OpenSOSData vs Recordwire
OpenSOSData sells Secretary of State lookups, live or cached, in every state, from $0.0314 per live lookup with no subscription.[1] Recordwire sends every formation and change in twelve states as events, at flat monthly prices.[2][3] Pick OpenSOSData for cheap lookups anywhere. Pick Recordwire when you need to know what changed without looking each company up.
Vendor facts from each vendor's own public pages, read 2026-10-16. Sources are listed below.
| OpenSOSData | Recordwire | |
|---|---|---|
| Model | Secretary of State lookup API, live or cached, plus bulk lookups and CSV datasets.[1][4][5] | Change feed plus lookup. Each new state file is compared with the last, and every difference is stored as a dated event. REST API, MCP server, and webhooks.[6] |
| U.S. state coverage | Claims 53: all 50 states, D.C., Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Its states page lists 51.[1][7] | 12 states. Florida, New York, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Connecticut, and Oregon from official bulk files and open data. Massachusetts, Idaho, Wyoming, and Missouri from the state's public search, new formations only. Delaware from a licensed data partner, new formations only.[2] |
| Freshness | Live scrape on demand, with a median of 58 seconds; cached results otherwise. Its pages give the cache window as 7 days and as 30 days.[8][1][9] | As often as each state publishes: daily in Florida, New York, Colorado, and Oregon, monthly in Pennsylvania, weekly in Virginia, nightly in Connecticut, every 3 hours in Massachusetts and Missouri, every 6 hours in Idaho, continuously in Wyoming, and several times a day in Delaware.[2] |
| Change events and history | Recent filing history per lookup. Weekly monitors on cached plans; new-formation and status-change lists sold as CSV.[10][4][5] | Six event types: formed, renamed, status, address, registered agent, officers. Full change events in the seven file states; new formations only in the other five. Virginia and Florida include state-published history.[11][2] |
| Webhooks | Yes, for bulk jobs and for monitors.[10][4] | Yes. Signed webhooks per subscription, filtered by state, event type, or up to 10,000 company IDs.[6] |
| MCP server | An npm package, @opensosdata/mcp-server; not mentioned on its site.[12] | Yes. Remote server at api.recordwirehq.com/mcp: five read tools and three for webhook subscriptions, one bearer key.[13] |
| Officers | Where available, plus registered agent.[1] | Where the state publishes them: Florida, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Wyoming; partly in New York, Virginia, Oregon. None in Colorado, Idaho, Missouri.[2] |
| Published pricing | Pay as you go: live lookups $0.10 down to $0.0314, cached $0.01 down to $0.00314. Cached plans $100 to $1,000 a month. 10 free lookups.[1][8] | $100 a month for one state, $200 for any three, $500 for all. No free trial.[3] |
When to pick OpenSOSData
You look up companies one at a time, in many states, and price matters most. Live lookups start at $0.10 and fall to $0.0314 with volume, cached ones to $0.00314, and credits never expire.[1] Live scrapes are slow, with a median of 58 seconds, so plan for long timeouts.[8]
When to pick Recordwire
You need to know what changed, not just what a record says today. Recordwire compares each state file with the last, so formations, status changes, and new registered agents arrive as dated events through webhooks, REST, or MCP, with no lookup per company. Prices are flat and published. It covers twelve states, so check the coverage page first.[11][3][2]
Questions
Is OpenSOSData live or cached?
Both. It scrapes the state site on demand and caches results; you can force a fresh scrape. Its pages give the cache window as 7 days on the home page and 30 days in the changelog.[1][9]
Does OpenSOSData send change alerts?
Its llms.txt says cached plans include weekly monitors, 25 to 500 depending on plan, that post changes to a webhook. Its HTML pages do not describe this.[4] Recordwire sends every change in a covered state, with no monitor limit.[6]
Does OpenSOSData have an MCP server?
There is an npm package, @opensosdata/mcp-server, but its site does not mention it.[12] Recordwire documents its MCP server at /mcp.[13]
Which is cheaper?
For a few lookups, OpenSOSData. For every change in a state, Recordwire is $100 a month for one state, $200 for three, and $500 for all.[1][3]
Can I use OpenSOSData and Recordwire together?
Yes. Use Recordwire events to learn which companies changed in the states it covers, then use OpenSOSData for anything Recordwire does not cover.[2]
More comparisons
Sources
- OpenSOSData home page. https://opensosdata.com/. Accessed 2026-10-16.
- Recordwire coverage by state. https://recordwirehq.com/states. Accessed 2026-10-16.
- Recordwire pricing. https://recordwirehq.com/#pricing. Accessed 2026-10-16.
- OpenSOSData llms.txt. https://opensosdata.com/llms.txt. Accessed 2026-10-16.
- OpenSOSData datasets. https://opensosdata.com/datasets/. Accessed 2026-10-16.
- Recordwire API docs. https://recordwirehq.com/docs. Accessed 2026-10-16.
- OpenSOSData state coverage. https://opensosdata.com/states/. Accessed 2026-10-16.
- OpenSOSData docs. https://opensosdata.com/docs/. Accessed 2026-10-16.
- OpenSOSData changelog. https://opensosdata.com/docs/changelog.html. Accessed 2026-10-16.
- OpenSOSData OpenAPI spec. https://opensosdata.com/openapi.yaml. Accessed 2026-10-16.
- Recordwire change events. https://recordwirehq.com/change-events. Accessed 2026-10-16.
- @opensosdata/mcp-server on npm. https://www.npmjs.com/package/@opensosdata/mcp-server. Accessed 2026-10-16.
- Recordwire MCP server. https://recordwirehq.com/mcp. Accessed 2026-10-16.
Something here out of date? Email brian@recordwirehq.com and it gets fixed.