Sunbiz, Explained: How Florida’s Register Names the People Behind a Company

How many companies are on the Florida register?

The first question most people ask, and Florida answers it precisely. The Florida Department of State’s own quarterly count puts 3,952,295 active business entities on the register as of April 2026 — nearly four million — of which 2,844,598 are LLCs (about 72%). On top of that there are 727,725 active fictitious-name (DBA) registrations. Florida is also the busiest formation state in the country: the registry recorded 689,971 new entity filings in 2023 and 670,459 in 2025, the equivalent of well over 1,800 new businesses a day. The register isn’t just large; it’s growing faster than almost anywhere else, which is why so much KYB on US counterparties now routes through Sunbiz.

Two different lenses sit behind these numbers, and it’s worth keeping them straight. The registry’s own filing counts (the Florida Department of State’s Yearly Statistics) record new entity documents filed each year — 689,971 in 2023, 641,597 in 2024, 670,459 in 2025. The federal applications figure (US Census Business Formation Statistics) measures formation intent via EIN/SS-4 applications — 667,031 in 2023, the most of any state. And the federal open/close flow (US Census / SBA) shows that between March 2023 and March 2024, 111,346 Florida establishments opened and 94,744 closed, a net gain of 16,602 employer establishments, with small businesses alone accounting for 100,178 openings and 85,944 closures. Three measures, three things counted — all primary, none interchangeable.

The layers of Florida company data

Florida’s company data is more consolidated than most states’ — the register and its public-access portal are the same system, Sunbiz — but a complete KYB picture still spans a handful of bodies. Knowing which one holds what saves wasted searches. Four sources matter.

One more body matters at the federal level, and Sunbiz points to it directly: the US Treasury’s Beneficial Ownership Information (BOI) registry, run by FinCEN. The Florida Division of Corporations explicitly notes the January 2024 federal BOI requirement and directs businesses to the Treasury site — its own role, in its words, is only to “provide notice.” Beneficial-ownership data therefore never sits on Sunbiz; it lives on the federal register, and (as the dedicated section below explains) its enforcement against domestic entities is currently suspended. Note too that unlike Michigan and most states, Florida registers fictitious names (DBAs) at the state level through Sunbiz, not county-by-county — so a Florida trade name is searchable in the same system as the entity behind it.

What the Sunbiz register actually gives you

Florida’s register is unusually generous for a US state — and uniquely generous on people. Knowing exactly which fields the free search surfaces is what lets you use it well. The key facts:

What sets Florida apart is that the free search returns the people, not just the entity. Open a record on Sunbiz and you get a working due-diligence picture, with names attached:

• Officers, directors and managers — by name, and searchable. This is Florida’s signature feature. The Corporate Detail page lists the entity’s principals (up to six on the database), and you can run the search in reverse — enter a person’s name under “Officer/Registered Agent Name” and pull every Florida entity they are tied to. Most state registers don’t expose people data at all; Florida makes it a primary search axis, for free.
• Identity and status, in full. Legal name, document number, entity type (profit corporation, LLC, LP, LLLP, nonprofit), date filed, and the current status (Active, Inactive, Dissolved). Crucially, “Active” means only that the entity has met basic filing requirements — it is not a guarantee of operations or solvency.
• The registered agent and addresses. Every Florida entity must maintain a registered agent at a physical Florida street address (no P.O. Box) for service of process; the register shows the current agent plus the principal and mailing addresses. You can also search by registered-agent name to map entities sharing an agent.
• FEI/EIN — searchable. Unusually, Sunbiz lets you search by Federal Employer Identification Number and exposes the FEI/EIN on the record. Few state registers surface the federal tax ID at all, let alone make it a search key — a genuine help for cross-referencing an entity to federal filings.
• Downloadable document images. Sunbiz serves free PDF images of the actual filed documents — articles of incorporation or organization, amendments, and annual reports — usually posted a few business days after processing, with records updated daily. That document-level access is the difference between a snapshot and the underlying paper.

The wall here is subtler than in a privacy-first state, because Florida already shows you the officers and managers. What it still doesn’t give you is the full beneficial-ownership chain — Sunbiz “lists officers and managers, but not always full ownership details” — and, just as important, none of it is verified at the point of filing. The register tells you who someone said runs the company, not who provably does. That is where cross-jurisdiction ownership linkage and corroboration earn their place. For multi-state KYB, Florida pairs naturally with Delaware, Michigan, and the other state registers covered in the US Secretary of State search guide.

Every Florida company-data dataset, mapped

Across the Sunbiz register, the Department of Revenue, the separate secured-transaction registry and SEC EDGAR, fourteen datasets matter for KYB. Florida’s pattern is the inverse of a privacy-first state: an unusually wide free tier that even names the people, a thin band of cheap paid items (only certificates and certified copies), and a small “not public” set that is the standard US limitation — full beneficial ownership and confidential tax data.

Exactly what data is free, paid & withheld

The free tier does the bulk of the work — and uniquely, it names the officers, directors and managers and serves document images. Paid means only the Certificate of Status and certified copies, and both are cheap. “Not public” means the full ownership chain Florida doesn’t always capture and tax data that is confidential by law.

Dataset-by-dataset summary

The same data, viewed by source rather than access tier:

Nine free, two paid, three not public. Florida’s free tier does more than almost any state’s — identity, status, the named officers and directors, registered agent, FEI/EIN, document images, annual reports, fictitious names and name availability are all public at no cost, and for listed entities SEC EDGAR adds the financial layer. Only certified documents are paid, and cheaply. The “not public” set is narrow and standard: the full ownership chain Florida doesn’t always capture, federal BOI data held by FinCEN, tax data held confidentially by the Department of Revenue, and UCC liens on a separate registry. Sources: Florida Department of State, Division of Corporations; Florida Department of Revenue; SEC EDGAR (verified June 2026).

The Florida company identifiers

A Florida entity carries a small set of identifiers. The Sunbiz document number resolves the register record; the FEI/EIN is the real operational key (and, unusually, a search field here); and for listed entities, SEC and global identifiers carry the financial data the state record doesn’t.

For production Florida KYB, the document number resolves the state record and its filings; the FEI/EIN is what the company actually transacts under — and, helpfully, a Sunbiz search key; and for listed entities the CIK and Commission File Number unlock the SEC filings — financials, directors, major holders — that no state register carries. Florida gives you a genuinely rich record on its own, with the federal identifiers extending it for the listed minority.

Worked example: NextEra Energy, Inc.

To anchor the identifiers and Florida’s people-transparency in a real record, here is NextEra Energy, Inc. — one of the largest energy companies in the world, parent of Florida Power & Light, and — unlike most big public companies — genuinely incorporated in its home state. Because NextEra is a domestic Florida corporation, its officers and directors actually appear on Sunbiz, which makes it the cleanest illustration of what Florida’s open register gives you that Delaware’s does not.

Three things the example surfaces. First, a genuinely Florida-incorporated public company shows its people on Sunbiz — directors and officers by name — for free, which the privacy-first states do not. Second, even so, the financial depth (audited statements, major holders) lives in SEC filings, not the state record. Third, the first thing to read off any Sunbiz record is whether the entity is domestic Florida or a foreign entity qualified to do business in Florida — a household name that incorporated elsewhere will appear only as a foreign qualification, with its charter held in its home state.

For contrast, here is the kind of entity Sunbiz handles by the million — a domestic Florida LLC, where the open register’s people data does real work:

The federal beneficial-ownership story — the fix that got rolled back

The one thing even Florida’s open register doesn’t give you — the full ownership chain — was, briefly, going to be solved at the federal level. The Florida Division of Corporations points you straight to it: every Sunbiz annual-report page now carries a notice directing businesses to the US Treasury’s Beneficial Ownership Information site. But that fix has largely been undone. Treated as a registry-data question — can you see who ultimately owns a Florida LLC? — here is the current state, which has moved repeatedly and remains in flux.

The Corporate Transparency Act (CTA) took effect on 1 January 2024, requiring most US companies to report their beneficial owners to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) — a federal beneficial-ownership register that would, for the first time, capture the ownership data that states like Florida don’t fully collect. It was never a public register (access was limited to authorities and, in narrow cases, financial institutions), but it was the most serious attempt in US history to gather ownership data that states deliberately don’t.

Then it was rolled back. After a year of injunctions, stays, and reversals through the federal courts, FinCEN issued an interim final rule on 26 March 2025 that redefined “reporting company” to mean only entities formed under foreign law and registered to do business in the US. The practical effect: all entities created in the United States — including every domestic Florida LLC and corporation — and their beneficial owners are now exempt from reporting BOI to FinCEN, and reporting companies need not report any US persons as owners. The federal layer that would have filled Florida’s one ownership gap was, for domestic entities, switched off — even as Sunbiz continues to display the notice.

The story is not over, and that matters for how you treat it. The interim rule is not yet finalised; FinCEN has said it intends to issue a final rule, with a 2026 timeline now expected after delays. Federal courts — including the Eleventh Circuit, whose jurisdiction includes Florida — have upheld the CTA’s constitutionality, so the statute remains valid law even though domestic reporting is currently suspended. In other words, it is premature to assume domestic entities will stay exempt. For KYB in 2026 the practical position is blunt: there is no working public or authority-facing federal ownership register for domestic Florida entities right now, so confirming who ultimately owns a Florida LLC means doing what analysts did before the CTA — reading the named officers and managers off Sunbiz, then building the ownership chain from SEC filings (for listed entities), entity documentation, registered-agent and cross-jurisdiction records, and direct due diligence. (Status verified against FinCEN primary sources, June 2026; given the history, re-check the current rule before relying on it.)

Florida’s economy — what the register reflects

Florida’s register reflects two things at once: a large real, operating economy and the busiest business-formation engine in the country. Both matter for KYB. No personal state income tax, a low corporate rate and a position as the US gateway to Latin America pull in real-estate vehicles, holding companies, international subsidiaries and a vast small-business base — which is exactly why so many counterparties resolve to a Florida record. The numbers behind the register:

The contrast with the pure formation states is instructive. A Florida record is more likely than a Delaware or Wyoming one to describe an entity that actually operates — and Sunbiz gives you the tools to read it: status, named officers and managers, registered agent, document images and annual reports, free. But the sheer volume and churn of Florida formations, plus the fact that filings are accepted unverified, means an open Florida record still has to be read critically — which is the subject of the next sections.

API and bulk data feeds — the four real paths

For production KYB or onboarding integrations needing structured Florida company data at scale, four access paths exist. The Division of Corporations publishes no free high-volume company-search API — the routes are the Sunbiz portal, the SEC for listed entities, officer/agent reverse-search data, and commercial providers.

Path 1 — The Sunbiz portal

The search at Sunbiz supports free per-entity lookups by name, document number, FEI number, officer/agent, ZIP or street address, with partial-match support, free document images and free people data. The Division also publishes downloadable data files and yearly statistics. It is the authoritative source and unusually rich for a free portal — but it is built for human, per-entity searches rather than high-volume programmatic querying.

Path 2 — SEC EDGAR (for listed entities)

For Florida’s publicly-traded entities — NextEra, Carnival, Ryder, Raymond James and the many large foreign-qualified ones operating in-state — SEC EDGAR is a genuinely rich, free, structured source: full-text search, per-filing APIs, and bulk data on financials, directors, and major holders. It only covers reporting companies, but for those it provides the ownership and financial depth no state register carries.

Path 3 — Officer and registered-agent reverse data

Florida’s standout asset is that you can search by person — officer, director, manager or registered agent — and pull every entity tied to that name. That reverse-search axis is a powerful relational signal for mapping networks, clustering related entities and spotting a single agent or officer behind many shells, in a way most state registers simply don’t allow.

Path 4 — commercial multi-jurisdiction APIs and bulk feeds

For teams that need Florida alongside the other 49 states and 100+ countries with a consistent schema and real-time access, commercial providers ingest the Sunbiz register, link entities to their officers, filing history, registered-agent networks, and SEC filings, and re-expose them through one API — removing the per-portal friction and adding the cross-jurisdiction joins that resolve a Florida LLC to its full ownership and a foreign-qualified entity to its home-state charter. Zephira’s Florida data is sourced directly from the official register, with Data Provenance attribution on every field, and joined to all 50 US states, Canada, Mexico, and 100+ other jurisdictions on a single data model. Bulk delivery via S3 or SFTP is available for batch enrichment and offline analytics.

Florida entity types — what each one means for KYB

Florida offers the familiar US set of forms plus one it’s especially known for — the LLLP. The register labels each one as it appears in Sunbiz, and the domestic-vs-foreign distinction matters as much as the form itself.

When a Florida entity lapses — the May 1 deadline, dissolution and reinstatement

Florida’s compliance cycle is simple, unforgiving, and — importantly — the point where the register’s openness becomes a fraud risk. Here is the lifecycle, and why the reinstatement step matters for due diligence.

That last row is where Florida’s open, low-friction system has a sharp edge. Only administratively dissolved entities can be reinstated (a voluntarily dissolved one cannot — you must form a new entity), and because anyone can file a reinstatement — or an amended annual report — without proving they are connected to the company, a lapsed Florida entity is a known target. The window adds to the risk: a dissolved entity’s name is protected for only about a year, after which another filer can take it. A bad actor reinstates the entity (or grabs the freed-up name), lists themselves as officer or manager, redirects the registered agent and mailing address, and then uses the resulting Sunbiz record to open bank accounts or claim authority. So for due diligence, an “Active” status that follows a recent reinstatement, or a recent unexplained change of officers or registered agent, is a flag worth pausing on — not proof of anything, but a reason to corroborate against the dated document images and the filing history rather than trust the current record at face value.

What the Florida register doesn’t tell you

Sunbiz is genuinely rich — but no state register is complete, and Florida’s particular openness creates gaps that catch out analysts who treat an open register as a verified one. The gaps that matter:

• Filings are accepted unverified. This is the big one. The Division of Corporations is an administrative filing agency: documents are “accepted at face value,” with no identity check on the filer. So a Sunbiz record tells you what someone filed, not what is provably true — and a recent change of officers, manager or registered agent can be legitimate or can be business identity theft. Filing a fraudulent document is a third-degree felony, but the register doesn’t stop it at the door.
• Officers and managers are not the same as owners. Florida names the people running an entity — a real advantage — but “lists officers and managers, [does] not always [show] full ownership details.” The ultimate beneficial owners can still sit behind the named managers, and there is no state UBO register. Since the 2025 federal rollback, the FinCEN layer that would have captured it is switched off for domestic entities too.
• “Active” only means filing-compliant. Active status confirms the entity has met basic filing requirements — nothing about solvency, operations, or whether it still trades. With nearly 95,000 Florida closures in a single recent year, current status is a weak guarantee of next quarter.
• The register sits under the Department of State. Sunbiz is run by the Division of Corporations within the Florida Department of State (the Secretary of State heads it) — not a standalone “Secretary of State business search” office. Third-party sites that mimic Sunbiz are common; the authoritative source is dos.fl.gov/sunbiz and search.sunbiz.org.
• Tax and UCC data live elsewhere. Corporate-income and sales-tax registration and returns are confidential with the Department of Revenue; UCC liens are on the separate floridaucc.com registry. A complete check means leaving Sunbiz for both.
• Private financials don’t exist publicly. Florida requires no public financial filing from private entities — the annual report is explicitly “not a financial statement.” Unless a company is SEC-reporting, there are no accounts to find — only estimation, voluntary disclosure, or M&A documents.

Where the substance actually lives

Sunbiz holds more than almost any state register — including the people — but a few layers still sit in other systems. The practical map:

The practical takeaway: for a Florida counterparty, the free register answers more than almost any state — existence, status, the named officers and managers, registered agent, FEI/EIN, document images and filing history — certificates are a cheap formality and SEC EDGAR covers the listed minority. The two things to hold in mind are that the named people aren’t always the ultimate owners, and that none of it is verified at filing. That is exactly where corroboration and cross-jurisdiction linkage with clear provenance earn their place.

The ownership wall, fraud risk and sanctions

Florida shows you more people than almost any state — but the two things it can’t guarantee, true ownership and verified filings, are exactly where the serious compliance exposure sits. An open register that names officers is a genuine head-start; it is not a substitute for confirming who is really behind an entity.

The OFAC 50 Percent Rule

The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) maintains the Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) List and a broader Consolidated Sanctions List — both free, official, downloadable, and searchable with fuzzy name-matching. US persons are broadly prohibited from dealing with anyone on them. The catch is OFAC’s 50 Percent Rule: an entity owned 50% or more, directly or indirectly, by one or more blocked persons is itself blocked — even if its own name, and its named Florida officers, never appear on any list. Because Florida shows managers but not always the full ownership chain, a blocking interest can sit one or two layers above the people Sunbiz names. Screening the entity and its listed officers is necessary but not sufficient.

The Florida-specific risk: unverified filings

Florida adds a second exposure most states don’t. Because Sunbiz accepts filings at face value with no identity check, the register itself can be weaponised: a fraudster can reinstate a lapsed entity or file an amended annual report to install themselves as officer, change the registered agent, and redirect the entity’s mail — then use the resulting Sunbiz profile to claim authority, open accounts, or cash redirected cheques. The Department of State runs a “Mind Your Sunbizness!” identity-theft resource precisely because this happens. For KYB, that means treating a recent officer or registered-agent change as something to corroborate against the dated document images and filing history — not as settled fact.

What this means for a KYB workflow

For a Florida entity, screen the entity and every named officer, manager, and connected party against the OFAC SDN and Consolidated lists — then go past the named people to the ownership chain, sourcing it from SEC filings (for listed entities), entity documentation, officer/agent clustering, and cross-jurisdiction tracing. OFAC’s March 2026 Sanctions Advisory on “sham transactions and sanctions evasion” flags exactly this pattern — ownership concealed behind opaque US legal structures — and Florida’s combination of free formation, named-but-unverified people, and reinstatement-driven identity theft is precisely the environment it describes. The register’s openness does real work; corroboration and ownership tracing do the rest.

Where Zephira sources Florida data from — directly

The most important question for any Florida company-data provider is the source. Zephira goes direct to the Sunbiz register and links each entity to the records that hold what the register doesn’t — with source attribution on every field.

Every record carries a Data Provenance panel naming the specific official source and the timestamp of the last refresh. Where Florida names officers but not the full ownership chain — and where a filing is unverified at source — Zephira does not invent ownership or vouch for unverified data; it traces what can be traced through SEC filings, officer/agent networks, and cross-jurisdiction linkage, dates every field, and is explicit about what the public record can and cannot show.

Recent and ongoing developments

Florida hasn’t changed its registry platform the way some states have — Sunbiz is a known quantity. What’s actually moving around a Florida record is the federal beneficial-ownership saga (which applies to every Florida entity) and the state’s own running battle with fraudulent filings. All dates verified from primary sources; given the federal volatility, re-check the current rule before relying on it.

Florida registry activity — verified primary-source statistics

Three lenses on Florida’s register, all from primary sources: what’s actually on the register by entity type, how new filings have moved over the last several years, and the federal open-versus-closed flow. The first two come straight from the Florida Department of State’s own Yearly Statistics (last updated 3 April 2026); the third is US Census / SBA data. Where a precise official figure exists, we use it rather than a rounded one.

What’s on the register, by entity type

New entity filings by year — the recent history

Florida registry data in regional context

How Florida's access regime compares to other major jurisdictions:

Florida sits at the open, people-transparent end of the US spectrum. Like every US state it has no federal register and doesn’t fully capture beneficial ownership — but among states it is unusually generous, naming officers, directors and managers, exposing FEI/EIN, and serving document images for free and with no login, where Delaware gates even status behind a fee. It still falls short of the UK, which publishes directors, accounts and verified beneficial owners. And there’s a Florida-specific asterisk: because filings are accepted unverified, the rich people data has to be read as “what was filed,” not “what is proven.” For KYB the practical reading is that a Florida entity is unusually easy to profile — you can see the people and the documents without paying — provided you corroborate recent changes and trace the ownership the register names but doesn’t verify.