UK Companies House API — Company Data, Directors, Owners & Filings

Extract structured UK company data from the official Companies House API. Returns JSON with company profiles, directors, beneficial owners (PSC), filing history, SIC codes, addresses, and compliance flags.

Capabilities

• Search UK companies by name, keyword, company number, or Companies House URL
• Company profiles: name, number, status, type, incorporation date, address, postcode, SIC codes
• Directors & officers: names, roles, appointment dates, nationality, occupation, date of birth, address
• Beneficial owners (PSC): shareholders with 25%+ ownership, voting rights, control type
• Filing history: accounts, confirmation statements, officer changes, with document URLs
• Compliance flags: overdue accounts, overdue confirmation statements, insolvency history, charges
• Advanced search: paste any Companies House advanced search URL to use their filters
• No API key required — just provide input and run
• Output: structured JSON, every field always present (null when absent)

When to use this actor

Use this when you need to:

• Look up a UK company by name or registration number
• Get a list of directors or officers for a UK company
• Find out who owns a UK company (beneficial ownership / PSC)
• Check if a UK company has overdue filings or insolvency history
• Extract filing history and links to filed documents
• Get SIC codes and industry classifications for UK companies
• Search Companies House by keyword, location, or industry
• Build a dataset of UK companies for research, compliance, or lead generation
• Perform KYC, AML, or due diligence checks on UK companies

Output fields

Every record contains these fields (null when not available):

Company: companyNumber, companyName, companyStatus, companyType, incorporationDate, dissolutionDate, address, postcode, locality, jurisdiction, companiesHouseUrl

Industry: sicCodes (array of {code, description})

History: previousNames

Accounts: accounts.lastFiled, accounts.type, accounts.nextDue, accounts.overdue

Confirmation: confirmationStatement.lastFiled, confirmationStatement.nextDue, confirmationStatement.overdue

Risk flags: hasInsolvencyHistory, hasCharges

Officers (when enabled): officers (array), activeDirectors (array of names), officerSummary

Each officer: name, role, appointedOn, resignedOn, active, nationality, occupation, countryOfResidence, dateOfBirth, address

PSC / Beneficial owners (when enabled): personsWithSignificantControl (array)

Each PSC: name, type, control (array of plain-English descriptions), notifiedOn, ceasedOn, active, nationality, countryOfResidence

Filing history (when enabled): recentFilings (array)

Each filing: date, category, type, description, documentUrl

Metadata: scrapedAt

Input

Three ways to specify companies — use any combination:

Search by name/keyword:

{ "searchQueries": ["Anthropic", "fintech London"] }

Direct lookup by company number:

{ "companyNumbers": ["13533094", "00445790"] }

Paste Companies House URLs (company pages, search results, or advanced search):

{
    "companiesHouseUrls": [
        "https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/13533094",
        "https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/advanced-search/get-results?companyNameIncludes=tech&registeredOfficeAddress=london&sicCodes=62012"
    ]
}

All input fields:

Field	Type	Default	Description
searchQueries	string[]	[]	Company names or keywords to search
companyNumbers	string[]	[]	Company registration numbers for direct lookup
companiesHouseUrls	string[]	[]	URLs from the Companies House website
includeOfficers	boolean	true	Include directors and officers
includePSC	boolean	true	Include beneficial owners
includeFilingHistory	boolean	true	Include recent filings
maxFilings	integer	10	Filings per company (1-100)
maxCompaniesPerQuery	integer	25	Max companies per search (1-500)
activeOnly	boolean	true	Exclude dissolved/liquidated companies

Output example

{
    "companyNumber": "13533094",
    "companyName": "ANTHROPIC UK LTD",
    "companyStatus": "active",
    "companyType": "Private Limited Company",
    "incorporationDate": "2021-06-15",
    "dissolutionDate": null,
    "address": "123 Tech Street, London, EC2A 1NT, United Kingdom",
    "postcode": "EC2A 1NT",
    "locality": "London",
    "jurisdiction": "england-wales",
    "sicCodes": [
        { "code": "62012", "description": "Computer Programming & IT" }
    ],
    "previousNames": [],
    "accounts": {
        "lastFiled": "2024-06-30",
        "type": "small",
        "nextDue": "2026-03-31",
        "overdue": false
    },
    "confirmationStatement": {
        "lastFiled": "2024-06-15",
        "nextDue": "2025-06-29",
        "overdue": false
    },
    "hasInsolvencyHistory": false,
    "hasCharges": false,
    "companiesHouseUrl": "https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/13533094",
    "officers": [
        {
            "name": "John Smith",
            "role": "director",
            "appointedOn": "2021-06-15",
            "resignedOn": null,
            "active": true,
            "nationality": "British",
            "occupation": "Software Engineer",
            "countryOfResidence": "England",
            "dateOfBirth": "1985-03",
            "address": "123 Tech Street, London, EC2A 1NT"
        }
    ],
    "activeDirectors": ["John Smith"],
    "officerSummary": "1 active of 1 total",
    "personsWithSignificantControl": [
        {
            "name": "John Smith",
            "type": "Individual",
            "control": ["Owns 75-100% of shares", "75-100% voting rights"],
            "notifiedOn": "2021-06-15",
            "ceasedOn": null,
            "active": true,
            "nationality": "British",
            "countryOfResidence": "England"
        }
    ],
    "recentFilings": [
        {
            "date": "2024-09-15",
            "category": "accounts",
            "type": "AA",
            "description": "micro entity accounts",
            "documentUrl": "https://document-api.company-information.service.gov.uk/document/..."
        }
    ],
    "scrapedAt": "2026-04-04T12:00:00.000Z"
}

How this actor compares to other Companies House scrapers

Feature	This Actor	Other scrapers
Beneficial owners (PSC)	Yes	No
Filing history + document URLs	Yes	Some
Human-readable names	"John Smith"	"SMITH, John"
SIC code descriptions	"Computer Programming & IT"	Raw code only
Company type decoded	"Private Limited Company"	"ltd"
Ownership in plain English	"Owns 75-100% of shares"	Raw slugs
Officer addresses	Yes	Some
Postcode + city extracted	Yes	No
Compliance flags	Yes	No
Paste CH advanced search URLs	Yes	Some
API-based (never breaks)	Yes	No (web scrapers)
No API key needed	Yes	Yes

Use cases

B2B Sales & Lead Generation — Search by industry keyword, get director names and company details. Filter by SIC code and location using advanced search URLs.

Due Diligence & KYC/AML — Verify company status, check beneficial ownership via PSC data, review filing compliance, flag insolvency history. Essential for onboarding.

Investment Research — Screen companies by incorporation date, SIC code, and type. Find newly incorporated companies in specific sectors.

Recruitment — Extract director and officer names with roles, nationality, and occupation for executive search.

Market Research — Map industries by SIC code, identify geographic clusters, track compliance patterns.

Legal & Regulatory — Access filing history with document URLs. Monitor accounts and confirmation statement compliance.

Technical details

• Uses the official Companies House REST API (not web scraping)
• Sliding-window rate limiter: stays within 600 req/5min limit automatically
• Exponential backoff on 429 responses with 3 retries
• 15-second request timeout with abort controller
• No browser, no proxy, no anti-bot — direct API calls
• Processes 3-5 companies per second with full enrichment

Pricing

Pay per result. No monthly subscription. Check the Pricing tab for rates.

FAQ

Do I need a Companies House API key? No. The actor handles API access. Just provide your search input and run.

How is this different from other Companies House scrapers? This is the only Apify actor with beneficial ownership (PSC) data, human-readable formatting, compliance flags, and officer addresses. It uses the official API instead of web scraping, so it never breaks.

Can I use Companies House advanced search URLs? Yes. Build filters on the Companies House website (SIC code, location, date, type), then paste the URL.

How accurate is the data? Data comes directly from the official UK government Companies House API — the authoritative company registry.

Can I filter by SIC code or location? Yes. Use advanced search URLs, or search broadly and filter the output by SIC codes and postcodes.

Is this legal? Yes. Companies House data is public record under UK law. The API is provided for programmatic access.

What output formats are available? JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, RSS, HTML. Access via Apify dataset or API.

Can I integrate this with other tools? Yes. Works with Google Sheets, Zapier, Make, webhooks, Slack, and the Apify API (Node.js, Python).