How to Check If a Business Name Is Taken

Why one search is never enough

A business name can be "taken" in four independent places, and clearing one tells you nothing about the others. Your state can happily approve "Lumina LLC" while a federal trademark on "Lumina" in your industry makes the name legally unusable. The .com can be free while the trademark register is a minefield — or the reverse. The order below runs from the weakest signal to the strongest, so you fail fast on names that were never going to work.

Step 1: Search your state's business register

Every US state runs a free business-entity search on its Secretary of State website (search "[your state] business entity search"). This tells you whether another corporation or LLC is already registered under the same or a confusingly similar entity name in that state — if so, the state will reject your formation paperwork until you pick something "distinguishable."

Two things to know. First, this check only covers your state: an identical name can be registered in all 49 others. Second, passing it grants you almost nothing — it means your paperwork will be accepted, not that you own the brand. That distinction trips up more founders than any other, and it's exactly what our guide on the difference between a business name and a trademark unpacks. If you plan to operate under a name different from your entity name, you'll also file a DBA ("doing business as") — same search, same caveat.

Step 2: Search the trademark register — the one that can actually stop you

This is the check that matters most. A federal trademark gives its owner nationwide rights to the name for their goods and services — regardless of which state either of you is in. If someone holds a live mark that's confusingly similar to your name in a related industry, they can force you to rebrand after you've printed the shirts and shipped the product.

Crucially, "confusingly similar" is broader than "identical." Sound-alikes ("Lyft"/"Lift"), altered spellings, and plural forms all count. A manual exact-match search on the USPTO's public search tool is a fine start, but it misses exactly these near-misses. The checker below runs your name against live US trademark data with phonetic and visual similarity matching — and handles steps 3 and 4 in the same pass.

Step 3: Check domain availability

The domain check is the one everybody does — often first, which is backwards. A free .com with a conflicted trademark is a trap; a taken .com with a clear trademark is usually solvable. Check the .com plus the extensions your audience expects (.io and .dev for developer tools, .app for mobile, .ai if that's your category, .co as the general fallback). If the exact .com is parked with no active site, note it — parked domains can often be bought later, and plenty of successful companies launched on an alternative extension first.

Step 4: Check social handles

Handle availability won't make or break the name legally, but inconsistent handles create friction forever. Check X, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, and GitHub — whichever subset matters for your business. If the exact handle is taken, a consistent modified form (like "joinlumina" or "luminahq" everywhere) beats five different improvisations. A dormant account squatting your exact handle is annoying but common; platforms rarely release them, so plan around it rather than waiting.

Step 5: The plain-search sanity check

Finally, spend five minutes searching the name on the open web and in the app stores. You're looking for unregistered but active users of the name in your space — a small competitor who never filed a trademark can still hold "common law" rights in their region, and an app with the same name in your category will bury you in search results. No database catches everything; your eyes are the last filter.

What the results mean

All clear across the four checks? Move fast — good names don't stay available. Consider filing a trademark application early; our guide on what a trademark costs in 2026 breaks down the fees. Found a conflict? Don't panic and don't guess: what to do depends entirely on where the name is taken, and our decision tree for when a business name is already taken walks through every branch. And if you'd rather check name ideas one after another without repeating the manual steps, the free name checker and the full trademark search exist for exactly that.