Business License Research
Finding out which licenses your city, county, and state want.
What it actually is
A report identifying the licenses and permits your specific business needs at federal, state, county, and city level. It is research, not filing — you still apply for and pay for each license yourself.
Do you need it?
Depends entirely on what you do and where. A consultant working from a laptop may need almost nothing; anything involving food, alcohol, vehicles, firearms, childcare, or a trade licence is a different story.
What changes if you’re in uniform
Two things that catch service members out. First, licensing is intensely local, so a PCS can invalidate the answer you got at your last duty station. Second, if you hold a professional licence, portability across states is its own separate problem with its own rules — that is a different question from business licensing and worth handling separately.
Doing it yourself
You file with
SBA's licensing guidance, then your state, county, and city
- Start with the SBA's licenses-and-permits guidance for the federal picture.
- Check your state's business licensing portal, then county, then city — all three levels can apply.
- Ask the specific regulator for your industry rather than a general business office.
Cost: Researching costs nothing but time. Each licence you then need carries its own fee set by the issuing authority.
Our call
Genuinely tedious to do yourself across three levels of government, which is the honest argument for paying someone. Just be clear you are buying a list, not the licences.
If you’d rather pay someone
Bizee lists business license research at $99 as of 11 August 2026. You still pay any state fee on top of that.
Affiliate link — we earn a commission, you pay the same price.