UK Visa Sponsor Register: Licensed Sponsors & Changes Feed

UK Visa Sponsor Register: Licensed Sponsors & Changes Feed

Get the UK sponsor licence list as clean, filterable data: organisations holding a Worker or Temporary Worker sponsor licence, built on the official GOV.UK register of licensed sponsors. Make a Skilled Worker sponsors list for any town, filter by visa route, rating and organisation name, or switch to the changes feed to see which sponsor licences were added, removed or re-rated since your last run.

Price: $0.001 per sponsor row and $0.002 per change. You only pay for rows saved to your dataset. Set maxResults or your maximum cost per run to cap the spend.

Not affiliated with, or endorsed by, GOV.UK, UK Visas and Immigration or the Home Office. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

What does it do?

• Register mode downloads the current register CSV from the GOV.UK publication page, cleans it (whitespace, stray commas, exact duplicate lines) and returns the sponsors that match your filters.
• Changes mode compares the current register with a saved baseline and returns one row per change: added, removed or rating_changed (for example A rating → B rating, or UK Expansion Worker: Provisional → A rating).
• It finds the newest file on every run, because GOV.UK publishes each update under a new file name.

Quick start

1. Click Try for free, keep the prefilled input (Skilled Worker sponsors in Manchester, capped at 50 rows) and press Start.
2. Or call it from code:

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/clearpath-data~uk-visa-sponsor-register/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{"mode": "register", "routes": ["Skilled Worker"], "towns": ["Manchester"], "maxResults": 50}'

Sample output: licensed sponsors

organisationName	townCity	route	licenceType	rating	registerDate
10architect Ltd	Manchester	Skilled Worker	Worker	A rating	2026-10-19
1D Agency Ltd T/A One Day Agency	MANCHESTER	Skilled Worker	Worker	A rating	2026-10-19
202 AHST GAS SERVICES LTD	Manchester	Skilled Worker	Worker	A rating	2026-10-19
24/7 RETAIL LTD	Manchester	Skilled Worker	Worker	A rating	2026-10-19

Real rows from a test run on 2026-10-19, trimmed to a few columns. Names, towns and capitalisation are kept as published.

Sample output: changes feed

changeType	organisationName	townCity	route	rating	previousRating
added	ABS Productions UK Ltd	London	Creative Worker	A rating
added	Acton Pharmacy	London	Skilled Worker	A rating
rating_changed	Aura Energy UK Limited	London	Global Business Mobility: UK Expansion Worker	A rating	UK Expansion Worker: Provisional

Real changes between the GOV.UK registers dated 2026-10-16 and 2026-10-19 (London only). That update had 26 added, 44 removed and 2 re-rated London listings.

How the changes feed works

1. First run with a given stateName: there's nothing to compare with yet, because GOV.UK publishes only the latest file. So the Actor returns current listings within your filters (up to firstRunRows, 100 by default, in register order, marked changeType: "current" and charged as sponsor rows at $0.001), and saves the whole register as a baseline in a key-value store named uk-visa-sponsor-register-state in your own Apify account. Set firstRunRows to 0 to only save the baseline and pay just the Actor start.
2. Every later run compares the newest register with that baseline, saves only the changes, then moves the baseline forward.
3. Schedule it daily or weekly. If GOV.UK hasn't published a new file since the last run, you get 0 changes and pay only the Actor start.

Filters apply to the changes too: with towns: ["Leeds"] you only get Leeds changes. The baseline always holds the whole register, so you can change filters between runs without false alarms.

No saved state? Compare with a dataset. Set Compare with dataset to the dataset of an earlier Register run of this Actor. Use a complete run (not cut off by maxResults) with the same filters. Otherwise listings outside that run are reported as added or removed. Reading a large dataset adds platform usage: about $0.02 for 45,000 rows in our test.

Use cases

• Recruiters and job boards: find employers that can sponsor Skilled Worker visas, by town or sector keyword.
• Immigration and HR advisers: monitor clients and prospects for rating changes (A → B) or removal from the register.
• Job seekers' tools: check whether an employer currently holds a sponsor licence and for which routes.
• Market research: count licensed sponsors by route and town, and follow how the register grows or shrinks.
• B2B sales: new sponsors are often growing companies that are hiring internationally.

Input

Field	Type	Default	What it does
mode	string	"register"	"register" lists sponsors; "changes" lists added, removed and re-rated sponsors since the baseline
routes	array	[]	Only these visa routes, e.g. "Skilled Worker", "Global Business Mobility: Senior or Specialist Worker", "Creative Worker"
towns	array	[]	Whole-word match on Town/City or County: "London" matches "Croydon, London" but not "Londonderry"
ratings	array	[]	"A rating", "B rating", "A (Premium)", "A (SME+)", "UK Expansion Worker: Provisional"
licenceTypes	array	[]	"Worker" or "Temporary Worker"
nameContains	array	[]	Organisation name contains any of these (case-insensitive)
nameExcludes	array	[]	Skip organisations whose name contains any of these
outputFormat	string	"listings"	Register mode: "listings" (one row per route, as published) or "organisations" (one row per organisation and location, with a list of routes)
changeTypes	array	[] (all)	Changes mode: any of "added", "removed", "rating_changed"
stateName	string	"default"	Changes mode: name of the saved baseline. Use one per schedule or task
baselineDatasetId	string		Changes mode: compare with an earlier Register dataset instead of the saved state
updateState	boolean	true	Changes mode: move the baseline forward after a complete run
firstRunRows	integer	100	Changes mode, first run only: current listings to return (charged as sponsor rows). 0 = none
maxResults	integer	1000	Stop after this many saved rows. 0 = no limit

Integrations, schedules and AI agents

• Schedules: Schedule changes mode daily or weekly with one stateName per schedule. See Apify schedules.
• No-code tools: send results to Google Sheets, Slack or a CRM with Apify's Make, Zapier or n8n integrations, or a webhook when a run finishes.
• AI agents (MCP): connect an MCP client such as Claude Code or Cursor to https://mcp.apify.com?tools=clearpath-data/uk-visa-sponsor-register and the agent can run this Actor directly. See the Apify MCP server docs.

How much does it cost?

What	Price	Per 1,000
Sponsor row (Register mode, and first-run rows in Changes mode)	$0.001	$1.00
Change (Changes mode)	$0.002	$2.00
Actor start (Apify standard)	$0.00005 per run

Examples:

• All Skilled Worker sponsors in Manchester (about 3,200 rows on 2026-10-19): about $3.20.
• The whole register (about 142,500 listings on 2026-10-19): about $142.50. Filter first if you don't need all of it.
• The first Changes run with a new stateName and default settings: 100 current listings × $0.001 = $0.10 (or only the Actor start with firstRunRows: 0).
• A changes run for the whole UK: the 2026-10-16 → 2026-10-19 update had 259 changes (114 added, 143 removed, 2 re-rated), which comes to about $0.52. The number of changes varies by update. Runs when GOV.UK hasn't published a new file cost only the Actor start.

Platform usage (compute) is billed by Apify separately as usual; a run takes a few seconds at 256 MB.

Limits and honest notes

• Update frequency is up to GOV.UK. The register is usually updated on working days, but there's no fixed schedule. This Actor can only be as current as the latest published file. registerDate in every row tells you which file it came from.
• Data is published as is. Some names contain garbled characters (for example "???" where GOV.UK's file has encoding errors) and towns are free text ("London", "LONDON", "London, England"). The Actor cleans whitespace and stray commas but doesn't rewrite names.
• Rows are listings, not companies. A sponsor licensed for two routes appears twice. Use outputFormat: "organisations" for one row per organisation and location. There is no company number in the register, so organisations are matched by name, town and county.
• A sponsor that changes name or town shows up as one removed plus one added.
• Removal doesn't say why. A sponsor can leave the register because its licence was revoked, surrendered or expired. The register doesn't publish the reason, so neither does this Actor.
• Only the Worker and Temporary Worker register. Other GOV.UK sponsor lists (for example Student sponsors) aren't included.
• If a run stops early (max results or your maximum cost per run), the baseline isn't moved forward, so the next run lists the same changes again. Raise the limit to get them all.

FAQ

Where does the data come from? From the CSV file on the GOV.UK page "Register of licensed sponsors: workers", published under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Every row includes sourceUrl.

Is this an official Home Office product? No. It's an independent tool built on the official GOV.UK register and isn't affiliated with or endorsed by GOV.UK, UK Visas and Immigration or the Home Office. For decisions that matter, check the register on GOV.UK.

How do I get only new sponsors every day? Use Changes mode with changeTypes: ["added"] and schedule it daily.

Where is my baseline stored? In a key-value store named uk-visa-sponsor-register-state in your own Apify account, one record per stateName. Delete it to start over.

Can I export to CSV or Excel? Yes. Every Apify dataset can be downloaded as CSV, Excel, JSON or XML, or read through the API.

What's in the run report? The RUN_REPORT record lists the source file, register date, filters, counts, the baseline used, whether the baseline was saved, and any warnings.

Other Clearpath Data Actors

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remote-jobs-aggregator	Remote jobs from Remote OK and Himalayas
lei-lookup	LEI lookup via the GLEIF API (LEI, name, BIC, ISIN)
hiring-changes-monitor	Jobs each company opened or closed since your last run, on the same six ATS boards
us-new-business-filings	New LLCs and corporations from the NY, CO and CT state registries, since your last run