Companies House Search: UK Company Rows from a Name

Type a company name, get one row per matching UK company: number, status, incorporation or dissolution date, registered office address and postcode. Reads the official Companies House register (England & Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland). No API key needed; add your own free key and it switches to the official Public Data API.

Who uses it: sales and RevOps teams building UK prospect lists from a name column, KYB and onboarding checks that need the company number before a deeper lookup, and agents that resolve "Tesco" to the right legal entity.

Related actors: to look up a company you already have a number for (accounts due dates, SIC codes, insolvency flags) use Companies House UK Lookup. This actor finds the numbers; that one reads the full record.

Price: $3.00 per 1,000 companies on the Free plan, less on paid plans. A search with no match returns one row saying so and costs nothing.

Example rows

companyNumber	companyName	companyStatus	incorporationDate	postcode	source
00445790	TESCO PLC	active	1947-11-27	AL7 1GA	website
05888957	(a dissolved Tesco entity)	dissolved	null	SE1 2AF	website

companyStatus on the website route is read from the register's own result line: no label after "Incorporated on" means active; a label such as "Liquidation" is passed through; "Dissolved on" and "Closed" map to dissolved and closed. The dissolved row above has incorporationDate: null because the search list does not print it. companyType is only filled when you add an API key.

How to use

1. In the Apify Console. Open the actor page and click Start — the queries field is already pre-filled with a working example. Results land in the run's dataset as soon as each item is found.
2. Via the API. Call it directly with a POST request — no Console needed once you have an API token:

   curl "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/accountable_eel~companies-house-search-lookup/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<YOUR_TOKEN>" \
     -X POST \
     -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
     -d '{"queries":["tesco"]}'
   

3. On a schedule. Save this actor as an Apify Task with the input you want, then add a Schedule (hourly, daily, weekly) so it runs on its own — no server of your own required.

Input

{
  "queries": [
    "tesco"
  ]
}

One search per line: a company name or part of one (e.g. "tesco"). Each search returns up to the maximum number of matching UK companies, one row per company. Accepted formats: tesco, acme consulting, 00445790.

Put one company name per line in queries. maxResults (default 20, up to 100) is how many companies each line returns; the register lists 20 per page and the actor reads the pages it needs. Leave apiKey empty to use the public register website. A free key from the Companies House developer site (a few minutes, no approval wait) is optional; it stays your own, is marked secret and is never written to the dataset. The API allows 600 requests per 5 minutes per key.

Output

One row per company. Missing values are null. Every row carries companyUrl (the Companies House page), sourceUrl (the search page) and scrapedAt.

query	found	status	searchQuery	companyCount	companies	matchRank	companyNumber	companyName	companyStatus	companyType	jurisdiction	incorporationDate	dissolutionDate	openedDate	registeredOfficeAddress	postcode	matchedPreviousName	companyUrl	source	sourceUrl	scrapedAt
tesco	true	OK			<all companies returned (full array)>	<rank in the register's results>				<company type (api key only)>				<opened date (overseas establishments)>					<route used (website or api)>		1970-01-01T00:00:00.000Z

A search with no match comes back as one row with "found": false, "status": "NOT_FOUND" and a message, and is never charged. A block or error page comes back as BLOCKED and is never charged either.

Pricing

Pay-per-event. A flat per-run fee covers session/proxy warmup; you're billed per item only when data is actually found and returned — see .actor/pay_per_event.json for exact prices. A miss is never charged.

Example runs

Paste any of these into the Input tab and press Start. All three return rows with no key and no account beyond an Apify login.

One name, the default shape.

{ "queries": ["tesco"] }

Several names, first 5 matches each.

{ "queries": ["monzo", "revolut", "wise payments"], "maxResults": 5 }

A longer list for one name, 60 companies.

{ "queries": ["acme"], "maxResults": 60 }

Use it from Clay, n8n, Make, or an AI agent

This actor runs synchronously over plain HTTP — call it directly from a script, a workflow tool, or an AI agent, no Apify Console needed once you have an API token.

curl "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/accountable_eel~companies-house-search-lookup/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<YOUR_TOKEN>" \
  -X POST \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"queries":["tesco"]}'

n8n. Add an HTTP Request node: Method POST, URL https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/accountable_eel~companies-house-search-lookup/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<YOUR_TOKEN>, Body Content Type JSON, JSON Body {"queries":["tesco"]} (swap in an expression from an earlier node for a real value).

Clay. Add an "HTTP API" column: Method POST, URL https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/accountable_eel~companies-house-search-lookup/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<YOUR_TOKEN>, Body {"queries":["{{search}}"]}, mapping the row's search into the queries array.

MCP. In Claude, Cursor, or any MCP client with the Apify MCP server, ask for "companies house search scraper" — the agent will find and run this actor.