Data
Alaska business licences by age and trade
Last updated October 31, 2026
Next update November 2026
Almost every business that works in Alaska needs a state business licence. The law asks for one “for the privilege of engaging in a business in the state”. The state publishes its active licences as a public map layer. We collected that layer on 30 October 2026: 83,483 licences, from a roofer in Wasilla to a repair shop in Ketchikan.
Unlike the Delaware licence file, Alaska’s layer carries an issue date on 99% of its rows. So this page can say how long each licence has been held. It counts the licences by age, by town and by the trade words in their names. Then it shows what our pipeline did with them, and why most of them are still waiting.
What an Alaska business licence is
The Alaska Business License Act sits in title 43 of the state’s statutes. A business applies to the Department of Commerce, Community, and Economic Development. The standard fee is fifty dollars a year, under the statute.
A licence must name the licensee, its address, the dates it runs, the business name it trades under, and “the primary and secondary line of business to be conducted”. One licence covers a firm’s whole state footprint for that line of business. The statute says so plainly: it “covers all its operations in the state regardless of the number of its establishments.”
Some businesses don’t need one at all. The act doesn’t apply to a fisheries business, a mining business, an insurance business, banks and credit unions, or someone working as an employee. In a state famous for fishing, that leaves out a big part of the economy. It’s a licence file of everyone else.
The file we read
The state’s division of Corporations, Business and Professional Licensing, CBPL for short, keeps the full licence file. Its download site answers scripts with a refusal, so our collector reads the state’s public map layer instead. The layer’s own note calls it “a subset” of the CBPL file.
The subset has two rules. The physical address must be in Alaska, and the city must match a community the state’s Division of Community and Regional Affairs (DCRA) lists. The note says “typically 12% of active business licenses drop out” under those rules. It also says a business with several locations shows “only one physical address”.
At our read, the layer held 83,488 active licences. Our collector kept 83,483, one row per licence number, and skipped 5.
The layer has one gap that matters for a trade page. The licence itself names a line of business, as the statute requires. The map layer doesn’t publish that field. So there’s no NAICS code and no trade column here. Where this page speaks of trades, it counts words in the business name, and says so.
How long the licences have been held
The layer gives each licence an issue date. 82,491 of the 83,483 carry one; 992 don’t. We counted the years from that date to the day of our read.
| Years since issue | Licences | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Under 2 | 28,126 | 34.1% |
| 2 to 4 | 19,401 | 23.5% |
| 5 to 9 | 15,959 | 19.3% |
| 10 to 19 | 13,045 | 15.8% |
| 20 or more | 5,960 | 7.2% |
| All with a date | 82,491 | 100% |
19,005 licences, 23.0%, were issued ten or more years ago. 5,960 have passed twenty. The middle licence was issued about 3.8 years before our read.
The oldest issue date in the layer is from 1969. Only 30 licences date from before 1990.
| Issue year | Licences |
|---|---|
| Before 1990 | 30 |
| 1990 to 1999 | 2,114 |
| 2000 to 2009 | 6,509 |
| 2010 to 2019 | 18,644 |
| 2020 to 2024 | 28,920 |
| 2025 | 13,446 |
| 2026, to 30 Oct | 12,828 |
| All with a date | 82,491 |
Two in three dated licences, 55,194, were issued in 2020 or later. Some of that is new business. Some of it may be old business under a new licence number. The layer doesn’t say which. So read a licence’s age as a floor on the business’s age, never as the age itself.
When the licences run out
Every licence in the layer ends on 31 December. Most end this year or next.
| Expiry year | Licences |
|---|---|
| 2025 | 2 |
| 2026 | 52,165 |
| 2027 | 31,243 |
| 2028 to 2030 | 73 |
| All | 83,483 |
The two that ended in 2025 are still marked active in the layer; our collector records them as inactive. The 52,165 that end in 2026 will either renew in the next two months or drop off the active list. When we refresh this table in November, some of that turnover will show.
Where the licence holders are
The layer places each licence in one of 297 DCRA communities. A third of the licences sit in Anchorage alone.
| Community | Licences | With an issue date | Under 5 yrs | 10+ yrs | 10+ share |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Anchorage | 27,936 | 27,587 | 15,349 | 6,823 | 24.7% |
| Wasilla | 7,929 | 7,889 | 5,170 | 1,301 | 16.5% |
| Fairbanks | 7,437 | 7,339 | 4,222 | 1,752 | 23.9% |
| Palmer | 3,943 | 3,921 | 2,437 | 755 | 19.3% |
| Juneau | 3,867 | 3,802 | 2,095 | 1,008 | 26.5% |
| Soldotna | 2,611 | 2,591 | 1,517 | 562 | 21.7% |
| Homer | 2,464 | 2,438 | 1,363 | 546 | 22.4% |
| Ketchikan | 2,422 | 2,372 | 1,268 | 663 | 28.0% |
| Eagle River | 2,256 | 2,243 | 1,399 | 450 | 20.1% |
| North Pole | 1,845 | 1,829 | 1,212 | 295 | 16.1% |
| 287 other places | 20,773 | 20,480 | 11,495 | 4,850 | 23.7% |
| All | 83,483 | 82,491 | 47,527 | 19,005 | 23.0% |
The ten largest communities hold 62,710 licences, three in four. The oldest licences sit in the southeast: in Ketchikan 28.0% have passed ten years, in Juneau 26.5%. The youngest sit in Wasilla, Palmer and North Pole, where 16% to 19% have.
The layer gives a community, not a borough. We don’t group the towns into boroughs here, because the file doesn’t.
Licences by trade word in the name
With no line of business in the layer, the only trade signal is the name. We sorted each licence by the first trade word its business name carries. A name with “roofing” counts as roofing even if it says “construction” too. The order of the rows below is the order of the test.
| Trade word in the name | Licences | Under 2 | 2–4 | 5–9 | 10–19 | 20+ | 10+ share |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Roofing | 137 | 47 | 33 | 18 | 24 | 13 | 27.4% |
| Plumbing | 149 | 33 | 27 | 29 | 28 | 21 | 35.5% |
| Heating, HVAC, refrigeration, mechanical | 269 | 62 | 50 | 53 | 49 | 44 | 36.0% |
| Electric | 360 | 68 | 60 | 64 | 80 | 68 | 43.5% |
| Auto repair, automotive, auto body, collision | 344 | 129 | 75 | 60 | 46 | 32 | 22.8% |
| Moving, movers, relocation | 56 | 16 | 13 | 8 | 10 | 4 | 27.5% |
| Construction, contracting, building, excavating | 2,358 | 633 | 514 | 393 | 497 | 267 | 33.2% |
| All trade words | 3,673 | 988 | 772 | 625 | 734 | 449 | 33.2% |
| No trade word | 79,810 | 27,138 | 18,629 | 15,334 | 12,311 | 5,511 | 22.6% |
The age bands count the licences with an issue date: 3,568 of the 3,673 trade licences, and 78,923 of the rest. The share of ten years or more is of the dated ones.
The trade names run older than the file. A third of them were issued ten or more years ago, against 22.6% for the rest. Electrical names are the oldest group: 148 of 340 dated licences, 43.5%, passed ten years. Auto repair names are the youngest of the trades, with 129 issued in the last two years.
Treat the trade rows as a floor, too. Plenty of roofers trade under a family name with no trade word at all. “Electric” also catches some power utilities and electric cooperatives. A count by name is a rough net, not a register of the trades.
What our pipeline did with them
Each licence was matched against the companies we already held, by name and place. The 83,483 licences became 81,738 companies. Some companies hold more than one licence.
| Into the database | Licences | Companies |
|---|---|---|
| New companies | 83,331 | 81,595 |
| Matched to a company we held | 152 | 143 |
| All | 83,483 | 81,738 |
Almost all of them were new to us. Before this file, our database held 436 Alaska companies from other sources.
| First source of the matched company | Companies |
|---|---|
| FMCSA Company Census, moving companies | 137 |
| Five state contractor files (WA, OR, TX, VA, IA) | 6 |
| All | 143 |
The matched companies keep the trade their first record gave them. 137 are movers. The other six are two roofing companies, one HVAC, one electrical and two general contractors. Their Alaska licences run older than the rest: 74 of the 142 dated ones, 52.1%, passed ten years, against 23.0% for the new companies.
Our database also gives each new company a records age, from its oldest licence date. 80,653 of the 81,595 have one, and 18,762 of them reach ten years or more.
Status by lane
Our pipeline puts every company in one lane, by headcount. Lane C is every company under 30 people or with no headcount on record, and Polyshares is its buyer. The licence layer has no headcount, so a new Alaska company goes to lane C unless another record of the same company gives it one.
| Lane and status | New | Matched | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lane C, qualified | 78,957 | 117 | 79,074 |
| Lane C, held for a name check | 2,345 | – | 2,345 |
| Lane C, already contacted | – | 19 | 19 |
| Lane C, opted out | 1 | – | 1 |
| 30 or more people, qualified | 4 | 2 | 6 |
| 30 or more people, contacted | – | 5 | 5 |
| Excluded | 288 | – | 288 |
| All | 81,595 | 143 | 81,738 |
96.7% of the companies sit in lane C as qualified. The 2,345 held ones have a word in the name our risk check stops on. “Health” leads with 513, then “banks” with 321 and “medical” with 257. 1,018 of them were stopped on a health word: health, medical, clinic, rehab, senior, nursing or hospice. A person clears them or they stay out of outreach. The 288 excluded ones carry a name our rules leave out: 171 schools, 40 hospitals, 32 “city of”, 21 universities, 20 staffing firms and 4 others. Eleven companies belong to our programme for larger companies, not to this page’s buyer.
At the read, none of the 81,595 new companies had been looked up yet. No website, no contact.
Why Alaska waits
Our outreach goes out on weekdays between 10:00 and 16:00 Central time. In Anchorage, that’s 07:00 to 13:00. Our sending step holds back any state the window can’t reach between 08:00 and 17:00 local time, and Alaska is one. So the 79,074 qualified companies wait for a send window that fits Alaska’s clock. Across all sources, the last Alaska contact we pushed to a campaign went on 19 October 2026.
That’s the honest state of play. An Alaska owner reading this hasn’t been skipped; the clock has.
What a licence date says about the record
A business licence says a company told the state what it does and paid its fee. It says nothing about the paperwork behind the work. A plumbing licence from 2004 could sit on twenty years of job files, or on a shoebox.
What Polyshares looks at is the record itself. Its home page says: “The length and texture of the record matter more than headcount or revenue.” Under “Who qualifies” it puts “Any company with real operating history, in any sector.” Construction is among the sectors it names. On price, it says: “Depth of operating history and how much visible reasoning the record contains move the number far more than raw volume does.”
Polyshares publishes a few of its deals. One is a roofing company at $450,000 (indicative, not an offer). Another is a general contractor at $300,000 (indicative, not an offer), on a “Perpetual exclusive license to the operational record,” “Anonymized before delivery.” A published deal is one company’s price. It doesn’t predict anyone else’s.
A licence date gives the depth a starting line. For licence age in the contractor files of other states, see our trade licence age table. New Hampshire licenses the business itself in two trades, electrical work and plumbing and gas fitting, and its licences are counted by age too.
What this means for an Alaska trade company
In our reading, the records that count are the ones that show how a job was worked out. For an Alaska builder or excavator, that’s the bids and takeoffs, the change orders, the freeze-up schedules, the inspection notes and the closeout files. Our page on job files and work orders walks through them.
For a roofer, it’s the estimates that became jobs and the ones that didn’t, with the reason written down. Snow load, ice dams and a short season leave a trail in the notes. Our page for roofing companies covers those records. For a heating contractor, it’s the service history: what failed at forty below and how it was fixed.
For an auto repair shop, it’s the repair orders, the diagnosis notes and the parts records. How did a technician get from a complaint to a fix? That’s the question our page on auto repair shops answers. For a mover, it’s the surveys, the estimates and the claims notes, and our table of household goods carriers by state counts the bigger fleets.
Polyshares counts “spreadsheets, CRM history, support tickets” and “accounting and ERP exports” as operational data. Our explainer on what data buyers actually want from a trade business puts them in order.
Before any of it is used, the record is de-identified. Customer names and payments are never what a buyer wants. What it wants is how the work was done: how an estimate became a job, how a change order was settled, how a repair was diagnosed.
How many years of yours can you still open? Our estimate takes two minutes and asks exactly that.
What the tables do not prove
An issue date is when the state issued that licence number. It isn’t when the business started. A business that changed hands or changed form may hold a young licence on an old record.
The layer is a subset. About one active licence in eight drops out of it, by the state’s own note, and a business with several sites shows one address. A town’s count is a count of licences placed there, not of every business in it. The layer’s own note says it is “not intended for definitive public use”; we use it for counts, as it stands.
The trade rows come from names, not from the line of business the licence holds. They miss trade businesses with plain names and catch a few that aren’t trades. Our lane is the pipeline’s reading of the records we hold, not a buyer’s decision. Polyshares decides on its own review; it says “We read a sample of the record.”
What is never included
This page holds counts only. It names no company and shows no licence number, address or person.
In a licence of records, the customer’s own information stays out. Polyshares says its licence “does not cover what you hold on behalf of your own clients.” It also says identifying fields, customer names, emails and account numbers are “stripped by a specialist PII partner before Polyshares or any lab sees the record.” Our advice: payment card numbers, bank statements and payroll should never be in an export at all. How it’s safe walks through what leaves your systems, and when.
Methodology
The file. The Business Licenses layer on the ArcGIS server of the Alaska Department of Commerce, Community, and Economic Development (Economics_Related/Business_Licenses MapServer/2). Its copyright line reads “SOA DCCED CBPL”. Its description calls it a subset of the CBPL business licence download: licences with a physical state of Alaska and a physical city matched to a DCRA community. It points to the CBPL download “for analysis of the data”; that site refuses scripted requests, so we read the layer. At our read the layer held 83,488 rows, all with the status Active (count query at 11:10 UTC). The fields include the business name, owners, licence number, issue, renew and expiry dates, physical and mailing address and the DCRA community. There is no line-of-business field.
What was collected. Our collector (ak-cbpl) takes the active licences in one paged query, keeps one row per licence number, and skips a row with no name or with a physical state other than Alaska. The host run on 30 October 2026 skipped 5 rows and wrote 83,483 licences into the database at 10:36 UTC.
When we read it. We read the layer’s description at 11:09 UTC and the host database read-only on 30 October 2026 between 11:09 and 11:15 UTC. The issue date, expiry date and community of each licence come from the layer, read through its open query API between 11:10 and 11:12 UTC and joined to the database on the licence number. Every one of the 83,483 licence numbers in the database was in that read. The statute was read at 11:12 UTC and the Polyshares pages at 11:13 UTC.
Dates. The layer’s dates are times in milliseconds; we read each as a date in Alaska time. The collector adds two hours before it reads the date; the figures on this page are the same either way. Years since issue are the days from the issue date to 30 October 2026, divided by 365.25. The bands are under 2, 2 to 4, 5 to 9, 10 to 19, and 20 or more. Shares are of the licences with an issue date, rounded to one decimal. The temporal coverage runs from the oldest issue year, 1969, to the latest expiry year, 2030.
Trade words. A licence’s trade row is the first of these tests its business name passes, ignoring case and extra spaces: “roof”; “plumb”; “heating”, “hvac”, “refrigeration” or “mechanical”; “electric”; “auto repair”, “automotive”, “auto body”, “collision”, “auto service”, “auto &” or “auto and”; “moving”, “movers” or “relocation”; “construct”, “contract”, “builder”, “building”, “excavat”, “earthwork” or “dirt work”. The words match inside longer words. A name that passes none is in the last row.
Companies. A company is a row in our database. A licence matched to a company we already held adds a source record to it and changes neither its trade nor its lane. The lane and status are the pipeline’s own at the read, set by our qualification step. The records age is the database’s own field, set from the oldest licence date at ingest. The send window and the Alaska hold are the settings of our sending step at the read.
Left out. The roughly 12% of active licences outside the layer, by the state’s note; lapsed and inactive licences; Alaska’s professional licences and its corporations register, which are separate files; and the businesses the act exempts.
Refresh. The tables are rebuilt monthly from a fresh download and a new read of the database. The next update is due 30 November 2026.
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Sources
- Alaska DCCED, Business Licenses layer (Economics_Related/Business_Licenses MapServer/2, source SOA DCCED CBPL): description and fields
- The same layer through its open query API, as read for this table
- Alaska Statutes, AS 43.70, the Alaska Business License Act: who needs a licence, what it holds, the fee, the exemptions
- Polyshares, home page: who qualifies, the length and texture of the record, anonymisation, what the licence does not cover (polyshares.com)
- Polyshares, case studies: the roofing company at $450,000 and the general contractor at $300,000 (polyshares.com)