading on screen, and a download of the image file for keeping, after which the document can be saved or printed. There is no charge for any of this, which is what makes the Florida index useful for due diligence rather than merely for confirming a name: the articles of incorporation, the amendments, the dissolution and the annual reports can all be read as filed.
A certified version of the same document, the one another agency or a court will accept as evidence, has to be ordered and paid for.
Fictitious names, partnerships and cable franchises
The company index does not cover trading names, so Florida keeps a separate fictitious name register, searchable by fictitious name, by owner name, by owner charter number, by owner federal identification number, by county for the prior week, and by detail by registration number. General and limited liability partnerships have their own index, searchable by partnership name, by agent or partner name, by partnership federal identification number and by document number.
And the division runs a cable franchise index, searchable by franchise name or number, with a list of every Florida cable franchise available by name or in detail. The county for prior week option on the fictitious name search is the one to know about for anyone monitoring new trading names in a particular county.
Liens against a debtor
Two of the indexes are about money owed rather than about companies. The judgment lien index is searchable by debtor name and by lien document number. The federal lien registration index is searchable by debtor name and by document number, and the results are specific: the debtor name and address, the corporate federal identification number where one was given, the status of the lien and the type of filing. The same search technique applies, with partial names accepted, so First South will reach The First Southern Apartments, LTD, LLP.
The detail page for a registration carries its own document list, so the lien paperwork itself can be viewed and printed in the same way as a corporate filing.
What certification costs
Four certification services sit on the division fee schedule. A certificate of status costs eight dollars seventy five, and can be ordered online or requested in writing. A certified copy of a filing also costs eight dollars seventy five, and must be requested in writing. A plain photocopy costs ten dollars, which is more than the certified version and a reminder to use the free images where possible. And the division runs an online validation service for checking a certificate of status that someone has produced, excluding fictitious name certificates.
A written request for a certified copy must include the entity name, the Florida document or registration number, the document type such as articles of incorporation, an amendment or a dissolution, the date the document was filed, and payment by cheque or money order payable to the Florida Department of State, in United States currency drawn on a United States bank, sent to the certification section.
The email warning on every page
Florida prints a notice at the foot of each of these pages that is worth taking seriously before contacting the division. Under Florida law, email addresses are public records, so anyone who does not want their address released in response to a public records request is told not to send electronic mail to the entity, and to contact the office by telephone or in writing instead. It is a small point with a wide reach: the state transparency statute that makes the business index free and complete also makes correspondence with the agency disclosable.
The division also offers a separate apostille and notarial certification service for documents going abroad, and publishes its own fee schedules for corporations, limited liability companies and limited partnerships.
Questions about looking up a Florida business
Related Florida records
Florida's other records guides on this site are the Florida public records law guide for the Sunshine Law, the Florida court records guide for the clerks of court, the Florida property records guide for the county recorders and property appraisers, and the Florida county pages for every county office.