Free data: new business formations by state and county

Monthly counts of new business registrations in 15 states, October 2024 to September 2026, counted from official state registry records. Free to download and reuse with credit to ListRiver. The files hold counts only, not business records.

New businesses by state

One row per state and month. CSV, UTF-8, first row is the column names.

Columns: month, state, state_code, new_businesses

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New businesses by county

One row per county and month, for the states that publish a county. CSV, UTF-8, first row is the column names.

Columns: month, state, state_code, county, new_businesses

Download CSV

Using this data

Both files are published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0) license. You may copy, publish and adapt them, including commercially, as long as you credit ListRiver with a link. Suggested credit:

Source: ListRiver (https://listriver.com/free-data)

What the numbers mean

  • month is the month of the formation (registration) date the state reports, as YYYY-MM.
  • new_businesses counts businesses formed in that month that are still active on the state register. Dissolved businesses are not counted, so earlier months are slightly understated.
  • The newest month can rise as late filings arrive, because states publish on different schedules. The files are rebuilt from live data and always show the last 24 complete months.
  • County is the county of the business address on file. States that do not publish a county are absent from the county file.
  • States covered: Alaska, California, Colorado, Connecticut, District of Columbia, Florida, Iowa, Mississippi, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Vermont, Virginia. This is not the whole country.

See the same figures as a report in all states ranked, or read the methodology for sources and known limits. Need the businesses themselves? Build a list.