BuildData › Business Licences
Dataset

Canadian Business
Licences API

690,000 business licence records from 27 Canadian cities. Active and historical licences with normalized business name, category, address, and status. Geocoded, updated daily via REST API.

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690K+ licence records
27 cities covered
Daily refresh rate
Geocoded lat / lng on every record
Coverage

Business licence records are sourced from municipal open data portals. Coverage spans 27 cities across 5 provinces. New cities are added as municipalities publish their data.

Toronto ON
Calgary AB
Vancouver BC
Edmonton AB
Winnipeg MB
Hamilton ON
Brampton ON
Mississauga ON
Kitchener ON
Waterloo ON
Sudbury ON
Victoria BC
Burnaby BC
Prince George BC
Maple Ridge BC
Langley Township BC
New Westminster BC
Lethbridge AB
Red Deer AB
Grande Prairie AB
+ 7 more

Normalized categories

Raw licence types vary by city. BuildData normalizes them into a consistent category_canonical field across all sources.

Food & beverage
Retail
Professional services
Construction trades
Health & wellness
Transportation
Entertainment
Real estate
Manufacturing
Accommodation
Personal care
Childcare

What the data includes

business_name / normalized_business_name
Raw and normalized business name for matching across cities and datasets
category_canonical
Normalized category (food, retail, construction trades, etc.) consistent across all 27 cities
status
Active, expired, pending, or cancelled
address / normalized_address
Street address, normalized for joining with permit and inspection records
lat / lng
Geocoordinates for proximity and map-based queries
event_date
Issue date or most recent activity date
municipality / province
Normalized city and province fields

Who uses business licence data

B2B lead generation

Build targeted lists of businesses by industry, city, and activity date. Identify newly licensed businesses as early-stage leads. Filter by address to find businesses in a trade area.

Market intelligence

Track openings and closures by category across cities. Measure commercial density in a neighbourhood. Detect emerging clusters of a specific industry type.

Location strategy

Evaluate competitor density before opening a new location. Understand the commercial mix around a property. Map franchise saturation across a city.

Proptech & commercial real estate

Enrich property listings and valuations with live commercial activity data. Identify retail-to-office conversion opportunities. Track ground-floor commercial health in mixed-use developments.

API example

GET /licence?municipality=calgary&category=food_beverage&status=active&limit=100

# All active food & beverage licences in Calgary
# Returns: business_name, category_canonical, address, lat/lng, status, date
GET /licence?lat=43.6532&lng=-79.3832&radius_km=1&category=construction_trades

# Construction trade businesses within 1km of downtown Toronto
# Useful for B2B sales territory mapping

Same endpoint pattern as building inspections, development permits, and building permits. One API key, one schema.

Start with 25 free requests per day

No credit card required. Full API access via RapidAPI. OpenAPI spec and docs included.

Get a free API key

Part of the BuildData Canadian construction data platform. Also available: building inspections, development permits, see all coverage.