What is Business Search?

Business Search is now in Beta, sign up with a business email to gain early access

An entity search returns the thing you searched for, not documents about it. Describe a person or a company and Business Search returns the matching records as structured JSON, rather than a list of pages that mention them. One request searches an index of more than 700 million people and companies, refreshed daily. Two entity types are available:

Company

Find companies by industry, headquarters country, size band, founding year and funding stage, with structured conditions or a plain-language sentence.

People

Find people by title, current company, location and follower count, with structured conditions or a plain-language sentence.

Search modes

Business Search supports a range of workflows, from looking up one company to discovering every candidate in a market, so it offers three modes that trade speed, depth, cost and precision against each other. The mode property selects one:

Ludicrous runs structured conditions you write with Business Search query syntax, exactly as written. It is the fastest mode and returns up to 100 records per page.
Instant takes a plain-language sentence, turns it into one structured query and returns its matches. It also returns up to 100 records per page, at the same rate as Ludicrous.
Smart takes the same kind of sentence, then ranks the candidates by how well each record answers the request. It is the most precise mode, the slowest and the most expensive, and returns 10 records per page.

In every mode, documents come back in ranked order.

Ludicrous
Instant
Smart

Ludicrous is a lexical, structured search: you name the fields and conditions yourself, text conditions match words with BM25, and no model interprets the request or reorders the results.Sample request

curl --request POST "https://api.brightdata.com/search/company" \
  --header "Authorization: Bearer $BRIGHTDATA_API_KEY" \
  --header "Content-Type: application/json" \
  --data '{
    "mode": "ludicrous",
    "query": {
      "and": [
        { "text": { "industry": "software" } },
        { "equals": { "headquarters_country_code": "US" } },
        { "range": { "employees_in_linkedin": { ">=": 50, "<=": 500 } } }
      ]
    },
    "limit": 3,
    "view": "summary"
  }'

import os
import requests

response = requests.post(
    "https://api.brightdata.com/search/company",
    headers={
        "Authorization": f"Bearer {os.environ['BRIGHTDATA_API_KEY']}",
        "Content-Type": "application/json",
    },
    json={
      "mode": "ludicrous",
      "query": {
        "and": [
          { "text": { "industry": "software" } },
          { "equals": { "headquarters_country_code": "US" } },
          { "range": { "employees_in_linkedin": { ">=": 50, "<=": 500 } } }
        ]
      },
      "limit": 3,
      "view": "summary"
    },
)
print(response.status_code, response.json())

const response = await fetch("https://api.brightdata.com/search/company", {
  method: "POST",
  headers: {
    "Authorization": `Bearer ${process.env.BRIGHTDATA_API_KEY}`,
    "Content-Type": "application/json",
  },
  body: JSON.stringify({
    "mode": "ludicrous",
    "query": {
      "and": [
        { "text": { "industry": "software" } },
        { "equals": { "headquarters_country_code": "US" } },
        { "range": { "employees_in_linkedin": { ">=": 50, "<=": 500 } } }
      ]
    },
    "limit": 3,
    "view": "summary"
  }),
});
console.log(response.status, await response.json());

Sample response

{
  "req_id": "r3417705745d9445bab3114d77d75f16d",
  "meta": { "coverage_percent": 100, "matched": 8, "offset": 0, "limit": 3 },
  "documents": [
    {
      "bright_id": "abc7d8b3719192a4f04197ab57cf352bdbda5abac31dfe1467cc61521d61741c",
      "data": {
        "name": "Braintrust",
        "slogan": "Active observability for agents in production.",
        "industry": "Software Development",
        "headquarters_location": "San Francisco",
        "headquarters_country_code": "US",
        "company_size_from": 51,
        "company_size_to": 200,
        "employees_in_linkedin": 169,
        "linkedin_followers": 15953,
        "website": "https://braintrust.dev/",
        "domain": "braintrust.dev"
      }
    }
  ]
}

meta.matched counts the records the search reached, not every company that satisfies the conditions. See How to paginate Business Search results.

Instant turns the sentence into one structured query and returns its matches in text-match order.Sample request

curl --request POST "https://api.brightdata.com/search/company" \
  --header "Authorization: Bearer $BRIGHTDATA_API_KEY" \
  --header "Content-Type: application/json" \
  --data '{
    "mode": "instant",
    "query": "Developer infrastructure companies building tools for AI engineering teams",
    "limit": 3,
    "view": "summary"
  }'

import os
import requests

response = requests.post(
    "https://api.brightdata.com/search/company",
    headers={
        "Authorization": f"Bearer {os.environ['BRIGHTDATA_API_KEY']}",
        "Content-Type": "application/json",
    },
    json={
      "mode": "instant",
      "query": "Developer infrastructure companies building tools for AI engineering teams",
      "limit": 3,
      "view": "summary"
    },
)
print(response.status_code, response.json())

const response = await fetch("https://api.brightdata.com/search/company", {
  method: "POST",
  headers: {
    "Authorization": `Bearer ${process.env.BRIGHTDATA_API_KEY}`,
    "Content-Type": "application/json",
  },
  body: JSON.stringify({
    "mode": "instant",
    "query": "Developer infrastructure companies building tools for AI engineering teams",
    "limit": 3,
    "view": "summary"
  }),
});
console.log(response.status, await response.json());

Sample response

{
  "req_id": "re5aefd1a0b9c4b9d813af52ce935c26d",
  "meta": { "coverage_percent": 100, "matched": 1314, "offset": 0, "limit": 3 },
  "documents": [
    {
      "bright_id": "cff2fcd9da9a150b16cbc855777265c8de34f3a360986903f23f7f4e73fcf497",
      "data": {
        "name": "Flamerix AI",
        "slogan": "Infrastructure for controlled AI-driven software development.",
        "industry": "IT Services and IT Consulting",
        "headquarters_location": "Tbilisi",
        "headquarters_country_code": "GE",
        "company_size_from": 2,
        "company_size_to": 10,
        "employees_in_linkedin": 1,
        "linkedin_followers": 3,
        "website": "https://flamerix.ai/",
        "domain": "flamerix.ai"
      }
    }
  ]
}

Smart runs the same interpretation as Instant, then reads each candidate and reorders them by how well the record answers the request, so the first result changes.Sample request

curl --request POST "https://api.brightdata.com/search/company" \
  --header "Authorization: Bearer $BRIGHTDATA_API_KEY" \
  --header "Content-Type: application/json" \
  --data '{
    "mode": "smart",
    "query": "Developer infrastructure companies building tools for AI engineering teams",
    "limit": 3,
    "view": "summary"
  }'

import os
import requests

response = requests.post(
    "https://api.brightdata.com/search/company",
    headers={
        "Authorization": f"Bearer {os.environ['BRIGHTDATA_API_KEY']}",
        "Content-Type": "application/json",
    },
    json={
      "mode": "smart",
      "query": "Developer infrastructure companies building tools for AI engineering teams",
      "limit": 3,
      "view": "summary"
    },
)
print(response.status_code, response.json())

const response = await fetch("https://api.brightdata.com/search/company", {
  method: "POST",
  headers: {
    "Authorization": `Bearer ${process.env.BRIGHTDATA_API_KEY}`,
    "Content-Type": "application/json",
  },
  body: JSON.stringify({
    "mode": "smart",
    "query": "Developer infrastructure companies building tools for AI engineering teams",
    "limit": 3,
    "view": "summary"
  }),
});
console.log(response.status, await response.json());

Sample response

{
  "req_id": "r8f4b4e27936b40aaaa342a894f4ac460",
  "meta": { "coverage_percent": 100, "matched": 1294, "offset": 0, "limit": 3 },
  "documents": [
    {
      "bright_id": "c455ef8769b2656cfe67d4a534edb30ff0f55d0241ea95d04e32835684cf3bf8",
      "data": {
        "name": "Skyflo",
        "slogan": "AI engineering harness for coding agents, tools, context, and long-running work.",
        "industry": "Software Development",
        "headquarters_location": "Pune, Maharashtra",
        "headquarters_country_code": "IN",
        "company_size_from": 2,
        "company_size_to": 10,
        "employees_in_linkedin": 2,
        "linkedin_followers": 214,
        "website": "https://skyflo.ai/",
        "domain": "skyflo.ai"
      }
    }
  ]
}

If Smart’s ranking step fails, the request returns the results Instant would have returned rather than an error, and it is still billed as Smart.

Compare the modes

Mode	Query input	Results per search (included / maximum)	Typical response time	When to use
`ludicrous`	Structured conditions	100 / 1,000	~50ms	Your application already knows which fields to filter on
`instant`	Plain-language sentence	100 / 1,000	~1 second	Natural language at interactive speed; the default for interactive use
`smart`	Plain-language sentence	10 / 100	~2 to 3 seconds	Result quality matters more than latency, or a wrong first result is costly

Where do you go next?

Quickstart

Send your first company search and read the response.

Pricing

Per-1,000-search rates by mode and what counts as billable.

Frequently asked questions

Is Business Search an enrichment product?

No. Business Search discovers and retrieves records. To add detail to records you already have, use Scraper API or your own stack.

How fresh is the Business Search index?

The index refreshes daily. A record added or changed at the source appears in Business Search results after the next daily refresh.

Can one search combine people and company filters?

No. A people search filters on people fields and a company search on company fields, so a question such as “CEOs of funded companies in San Francisco” takes a company search followed by a people search. See How to run a multi-step search.

Get started

Data extraction

Web search

AI training data

Proxy networks

Company

People

Search modes

Compare the modes

Where do you go next?

Quickstart

Pricing

Frequently asked questions

Is Business Search an enrichment product?

How fresh is the Business Search index?

Can one search combine people and company filters?

Company

People

​Search modes

​Compare the modes

​Where do you go next?

Quickstart

Pricing

​Frequently asked questions

​Is Business Search an enrichment product?

​How fresh is the Business Search index?

​Can one search combine people and company filters?

Search modes

Compare the modes

Where do you go next?

Frequently asked questions

Is Business Search an enrichment product?

How fresh is the Business Search index?

Can one search combine people and company filters?