UK Company Registry Status & Filing Signals

Check UK companies by company number against the official Companies House monthly data file. For each number you get one flat JSON row: register status, whether accounts and the confirmation statement were overdue at the data date, insolvency-related status, registered charges, last filing dates, a name check against the registered and previous names, and optional comparison with rows from your own earlier run.

This is a monthly snapshot, not real-time register data. Every row states the date its data is valid for. Anything that happened after that date (a filing, a status change, a dissolution) is not visible. Use it for screening and monitoring lists of companies, not for a point-in-time check of a single company.

It reports register facts and, separately, rule-based signals computed from them. It is not a credit report, a rating, or a recommendation about any company.

What you get

• Status: Active, strike-off proposed, liquidation, administration, voluntary arrangement, receivership (as shown in the monthly file).
• Filing signals at the data date: accounts and confirmation statement overdue or not, with the due date and days overdue, plus a clear flag when a due date fell after the data date (unknown without a live check).
• Charges: registered, outstanding, part-satisfied and satisfied counts.
• Name check: give the name you hold; the row tells you if it matches the registered name, a previous name, or differs.
• Change detection: paste an earlier run's rows as baseline to see what changed between two data dates.
• Evidence on every row: data date, source file date and URL, file checksum, licence and attribution, source page URL, and caveats.
• Fast and cheap at volume: thousands of company numbers in seconds, no API key, no proxies.

Typical uses

• Re-check a supplier, customer or portfolio list every month for status changes and overdue filings.
• Clean a CRM list: confirm that a number and a name belong together before you contact or invoice.
• Feed an AI agent a compact, well-labelled record with its data date and limits.
• Compare this month's rows with last month's to list companies whose status or filing position changed.

How to use

1. Open the Input tab and add company numbers to companies ("00445790", "SC123456"), or objects {"companyNumber": "00445790", "companyName": "Tesco PLC"}.
2. Run it (the default 512 MB is enough; a run takes seconds).
3. Read lookupStatus first, then dataFreshness, then attention and inferences. Export the dataset as JSON, CSV or Excel, or call it from the API or an MCP client.

Data date and freshness

• evidence.snapshotAsOf is the data date: the end of the month before Companies House published the file (the October 2026 file is valid for 30 September 2026).
• evidence.sourceFileDate is the file's own date; evidence.indexBuiltAt is when this Actor build converted it; evidence.sourceFileUrl and evidence.sourceFileSha256 identify the exact file.
• dataFreshness.status: current (up to 45 days after the data date), aging (46 to 75 days: a newer file may exist) or outdated (over 75 days). Rows from an outdated build are returned for reference only and are not charged. dataFreshness.newerSnapshotPublished tells you if Companies House has already published a newer file than the one in this build.
• Overdue flags refer to the data date, not to today. About four in a hundred companies showed a changed status or newer filings two weeks after the data date in our own comparison with the live register.

What each field means

Question	Where	Kind
What does the register say?	companyStatus, registerFacts, chargesSignals, filingSignals	fact (at the data date)
Were filings overdue at the data date?	accountsOverdue, confirmationStatementOverdue	computed from register due dates
Is the status insolvency-related?	insolvencySignals.statusIndicatesInsolvencyProcess	fact (status value only)
Does my name match?	nameCheck.result: match, previous_name, differs, not_provided	computed
What do the rules flag?	inferences[] and attention.level	inference
What changed since my earlier run?	changesSinceBaseline	computed, only when comparable

attention.level is none_flagged, review or alert. none_flagged is not an all-clear, and Active is not a statement about solvency or suitability: it means only that none of the listed rules fired on month-old data.

Lookup results

FOUND, NOT_IN_SNAPSHOT, AMBIGUOUS_NAME, INVALID_NUMBER.

• NOT_IN_SNAPSHOT does not mean the company does not exist or was dissolved. The file lists live companies only. The number may belong to a dissolved company, to a company incorporated after the data date, or be mistyped. In our check, 12 of 13 numbers missing from the file were dissolved companies and 1 did not exist; the Actor never says which.
• A name on its own is used only when it is an exact, unique match among live companies; otherwise you get AMBIGUOUS_NAME with candidates or NOT_IN_SNAPSHOT. Always confirm the number before relying on a name-only match.
• Rows are returned in company-number order for speed; inputPosition is the position in your input.

Compare with an earlier run (baseline)

Paste the dataset items of an earlier run into baseline (or give baselineDatasetId of your own dataset). A row lists changes only if the baseline row exists for that number, was produced by this Actor, and has an earlier data date. Otherwise changesSinceBaseline.comparable is false with the reason; the same data date means there is no new information. Nothing is stored between runs and nothing is shared between users. The first useful comparison is possible once a second monthly data date exists.

Example output (real register data, abridged)

{
  "lookupStatus": "FOUND",
  "companyNumber": "00445790",
  "companyName": "TESCO PLC",
  "companyStatus": {
    "value": "active",
    "label": "Active",
    "detail": null
  },
  "nameCheck": {
    "provided": null,
    "result": "not_provided"
  },
  "accountsOverdue": {
    "value": false,
    "asOf": "2026-09-30",
    "nextDue": "2027-08-26",
    "daysOverdue": 0,
    "dueDatePassedSinceDataDate": false
  },
  "confirmationStatementOverdue": {
    "value": false,
    "asOf": "2026-09-30",
    "nextDue": "2027-07-02",
    "daysOverdue": 0,
    "dueDatePassedSinceDataDate": false
  },
  "chargesSignals": {
    "total": 9,
    "outstanding": 2,
    "partSatisfied": 0,
    "satisfied": 7
  },
  "filingSignals": {
    "lastAccountsMadeUpTo": "2026-02-28",
    "accountsCategory": "GROUP",
    "lastConfirmationStatement": "2026-06-18"
  },
  "inferences": [
    {
      "code": "OUTSTANDING_CHARGES_REGISTERED",
      "level": "info",
      "basis": "fact",
      "text": "2 charge(s) registered as outstanding. Charges are common in normal lending; this is information, not a warning."
    }
  ],
  "attention": {
    "level": "none_flagged",
    "meaning": "Count of rule-based signals in register data. \"none_flagged\" does not mean the company is safe, solvent or a suitable counterparty."
  },
  "evidence": {
    "source": "Companies House Free Company Data Product (monthly snapshot)",
    "snapshotAsOf": "2026-09-30",
    "sourceFileDate": "2026-10-01",
    "sourceFileUrl": "https://download.companieshouse.gov.uk/BasicCompanyDataAsOneFile-2026-10-01.zip",
    "licence": "Open Government Licence v3.0",
    "attribution": "Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Source: Companies House."
  },
  "dataFreshness": {
    "snapshotAsOf": "2026-09-30",
    "ageDays": 16,
    "status": "current",
    "newerSnapshotPublished": false
  },
  "sourceUrls": [
    "https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/00445790"
  ]
}

Not included in this version

No live Companies House API access, no insolvency case details, no filing history, and no officer, shareholder or beneficial-owner data (no names, dates of birth or addresses of people).

For AI agents and MCP clients

Tool description: "Look up UK companies by company number in the official Companies House monthly data. Returns register status, overdue-filing flags at the data date, insolvency-related status, charges and a name-match check, each with the data date, sources and caveats. Monthly data; signals only, never a credit rating or approval."

Guide for agents: read dataFreshness first and tell the user the data date. Treat AMBIGUOUS_NAME and NOT_IN_SNAPSHOT as "unknown", never as "dissolved" or "does not exist". If nameCheck.result is differs, stop and ask which entity is meant. Escalate attention.level = alert to a person. Do not describe a company as safe, healthy or approved because nothing is flagged, and do not present month-old data as current.

Pricing (pay per event)

Event	Price
Company found (company-signals)	$0.002 per company
Actor start	$0.00005

You are charged only when a company is found for your number (or an exact unique name match), for example $0.20 for 100 companies and $2.00 for 1,000. Not charged: NOT_IN_SNAPSHOT, AMBIGUOUS_NAME, INVALID_NUMBER, rows from an outdated build, and rows after a spending limit. If you set a maximum charge per run and it is reached, the run stops writing rows and SUMMARY shows limitHit: true. A restarted run skips finished rows and never charges them twice (the small start event can be charged again). There is no per-dataset-item price.

Source, licence and attribution

Data: Companies House Free Company Data Product (monthly file), Crown copyright, published under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Source: Companies House. Companies House states that it imposes no rules on how register information is used and that you are responsible for complying with data-protection, copyright and other law. The monthly file is provided free of charge and without support. This Actor is not affiliated with or endorsed by Companies House. It does not scrape the Companies House search website and does not use its API (it only reads the public download page to tell you whether a newer monthly file exists).

FAQ

Is this real-time? No. It is the monthly file; see the data date on every row.

Can I look up a company by name? Only as an exact, unique match among live companies, with a warning to confirm the number. Supply the number whenever you can.

Does it give directors or owners? No, by design.

Will it tell me whether to trade with a company? No. It shows register status and rule-based filing signals as of the data date. Use other sources and your own judgement for decisions.