LicenseCheck

Coverage — and what we can’t cover

We only include states with a genuine live, free, queryable API over their alcohol licence register. Everything here was tested directly. Where a state is missing, this is why.

3
states with a live API
492,986
licence records queryable right now
0
rows stored by us
StateStatusDetail
Texas
TX
Live APITABC — Socrata API, 126,337 records, daily
New York
NY
Live APISLA — Socrata API, 60,005 active + pending + inactive, daily, 98% geocoded
Connecticut
CT
Live APIDCP — Socrata API, 306,644 permits across 5 datasets + enforcement
California
CA
Bot-blockedABC returns HTTP 403 to any non-browser client. No dataset on the state open-data portal.
Florida
FL
Files onlyDBPR licensee download page returns 404. No queryable feed.
Washington
WA
Files onlyLCB publishes dated .xlsx workbooks only. Nothing on the state Socrata portal.
Delaware
DE
Bot-blockedEntity and licence search behind CAPTCHA.
Oregon
OR
Files onlyOLCC datasets are registered on Socrata but are non-tabular file links — a query returns "no row or column access to non-tabular tables".
Missouri
MO
Fragment onlyOpen-data "New Liquor Licenses" contains 388 rows. The 313,312-row set is products with assigned wholesalers, not licences. No retail register.
Colorado
CO
No APINo liquor licence dataset found on the state open-data portal.
Other 40 states
No APINo free, live, queryable retail alcohol licence API found. Most publish a search form only, some charge per lookup.

Why we don’t just scrape the rest

A scraped copy of a licence register goes stale immediately, and a stale licence record is worse than none — someone checking whether a permit is current needs today’s answer, not last quarter’s. Everything on this site is fetched from the state at the moment you load the page. That constraint is why coverage is three states instead of fifty, and we would rather be narrow and right.

What would change this

Any state publishing a queryable feed over its register. Our source registry is a configuration file; adding a state is a matter of mapping its field names, not rebuilding the site. We re-test the blocked and file-only states periodically.

Requested but not available

Missouri is the one people ask about most. Its open-data portal has a dataset called “New Liquor Licenses” that looks right until you count it: 388 rows, and they are recent issuances rather than a register. The largest Missouri alcohol dataset, at 313,312 rows, is a product list with assigned wholesalers. There is no Missouri retail licence register available as open data, so there is no honest Missouri section to build.