How do I search for UCC liens on a Florida business?

You can search for UCC liens filed against a Florida business or individual through the Florida Secretary of State's FSTR (FloridaUCC.com) portal, or use SunbizStatus to run a combined entity status and UCC lien check in one place.

What is FloridaUCC.com and who uses it?

FloridaUCC.com (officially FSTR Online Filing) is the Florida Secretary of State's UCC lien search portal. It is used by lenders, banks, attorneys, CPAs, title companies, factoring companies, and M&A professionals to check whether a borrower or business has existing liens before extending credit or completing a transaction.

Can lenders check UCC liens on Florida businesses before funding?

Yes. Lenders and banks routinely search the Florida FSTR (UCC) database before extending credit to verify that collateral is not already pledged to another creditor. SunbizStatus provides a direct link to run this check alongside the entity's Sunbiz status.

A Florida Business Name Can Pass Sunbiz and Still Not Be Yours to Use — Here's Why

A client wants to form a new LLC, add a subsidiary, or launch a new brand under an existing entity. Someone runs a quick search on Sunbiz, the name comes back clear, and everyone moves on. That search answered exactly one question — and it's not the only one that matters.

Florida actually runs three separate naming checks, administered by two different legal frameworks, and clearing one says nothing about the other two. For a firm managing name decisions across several client entities at once, that's an easy gap to fall into — especially when a dashboard tracking "Active" status on existing entities can make it feel like naming is already a solved problem.

1. Entity name availability (the Sunbiz check most people actually run)

Every Florida LLC and corporation name has to be "distinguishable" from every other entity name already on file with the Division of Corporations (Fla. Stat. §605.0112 for LLCs; the parallel provision governs corporations). The bar is narrow: Sunbiz won't register a name that's identical, or that differs from an existing one only by a suffix, an article ("a," "an," "the"), the word "and" or "&," singular/plural/possessive form, or punctuation. Two names that are merely similar in spirit — different industries, different word order, a synonym — can both get through.

This check also explicitly does not compare against fictitious name registrations, general partnership registrations, or LLP statements. It's entity-vs-entity only.

If the new name needs a required designator — "LLC," "L.L.C.," or "Limited Liability Company" for an LLC, "Inc.," "Corp.," "Incorporated," or similar for a corporation — that gets checked too. And a handful of restricted words trigger an extra step before Sunbiz will accept the filing at all: "Bank," "Banker," or "Trust Company" needs sign-off from the Office of Financial Regulation; "Insurance" or "Assurance Company" needs the Office of Insurance Regulation; "Lottery," "Olympic"/"Olympiad," and the various "Space Florida"-type names each need their own outside approval. Worth flagging early for any client naming a financial-services or insurance-adjacent entity — that approval step can add real time to a formation timeline.

2. Fictitious name / DBA registration (same agency, no distinguishability check at all)

If the client plans to operate under a trade name different from the entity's legal name, that's a separate fictitious name registration under Fla. Stat. §865.09 — filed with the same Division of Corporations, but under a completely different standard. Florida does not screen fictitious name filings for uniqueness, and it will accept more than one registration for the identical name. The filing is pure public notice of who's operating under that name; it creates no ownership right and resolves no competing claims. A clean Sunbiz entity-name search tells you nothing about whether the DBA a client actually wants to put on a sign or a website is already registered by somebody else — that's a separate lookup.

3. Trademark registration (a different legal right entirely)

A trademark isn't a naming filing at all — it's a right to use a specific brand identifier for specific goods or services, and it only exists once the mark is actually used in commerce. Florida runs its own state-level trademark registration (Fla. Stat. Ch. 495), filed by mail with the same Division of Corporations for $87.50 per class, lasting five years with a renewal that requires proof the mark is still in use. Federal registration through the USPTO is broader and takes priority over a state mark if both exist. Either way, a trademark search is checked for likelihood of confusion with other marks in the same or related goods/services — a much fuzzier standard than Sunbiz's exact-match entity name rule, and one Sunbiz's own records can't answer.

One more practical piece: reserving a cleared name. Once an entity name is confirmed available, it can be held for 120 days before filing — $25 for an LLC, $35 for a corporation, $52.50 for an LP/LLLP — through a signed letter to the Division of Corporations rather than an online form, and the reservation cannot be renewed or extended past that window.

The takeaway for a multi-client practice: naming a new entity, adding a DBA, or launching a new brand under an existing client is a three-part check every time — entity name, fictitious name, and trademark — not one search that covers all three. A roster that shows every client's entity as "Active" is tracking the right thing for annual report and dissolution risk, but it was never built to answer "is this specific new name actually clear to use," and no single Sunbiz lookup answers that either.

Sources: Fla. Stat. §605.0112 · Fla. Stat. §607.04021 — reserved name · Fla. Stat. §495.071 — trademark duration/renewal · Division of Corporations — restricted words · Florida trademark application fee, CR2E014 · Harbor Compliance — Florida name reservation fees · UpCounsel — Florida fictitious name search