UK Companies House Scraper - Enhanced

Search and extract company data with financial analysis, PSCs, charges, insolvency history, and company health scoring from the official UK registry.

Before you start

This actor needs a free Companies House API key (it takes about two minutes to register). Paste it into the apiKey field before you press Start; without it the run stops straight away and nothing is charged. Details are in the API Key section below.

Features

Core Company Data

• Company Search: Search by company name
• Direct Lookup: Fetch by company number
• Company Details: Status, type, registration date, SIC codes
• Company Age: Calculated years and months since incorporation
• Previous Names: Historical company name changes

Officers & Ownership (NEW)

• Officers: Directors, secretaries with full details
• Active/Resigned Counts: Track officer changes
• PSCs: Persons with Significant Control (beneficial owners)
• Natures of Control: Voting rights, ownership percentages

Financial Health (NEW)

• Charges/Mortgages: All registered charges with status
• Insolvency History: Liquidation and administration records
• Practitioner Details: Insolvency practitioner information
• Accounts Status: Filing deadlines and overdue alerts

Company Health Score (NEW)

• Health Score: 0-100 score based on multiple factors
• Status Classification: Healthy, Caution, Concern, or Critical
• Factor Analysis: Explains what's affecting the score
• Risk Indicators: Outstanding charges, overdue accounts, etc.

Financial Estimates (NEW)

• Revenue Band: Estimated based on accounts type
• Employee Band: Estimated headcount range
• Size Category: Micro, Small, Medium, or Large

Use Cases

• B2B lead generation with financial filtering
• Credit risk assessment and due diligence
• Competitive intelligence research
• Supplier verification and vetting
• Investment research and screening
• Compliance and KYC checks

API Key (FREE)

This actor requires a free Companies House API key.

1. Go to https://developer.company-information.service.gov.uk/
2. Create an account and register an application
3. Copy your API key (600 requests per 5 minutes free)

Input

Field	Type	Required	Default	Description
apiKey	string	Yes	-	Your free Companies House API key
searchQueries	array	No	-	Company names to search
companyNumbers	array	No	-	Direct company numbers (e.g. 445790 is normalized to 00445790)
maxResults	number	No	100	Results per search
includeOfficers	boolean	No	true	Fetch officers
includeFilingHistory	boolean	No	false	Fetch recent filings
maxFilings	number	No	10	Filing history items
includePSCs	boolean	No	true	Fetch beneficial owners
includeCharges	boolean	No	true	Fetch mortgages/charges
includeInsolvency	boolean	No	true	Fetch insolvency history
includeAccounts	boolean	No	true	Include accounts info (accounts is null when disabled)
includeEstimates	boolean	No	true	Calculate financial estimates

Example Input

{
    "apiKey": "your-free-api-key",
    "searchQueries": ["Tesco"],
    "maxResults": 5,
    "includeOfficers": true,
    "includePSCs": true,
    "includeCharges": true,
    "includeInsolvency": true
}

Output

Each company produces one result. Officers, PSCs and charges are fetched in full (all pages, up to 1,000 each); activeOfficersCount/resignedOfficersCount come from Companies House totals. sicCodes[].description uses the official Companies House SIC descriptions (null if unknown). Filing history items include transactionId and a human-viewable viewUrl; insolvency cases include all dates. The health score only considers officers, PSCs and charges when those sections are enabled.

Abbreviated example:

{
    "companyNumber": "00445790",
    "companyName": "TESCO PLC",
    "companyStatus": "active",
    "companyType": "plc",
    "companyTypeDescription": "Public Limited Company",
    "companyAge": {
        "years": 76,
        "months": 2
    },
    "registeredOfficeAddress": {
        "addressLine1": "Tesco House",
        "locality": "Welwyn Garden City",
        "postalCode": "AL7 1GA"
    },
    "sicCodes": [
        {
            "code": "47110",
            "description": "Retail sale in non-specialised stores with food, beverages or tobacco predominating"
        }
    ],
    "officers": [
        {
            "name": "John Smith",
            "role": "director",
            "appointedOn": "2020-01-15",
            "nationality": "British"
        }
    ],
    "activeOfficersCount": 12,
    "pscs": [
        {
            "name": "Investment Fund Ltd",
            "naturesOfControl": ["ownership-of-shares-75-to-100-percent"],
            "kind": "corporate-entity"
        }
    ],
    "charges": [
        {
            "status": "fully-satisfied",
            "createdOn": "2015-06-01",
            "personsEntitled": ["Barclays Bank PLC"]
        }
    ],
    "totalCharges": 15,
    "satisfiedCharges": 12,
    "outstandingCharges": 3,
    "accounts": {
        "lastAccounts": {
            "madeUpTo": "2024-02-28",
            "type": "full"
        },
        "nextAccounts": {
            "dueOn": "2024-11-28",
            "overdue": false
        }
    },
    "financialEstimates": {
        "estimatedRevenue": "> £36m",
        "employeeBand": "> 250 employees",
        "revenueSource": "Based on full accounts filing"
    },
    "companyHealth": {
        "score": 95,
        "status": "healthy",
        "factors": [
            "Established company (10+ years)"
        ]
    },
    "url": "https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/00445790",
    "scrapedAt": "2024-01-20T12:00:00Z"
}

Cost

This actor uses pay-per-event pricing. For current prices, see the Pricing tab.

You only pay for valid results: companies that are not found, invalid company numbers, and lookups that fail after retries are skipped and never charged.

The Companies House API key itself is free.

Run summary

Besides the dataset, each run writes to the default key-value store:

• SUMMARY: counts of saved, skipped and failed companies, per-query hit counts and the health breakdown
• FAILED_REQUESTS: API lookups that still failed after retries (rate limit, server error, network)
• SKIPPED_COMPANIES: company numbers that were invalid, not found, or returned an incomplete record

An invalid or missing API key fails the run immediately with a clear message instead of finishing with an empty dataset.

Rate limits (HTTP 429) and temporary server errors are retried automatically with backoff.

Tips

1. Health scoring: Use companyHealth.status to quickly filter companies

   • healthy (80-100): Low risk
   • caution (60-79): Some concerns
   • concern (40-59): Multiple issues
   • critical (0-39): High risk

2. Outstanding charges: Check outstandingCharges for secured debts

3. Financial estimates: Revenue bands based on accounts type filing

4. PSC analysis: Beneficial owners reveal true control structure

Data Source

Data from Companies House, the official UK government registrar.

Support

• Built by: Artificially
• Issues: Report bugs or request features via Apify Console