GLEIF LEI Lookup — Legal Entity Identifier API

Looks up a company's Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) against GLEIF's own official, free, public registry and returns the entity's legal name, entity and registration status, jurisdiction, legal form, registered address, and any BIC/SWIFT codes GLEIF has linked to it. You paste in one or more 20-character LEI codes; each one comes back as a flat row built from GLEIF's own record, or a clean miss if the code doesn't resolve to anything. No API key, no scraping — this calls GLEIF's REST API directly.

Who it's for

The accountable_eel catalogue sells company intelligence columns for outbound. Each actor takes a list of domains or company identifiers and returns one flat, stably-named row per input — firmographics, registry IDs, tech stack, email route, hiring activity — the shape a Clay table, an n8n workflow, or an AI agent can consume without post-processing. Pricing is pay-per-event and per-domain: a few tenths of a cent for a row that was actually found, and nothing for a miss, so a list that doesn't enrich costs you next to nothing. Where an official source exists — VIES, GLEIF, SEC EDGAR, Brønnøysund, PRH, RDAP — it is queried directly instead of scraped. No seat licence, no monthly minimum, no credit system to decode.

For GLEIF specifically: this is for anyone who already has a list of LEI codes — pulled from invoices, ISO 20022 payment messages, a KYC file, or a counterparty database — and needs the entity record behind each code without opening GLEIF's search page one code at a time.

Why this one

• Queries GLEIF's own API directly — the same registration data used for regulatory reporting and counterparty due diligence, not a scrape or a cached mirror of it.
• Returns the registration lifecycle fields (registrationStatus, initialRegistrationDate, nextRenewalDate) alongside the entity record, so you can flag lapsed or soon-to-expire registrations in the same pass instead of a second lookup.
• Handles thousands of LEI codes in one run with configurable concurrency — GLEIF's own web search is one code at a time.
• A code that doesn't resolve — malformed, mistyped, or never registered — is reported as found: false and is never billed.
• Output is one flat row per LEI, field names fixed, ready to paste into a spreadsheet or feed straight into a workflow tool with no reshaping.
• Jurisdiction and legal form come back as structured codes (ISO jurisdiction, GLEIF ELF), not free-text guesses — useful when you need to bucket entities by country or entity type programmatically rather than parsing an address string.

What you get

One row per LEI code you submit. Every field below comes straight through from GLEIF's own record — nothing is inferred or supplemented from another source.

Field	Type	Description
query	string	The LEI code you submitted, as submitted.
found	boolean	true if GLEIF returned a matching record, false for a miss.
status	string	OK for a resolved LEI; a short reason code when nothing matched.
lei	string	The 20-character LEI code, as recorded by GLEIF.
legalName	string	The entity's registered legal name.
entityStatus	string	Entity status, e.g. ACTIVE or INACTIVE.
legalForm	string	GLEIF ELF (Entity Legal Form) code for the entity's legal structure.
jurisdiction	string	ISO jurisdiction code the entity is registered in.
legalAddress	object	Registered legal address — address lines, city, region, country, postal code.
registrationStatus	string	LEI registration status, e.g. ISSUED, LAPSED, PENDING_TRANSFER.
initialRegistrationDate	date (ISO 8601)	When the LEI was first registered.
nextRenewalDate	date (ISO 8601)	When the LEI registration is next due for renewal.
bic	array of strings	BIC/SWIFT codes GLEIF has linked to the entity, if any — often empty.
scrapedAt	date (ISO 8601)	When this actor fetched the record.

onlyFound (input option) drops the miss rows if you only want resolved entities in your dataset. columns lets you request a subset of the fields above — useful when you're paying per source elsewhere in the catalogue and want a lean payload here too.

Two fields are worth distinguishing up front: entityStatus describes the entity itself (is the company ACTIVE or INACTIVE), while registrationStatus describes the LEI record's own lifecycle (ISSUED, LAPSED, PENDING_TRANSFER, and similar). An entity can be perfectly active while its LEI registration has lapsed because nobody renewed it — that combination is exactly what registrationStatus and nextRenewalDate together are for.

Price

$3 per 1,000 LEI codes, plus a $0.00005 start fee. Misses (found:false) are never charged.

That's $0.003 per LEI that actually resolves, plus a flat $0.00005 charge once per run for the actor start — not per code. Run 1,000 LEI codes through this actor and, if every single one resolves, you pay about $3. The same 1,000 rows through a credit-based enrichment platform runs $80–$400. A code that doesn't resolve costs nothing at all, so a messy list — typos, duplicates, codes that were never issued — doesn't inflate the bill.

How to use

1. In the Apify Console. Open the actor page and click Start — the leiCodes 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~gleif-lei-lookup/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<YOUR_TOKEN>" \
     -X POST \
     -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
     -d '{"leiCodes":["5493001KJTIIGC8Y1R12"]}'
   

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.

1. Paste your LEI codes into leiCodes, one per line — the actor uppercases and trims whitespace automatically, so 5493001kjtiigc8y1r12 and 5493001KJTIIGC8Y1R12 both work.
2. Leave maxConcurrency at its default for a first run, or raise it for a large batch — GLEIF's API has no meaningful rate limit for reasonable request volumes.
3. Run it. Each code becomes one row in the dataset: a resolved entity record, or a clean found: false miss that costs nothing.
4. Pull the results via the Apify API, an integration, or the Console's dataset export (CSV, JSON, Excel) and join it back to whatever list the LEI codes came from.
5. If you're screening for compliance gaps rather than just enriching a table, filter the results on registrationStatus and nextRenewalDate afterward — those two fields, not entityStatus, are what tell you whether the LEI itself needs attention.

Input

{
  "leiCodes": [
    "5493001KJTIIGC8Y1R12"
  ]
}

One 20-character LEI code per line. Accepted formats: 5493001KJTIIGC8Y1R12, 5493001kjtiigc8y1r12.

leiCodes is a list of 20-character LEI codes to look up — one per line, e.g. 5493001KJTIIGC8Y1R12. maxConcurrency controls how many LEIs are checked in parallel, and proxyConfiguration defaults to Apify Proxy (GLEIF's API has no bot protection, so this rarely matters in practice).

Sample output

query	found	status	lei	legalName	entityStatus	legalForm	jurisdiction	legalAddress	registrationStatus	initialRegistrationDate	nextRenewalDate	bic	scrapedAt
5493001KJTIIGC8Y1R12	true	OK	5493001KJTIIGC8Y1R12	Bloomberg Finance L.P.	ACTIVE	T91T	US-DE	{"addressLines":["C/O Corporation Service Company","251 Little Falls Drive"],"city":"Wilmington","region":"US-DE","country":"US","postalCode":"19808"}	ISSUED	2012-12-06T20:55:22Z	2027-01-25T16:50:02Z	[]	2026-08-31T06:01:09.714Z

For example, looking up 5493001KJTIIGC8Y1R12 returns a record like this:

{
  "query": "5493001KJTIIGC8Y1R12",
  "found": true,
  "data": {
    "lei": "5493001KJTIIGC8Y1R12",
    "legalName": "Bloomberg Finance L.P.",
    "status": "ACTIVE",
    "legalForm": "8888",
    "jurisdiction": "US-DE",
    "legalAddress": {
      "addressLines": ["731 Lexington Avenue"],
      "city": "New York",
      "region": "US-NY",
      "country": "US",
      "postalCode": "10022"
    },
    "registrationStatus": "ISSUED",
    "initialRegistrationDate": "2012-06-06T15:00:00.000Z",
    "nextRenewalDate": "2026-05-30T09:23:00.000Z",
    "bic": []
  },
  "scrapedAt": "2026-08-21T10:15:00.000Z"
}

A row with "found": false means GLEIF's API returned zero results for that code — an invalid, malformed, or unregistered LEI — and it is never charged.

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~gleif-lei-lookup/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<YOUR_TOKEN>" \
  -X POST \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"leiCodes":["5493001KJTIIGC8Y1R12"]}'

n8n. Add an HTTP Request node: Method POST, URL https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/accountable_eel~gleif-lei-lookup/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<YOUR_TOKEN>, Body Content Type JSON, JSON Body {"leiCodes":["5493001KJTIIGC8Y1R12"]} (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~gleif-lei-lookup/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<YOUR_TOKEN>, Body {"leiCodes":["{{LEI code}}"]}, mapping the row's LEI code into the leiCodes array.

MCP. In Claude, Cursor, or any MCP client with the Apify MCP server, ask for "GLEIF LEI Lookup | Apify" — the agent will find and run this actor.

Tips

• Use onlyFound if you only want resolved entities in the output — useful when you're joining the dataset back onto a table and don't want miss rows to overwrite good data.
• Check registrationStatus and nextRenewalDate together to flag entities whose LEI has lapsed or is about to — a lapsed LEI often means a compliance filing is overdue on the entity's side.
• legalForm is a GLEIF ELF code, not a plain-language string (e.g. 8888 for a US LLP). Join it against GLEIF's public ELF code list if you need the readable name.
• bic comes back empty for most non-financial entities — it's only populated for entities GLEIF has linked to SWIFT/BIC codes, mainly banks and financial institutions.
• If your source list has raw company names instead of LEI codes, you won't get a match here — this actor takes an LEI as input, it does not search by name. Get the LEI first (GLEIF's own search, or a registry lookup that returns one) and feed the code in.
• legalAddress comes back as an object, not a single string — if you're pushing rows into a flat spreadsheet or CRM field, decide up front whether you want the whole object, just city and country, or a concatenated line, and shape the mapping on your side accordingly.

vs. alternatives

	What it costs	What you get	Trade-off
This actor (gleif-lei-lookup)	$0.003 per LEI that resolves (less on paid tiers), $0.00005 actor start, nothing for a miss	One flat row per LEI — legal name, entity and registration status, jurisdiction, legal form, registered address, BIC codes, registration lifecycle dates	Takes an LEI as input, not a company name — it doesn't search GLEIF for you, it resolves codes you already have.
GLEIF directly	Free	The same data, from the same source	It's the same source — this actor exists for the batch: hundreds or thousands of codes in, one row per code out, retries and concurrency handled, in the format your table already reads. One code, once? Use GLEIF's own search page.
Clay	$0.08–$0.40 per enriched row in credits, on top of a seat	A whole enrichment workspace — waterfalls across dozens of providers, plus the table and the sequencing around it	If you want one place that does everything and you're not counting rows, that's Clay. This is one column, priced per column, callable from Clay via its HTTP step.
Doing it yourself	Your time + handling GLEIF's pagination, retry logic, and mapping ELF codes to readable legal forms	The same data	You still have to write and maintain the request loop, the concurrency limiting, and the found/not-found branching this actor already does.

Prices for third-party tools are their published list prices as of August 2026 and are not tracked here — check the vendor before relying on the comparison. GLEIF's own registry search is genuinely free and returns the same underlying record — the reason to use this actor instead is entirely about volume: a few LEI codes, use the portal; a few hundred or thousand, run this once instead of clicking through GLEIF's page for each one.

FAQ

What happens if an LEI doesn't resolve? It comes back as a normal dataset row with found: false and a status explaining why nothing matched (invalid format, unregistered, or malformed code). It is never charged — you only pay for codes that resolve to a real record.

Are there rate limits? GLEIF's public API doesn't impose a meaningful rate limit for reasonable batch sizes. maxConcurrency controls how many requests this actor sends in parallel; raise it for large runs, lower it if you want to be gentler on shared infrastructure.

How fresh is the data? Every run queries GLEIF's live API — nothing is cached or stored between runs. scrapedAt on each row is the timestamp of that specific request, so the data is as current as GLEIF's own registry at the moment you ran it.

Does this need proxies? proxyConfiguration defaults to Apify Proxy, but GLEIF's LEI API has no bot protection, so it rarely matters. You can turn proxying off if you'd rather not route through it.

Is looking up LEI data a GDPR problem? No — an LEI identifies a legal entity (a company, fund, or other organization), not a natural person. The registry fields returned here — legal name, registered address, jurisdiction — are the same public B2B registration data GLEIF itself publishes for regulatory and counterparty-verification purposes.

Can I schedule this to re-check LEIs periodically? Yes, via an Apify schedule on this actor, run against the same list of codes. There's no delta/diff feature built in — each run returns the full current record for every code, so compare registrationStatus and nextRenewalDate against your last run's output yourself if you want to catch changes.

Can an AI agent call this directly? Yes. Any MCP client connected to the Apify MCP server can find and run this actor by name ("GLEIF LEI Lookup"), or you can call the Apify API directly — see the integrations section above.

Does it deduplicate LEI codes in my list? No — if the same code appears twice in leiCodes, you get two rows and are charged for each resolved lookup. Deduplicate before you submit if your source list has repeats, since GLEIF's record for a given LEI doesn't change between two calls in the same run.

Can I look up a company by name instead of an LEI code? Not with this actor — it resolves codes you already have, it doesn't search GLEIF by name. If you're starting from company names, you need a source that returns an LEI first (GLEIF's own search UI, or a provider that maps names to identifiers), then feed the resulting codes in here for the full record.

What is an LEI actually used for? It's a 20-character identifier that uniquely names a legal entity participating in financial transactions — used for regulatory trade and transaction reporting (e.g. under EMIR, MiFID II, Dodd-Frank), KYC and AML onboarding, and verifying who you're actually transacting with before a payment or contract goes through. This actor resolves codes you already have; it doesn't assign new ones.

Related actors

• Company Registry Unified Lookup
• EU VAT Validator
• SEC EDGAR Company Lookup