Skip to main content
The California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control (CA ABC) maintains a public license lookup at abc.ca.gov/licensing/license-lookup. NexusFeed calls that endpoint with a stateless HTTP GET and parses the returned HTML table — no CAPTCHA, no Playwright rendering required. This makes California the fastest and cheapest ABC state in the API.

​
State overview

FieldValue
State codeCA
AgencyCalifornia Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control
Source URLhttps://www.abc.ca.gov/licensing/license-lookup/
AuthenticationNone required
CAPTCHANone
Search supportedYes (dba_name, owner_name, address)
Lookup supportedYes
Extraction methodstructured_parse
Cache TTL24 hours

​
Search example

curl "https://api.nexusfeed.dev/v1/abc/search?state=CA&dba_name=TRADER%20JOE" \
  -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY"

​
Lookup example

curl "https://api.nexusfeed.dev/v1/abc/license/47-123456?state=CA" \
  -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY"
The lookup endpoint first tries CA ABC’s RPTTYPE=11 parameter (direct license number lookup). If the response is an error page or an empty result, it falls back to a RPTTYPE=15 name search with post-filtering on the license number. Both paths report as structured_parse.

​
Example response

{
  "state": "CA",
  "query": {"dba_name": "TRADER JOE"},
  "total_results": 3,
  "results": [
    {
      "license_number": "47-123456",
      "license_type_code": "47",
      "dba_name": "TRADER JOE'S #123",
      "owner_name": "TRADER JOE'S COMPANY",
      "status": "ACTIVE",
      "expiration_date": "2026-09-30",
      "address": "1234 MAIN ST, LOS ANGELES, CA 90001",
      "county": "LOS ANGELES"
    }
  ],
  "_verifiability": {
    "source_timestamp": "2026-04-10T14:22:11Z",
    "extraction_confidence": 1.0,
    "raw_data_evidence_url": "https://www.abc.ca.gov/licensing/license-lookup/?RPTTYPE=15&DBANAME=TRADER%20JOE",
    "extraction_method": "structured_parse",
    "data_freshness_ttl_seconds": 86400
  }
}

​
California license types (most common)

CodeType
20Off-Sale Beer & Wine
21Off-Sale General
41On-Sale Beer & Wine — Eating Place
47On-Sale General — Eating Place
48On-Sale General — Public Premises (bar)
58Caterer’s Permit
75On-Sale General — Brewpub
Full list is published by CA ABC at abc.ca.gov/licensing/license-types.

​
Use cases

  • Verifying a California bar, restaurant, grocery, or liquor store holds an active license before onboarding as a distributor account.
  • Confirming an expiration date before binding a liquor liability insurance policy.
  • Checking whether a specific license has been suspended or revoked before a compliance decision.
  • Due diligence on a business for sale — confirming its ABC license is currently in good standing.