Using LookBefore
What LookBefore searches
LookBefore searches free government data sources in one query. Places, companies, product recalls, providers, and names come from the agencies that publish them.
Published July 28, 2026 · 4 min read
The government publishes a large amount of public data for free. Restaurant inspections, business registrations, SEC filings, EPA enforcement actions, product recalls. Finding it meant knowing which agency held which record and visiting each website separately.
LookBefore searches those sources together, for free. One search queries dozens of live government databases at once and pulls the records from the agencies that publish them.
Places
Places have public records. Health departments inspect and score restaurants and food facilities. The EPA registers industrial sites and tracks enforcement against them. Monitors measure air quality around the clock. The Census counts who lives in a neighborhood and tallies each year’s residential building permits.
A place search runs on a city or a ZIP code. The results include restaurant inspections, EPA facility and enforcement records, current air quality, demographics, and building-permit totals.
Companies
Companies leave a long public trail. Registering a business creates a state filing. Raising money creates SEC filings. Winning federal work creates contract and spending entries. Banks appear in FDIC records. Complaints about financial products go to the CFPB. Nonprofits file their finances with the IRS every year.
An organization search pulls those data sources into a single query. It returns SEC filings, state business registrations, IRS tax-exempt status, nonprofit financial filings, federal contracts and spending, consumer complaints, campaign finance records, and FDIC bank data. It works for corporations, small businesses, charities, and 501(c)(3) nonprofits. A two-person LLC may show only its state registration, and even that confirms the company exists, when it was formed, and who filed it.
Product recalls
LookBefore searches product-recall databases. NHTSA tracks vehicle recalls, the FDA tracks drug, device, and food recalls, and the CPSC tracks consumer-product recalls. Search a used car by year and model, a medication by name, a car seat, or a frozen food brand.
An empty result means the search checked the recall databases and nothing matched.
Providers
Licensed professionals carry public credentials. A provider search shows a doctor’s or clinic’s NPI registration, federal exclusion list status, and reported industry payments.
Names
Name searches run against federal and high-level datasets. Federal court records, SEC filings, insider-trading disclosures, FEC campaign contributions, business registrations, the NPI provider registry, federal exclusion lists, and CMS industry payments all match by name. Search a public figure, an executive, a candidate, or a doctor and records come back when those sources hold a match.
Those datasets sit at the federal level, so a name search shows where a person appears in the federal record. It is built for personal research. Look up who funds a candidate, what an executive disclosed, whether a doctor takes industry money, or how a federal case ended.
Every source in this post is live on lookbefore.org today. Run a search on your city, a company you pay, or a product in your house and see what comes back. Look before you leap.