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Business Search is in early access. Email sales@brightdata.com to request access.
In this quickstart we run one company search with cURL and read the three parts of the response: req_id, meta and documents.

Prerequisites

  • A Bright Data account with Business Search access. Check your entitlement in the Control Panel
  • A Bright Data API key from Authentication

Step 1: Set your API key

Store the key in an environment variable so it never appears in a command history or a committed file. The request in the next step reads it from there:
This request uses Instant mode to find US software companies with 50 to 500 employees. view: "summary" asks for a compact record instead of the default id_only:
The request returns HTTP 200 and a JSON body that starts with req_id. If the body is {"error":"Invalid token"} with HTTP 401, the key is missing, invalid or expired. Check the value you exported in Step 1. HTTP 403 means the account behind the key is inactive or not on the Business Search allowlist yet. Email sales@brightdata.com to request access.

Step 3: Read the response

A successful response contains request metadata and a documents array. This is the first of the 10 records from a real run, with url and logo omitted:
req_id identifies the request. Keep it for troubleshooting and include it in support tickets.

What you built and where to go next

You sent a natural-language company search and read the records it returned. Next, decide whether you need a broad candidate set or a ranked shortlist in What is Business Search?. Then write your first structured query with Business Search query syntax.