Companies House API: UK Company Search, Accounts and SIC

Query the UK Companies House register by name, SIC code, location, status, type or incorporation date, or look up a list of company numbers. Each company is one flat row: registered office, SIC codes, status, type, key dates, accounts and confirmation statement dates, insolvency and charges flags. The data comes live from the Companies House Public Data API. You pay per company returned. Rows with an error are free.

The output holds company data only: no directors, no persons with significant control (PSC), no shareholders, no dates of birth, and no addresses of directors or PSC. The address given is the registered office, the public address of the company on the register; for a small company it can be the home of its owner.

What you get for each company

• Company number, name, status, type, jurisdiction
• Incorporation and dissolution dates
• Registered office address, postcode, country
• SIC 2007 activity codes
• Last accounts (period end, type: full, small, micro-entity, dormant...) and next accounts due
• Confirmation statement dates and overdue flags
• Insolvency history, charges and liquidation flags
• Optional: the last 5 accounts filings (date, period end, type, pages)

Use cases

• B2B lead lists: every active bakery in Leeds, every software company (SIC 62012) incorporated last month.
• New company feeds: schedule a weekly run on incorporatedFrom and incorporatedTo to list new incorporations.
• KYB and supplier checks: confirm that a company exists, is active, files its accounts on time and has no insolvency history.
• CRM enrichment: add SIC codes, registered office and accounts dates to a list of company numbers.
• Distress signals: list companies in liquidation or administration, or with overdue accounts, in a sector or a town.
• AI agents: call the Actor through the Apify MCP server to look up a UK company on request.

Input

Search by name and filters:

{
  "query": "bakery",
  "location": "Leeds",
  "sicCodes": ["10710"],
  "companyStatus": ["active"],
  "companyTypes": ["ltd"],
  "incorporatedFrom": "2020-01-01",
  "maxResults": 500
}

Or look up company numbers:

{ "companyNumbers": ["00445790", "SC123456"], "includeFilings": true }

Field	Description	Default
query	Words the company name must contain
companyNumbers	Company numbers to look up; the search filters are then ignored
location	Town, county or postcode of the registered office
sicCodes	SIC 2007 codes, 5 digits (several combine with OR)
companyStatus	active, dissolved, liquidation, administration... Empty list for any status	["active"]
companyTypes	ltd, plc, llp...	any
incorporatedFrom, incorporatedTo	Incorporation date range, YYYY-MM-DD
fullProfile	Accounts, confirmation statement and flags (one extra request per company)	true
includeFilings	Last 5 accounts filings of each company (one extra request per company)	false
maxResults	Maximum number of companies	100
apiKey	Your own Companies House API key (optional, stored encrypted)

Set at least one of query, companyNumbers, location, sicCodes, companyTypes or an incorporation date. Filters combine with AND.

Without apiKey, the Actor uses a shared key: at most 1,000 companies per run and 5,000 API requests per day for your account. With your own free key (create an application on the Companies House developer hub), maxResults goes up to 10,000. For very large extractions, split the search by SIC code, location or incorporation date.

Integrations and recipes

• Make, Zapier, n8n: run the Actor on a schedule and send each row to Google Sheets, Airtable or your CRM. A weekly run with incorporatedFrom set to last Monday gives a feed of new UK companies.
• Apify MCP server: an AI agent can call this Actor to check a UK company by name or number.
• Companies House SIC code list: set sicCodes to ["62012"] and location to London for software companies in London.
• Companies in liquidation by town: set companyStatus to ["liquidation"] and location to a town.
• Company number lookup in bulk: paste your list in companyNumbers and export to CSV or Excel.

Speed

Companies House allows 600 requests per 5 minutes per key. With fullProfile on (the default), each company takes one request, and includeFilings adds one more. On the shared key, which all users share, the Actor makes at most one request every 1.2 seconds: about 50 companies a minute, 25 with includeFilings. If Companies House still answers "too many requests" twice in a run, the run stops and keeps the companies already returned. With your own key, it makes one request every 0.6 seconds: about 100 companies a minute. With fullProfile off, the search fields come in pages of 500 companies, so 1,000 companies take a few seconds.

Output

One row per company. Real output for Tesco PLC with includeFilings on, from a run on 23 October 2026 (filings shortened to one of five):

{
  "companyNumber": "00445790",
  "name": "TESCO PLC",
  "status": "active",
  "statusDetail": null,
  "type": "plc",
  "subtype": null,
  "jurisdiction": "england-wales",
  "incorporationDate": "1947-11-27",
  "dissolutionDate": null,
  "address": "Tesco House, Shire Park, Kestrel Way, Welwyn Garden City, AL7 1GA, United Kingdom",
  "addressLine1": "Tesco House, Shire Park",
  "addressLine2": "Kestrel Way",
  "locality": "Welwyn Garden City",
  "region": null,
  "postalCode": "AL7 1GA",
  "country": "United Kingdom",
  "sicCodes": ["47110"],
  "accountingReferenceDate": "26-02",
  "lastAccountsMadeUpTo": "2026-02-28",
  "lastAccountsType": "group",
  "nextAccountsMadeUpTo": "2027-02-26",
  "nextAccountsDue": "2027-08-26",
  "accountsOverdue": false,
  "lastConfirmationStatement": "2026-06-18",
  "nextConfirmationStatementDue": "2027-07-02",
  "confirmationStatementOverdue": false,
  "hasInsolvencyHistory": false,
  "hasCharges": false,
  "hasBeenLiquidated": false,
  "registeredOfficeInDispute": false,
  "undeliverableRegisteredOffice": false,
  "filings": [
    { "date": "2026-07-25", "madeUpTo": "2026-02-28", "accountsType": "group", "formType": "AA", "pages": 236 }
  ],
  "url": "https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/00445790",
  "error": null
}

With fullProfile off, the accounts, confirmation statement and flag fields are null. A company number that is not on the register gives a row with only companyNumber, url and error, and is not charged.

Pricing

You pay per company returned (event company), no subscription. Rows with an error and searches with no result cost nothing. fullProfile and includeFilings add requests but no cost.

FAQ

Do I need a Companies House account? No. The shared key covers runs up to 1,000 companies. For more, create a free API key on the Companies House developer hub and set apiKey.

Does it return directors or persons with significant control? No. The Actor never calls the officers, PSC or shareholder endpoints. It also leaves out the "care of" name of the registered office and any "c/o" part of the address lines, and reads only accounts filings. You get company-level data only.

How many results can one run return? Up to 1,000 companies with the shared key and 10,000 with your own key. For larger extractions, split the search by SIC code, location or incorporation date.

How fresh is the data? The Actor queries Companies House live on every run.

Does it download the accounts documents? No. includeFilings lists the accounts filings (date, period end, type, page count); the documents themselves can be opened from the company page linked in url.

Related Actors

Other Actors from the same account, all pay per result:

• French Company Search: Same kind of data for French companies (SIREN, SIRET, NAF code, revenue).
• UK Tenders Scraper: UK public tenders from Find a Tender, to match buyers and suppliers with their company records.
• Tech Stack Detector: Detect the technologies used on the websites of the companies you found.
• Career Site Jobs Scraper: Read the open jobs of companies that use Workday, Greenhouse, Lever or Ashby.