The Department of Business Services at the Illinois Secretary of State keeps the register, and its database covers corporations, not for profit corporations, limited partnerships, limited liability companies and limited liability partnerships. The business entity search is unusual in how many doors it opens: business name, registered agent, president, secretary, manager, file number, keyword and partial word are all search methods, with an individual name search taking a surname, forename and middle initial.
What comes back is a File Detail Report, which the office calls the most requested information for a business entity and which costs nothing to read. It carries the official name, the date of formation or registration, the jurisdiction, the name of the registered agent and the address of the registered office, the status as active or inactive, and the names and addresses of the president and secretary for a corporation or of any managers for a limited liability company. A Certificate of Good Standing is bought from the same page. For Illinois businesses by place, see the Illinois county pages.
- Eight ways to search: name, registered agent, president, secretary, manager, file number, keyword and partial word.
- Officers in the free report: the File Detail Report names the president and secretary of a corporation or the managers of a limited liability company.
- Twenty five dollars, or five: a Certificate of Good Standing for a corporation or limited liability company, or for a not for profit.
- Individual searches only: bulk copying or downloading is prohibited and prosecuted under the computer tampering statutes.
Written by SearchSystems.net from Illinois's own systems: the Illinois Secretary of State business entity search, the business search and certificate of good standing page, the Department of Business Services annual report page, each read on October 15, 2026 by the SearchSystems editorial team.
Searching by the people, not the company
Most state registers index companies and leave the people out of the search. Illinois does the opposite, offering registered agent, president, secretary and manager as search methods alongside the business name, so a researcher with only an individual name can find the entities that person is attached to. The search form takes a surname, forename and middle initial for a person, or a business name instead. The keyword and partial word methods help with the other common problem, an entity name remembered imperfectly, and the file number method is there when a document or a notice has supplied it.
Between them the eight methods cover most of the ways a name arrives in front of a researcher.
What the File Detail Report contains
The report is free and it is the heart of an Illinois search. It gives the official name of the entity, which is often not quite the name in use; the date of formation or registration; the jurisdiction, which shows whether the company is an Illinois entity or a foreign one registered here; the name of the registered agent and the address of the registered office, which is the service address for legal process; and the status, active or inactive.
For a corporation it names the president and the secretary with their addresses, and for a limited liability company it names any managers with theirs. That last part is what makes the Illinois report more useful than most for due diligence, since the officer names come free with the lookup rather than requiring a paid filing copy.
Buying a Certificate of Good Standing
A Certificate of Good Standing confirms compliance with the Department of Business Services, and it is the document another state, a lender or a counterparty will ask for. The route is short: search the database to reach the company File Detail Report, purchase the certificate online, then print it from the link on the receipt page or from the link in the returned email. The price depends on the entity type, at twenty five dollars for a corporation or limited liability company and five dollars for a not for profit, which makes Illinois one of the cheaper states for a not for profit certificate.
Because the certificate is printed by the purchaser rather than posted, it is available the same minute the payment clears.
Checking whether a name is free
Illinois treats name availability as a two step process and is honest about the limits of the first step. Entering the official name in the search is the test: if a no records found result appears, the name may be available. The word may is doing real work there, because availability is decided when a filing is examined, not by the absence of a match. The office then publishes the reservation forms to take it further, with separate forms for business corporations, not for profit corporations and limited liability companies, completed and submitted to the Secretary of State.
For anyone naming a company, the sensible order is to search, reserve, and only then print stationery.
Individual searches only, and the criminal statutes behind it
Illinois states its terms of use more firmly than most states. The database is provided to the public for individual searches only, and the use of the website or database to copy or download bulk searches or information is prohibited. The reason it can afford to say so is that the information is also a product: pursuant to statute, the Department of Business Services offers information for sale, with a telephone number published for contract enquiries.
The warning then names the law. The information in the database is the property of the Office of the Secretary of State, and any unauthorized use, unauthorized access, removal of data, copying or downloading is prohibited by criminal statutes, including the offences of computer tampering and aggravated computer tampering at sections 16D-3 and 16D-4 of chapter 720 of the compiled statutes, with violators prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
Annual reports, and what a missing one means
The same office takes the annual reports that corporations, not for profit corporations and limited liability companies must file, and the filing can be made online. For a researcher, the annual report is the heartbeat of an Illinois record: an entity that has stopped filing will in time lose its active status, and the status field on the File Detail Report is the first thing to read. Where the status is inactive, the next question is what happened and when, which is a matter for the filing history rather than the summary report, and the office enquiry line is the route to that detail.
The external link notice
One small feature of the Illinois site is worth understanding, because it appears in the middle of a search. The office displays an external link disclaimer before sending a visitor to a site it does not own, stating that the Illinois Secretary of State is not responsible for any information, content or products on third party sites and that the linked site is not bound by its privacy policy. It appears on the business search pages because the search application and the certificate purchase sit on separate systems.
Seeing it does not mean a researcher has left the official register for a commercial lookalike, but it is a useful prompt to check the address before entering card details.
Questions about looking up a Illinois business
Related Illinois records
Illinois's other records guides on this site are the Illinois public records law guide for the Freedom of Information Act, the Illinois court records guide for the circuit clerks, the Illinois property records guide for the county recorders, and the Illinois county pages for every county office.