Open Company Registries: company registry search for GLEIF, Norway and Finland

Open Company Registries is a company registry search across three open registries in one run. It returns one row per company from the GLEIF Global LEI Index (legal entities in every country), the Norwegian Central Coordinating Register for Legal Entities (Brønnøysund Register Centre, Brreg) and the Finnish trade register (PRH, YTJ open data). Search by company name, look up LEI codes, Norwegian organisation numbers and Finnish Business IDs, or list the businesses in a Norwegian municipality or Finnish city by industry. Every row has the same columns whatever the registry, so you can merge results without mapping fields yourself.

The data comes from each registry's own open data service. No login and no API key. It returns company-level facts only: no directors, officers, owners, shareholders or contact persons, and no sole traders.

What data does this company registry search return?

Field	Example	Notes
recordType	company	company, or error for a registration number that returned no company
registry, registryName, country	Brreg, Brønnøysund Register Centre, NO	Registry the row comes from and its country (for GLEIF, the legal-address country)
companyName	EQUINOR ASA	Current registered name
otherNames	["STATOIL ASA"]	Previous, parallel and auxiliary names
registrationNumber	923609016	National number (Brreg, PRH) or the number GLEIF has on file
lei	OW6OFBNCKXC4US5C7523	GLEIF rows only
legalForm, legalFormCode	Allmennaksjeselskap, ASA	GLEIF gives the ISO 20275 ELF code
status, statusDetail	active, registered	active or inactive, plus the registry's own wording
foundedDate	1972-09-18	Brreg and GLEIF
registeredDate	1995-03-12	Date entered in the registry. For GLEIF, the date the LEI was first issued
closedDate	2026-04-30	Deleted or ceased companies
industryCode, industryDescription	06.100, Utvinning av råolje	NACE based codes (Brreg and PRH)
industryCodeSystem	NACE (Norwegian SN standard)	Which code list industryCode comes from
employees, employeeBand	21272, 1000+	Registered employees and the band (0, 1-4, 5-9, 10-19, 20-49, 50-99, 100-249, 250-499, 500-999, 1000+). Brreg only
website	www.equinor.com	When registered
street, postalCode, city, addressCountry	Forusbeen 50, 4035, STAVANGER, NO	Registered business address
municipality, municipalityCode	STAVANGER, 1103	Municipality of the address. Brreg only
vatRegistered, inLiquidation, bankrupt	true, false, false	Brreg and PRH
lastUpdated	2026-08-19T10:04:06	When the registry last changed the record
sourceUrl, licence, attribution	...	Link to the registry record, the licence it is published under and the attribution line to keep
query, queryType	Equinor, name	What produced the row (name, registrationNumber or area)
error	Enhetsregisteret has no organisation number (number).	Reason, on error rows only
fetchedAt	2026-09-26T17:01:50.220Z	When the Actor read the record

How to search company registries step by step

1. Open the Actor and go to the Input tab.
2. Under Company names, add one or more names or parts of names, for example Equinor or Kone. Every word you type must appear in the company name or one of its other names.
3. Under Registration numbers, paste any LEI codes, Norwegian organisation numbers or Finnish Business IDs. The Actor sends each number to the registry it belongs to and checks the check digit first, so typos fail before any request is made.
4. Under Registries, keep all three or pick the ones you need. This applies to name searches.
5. Set Results per search (per name, per registry) and Max results (whole run).
6. Keep Active companies only on to leave out dissolved, bankrupt and ceased companies in name searches. Lookups by number always return the company with its status.
7. Click Start. Results appear in the Companies view of the dataset. Download them as JSON, CSV or Excel, or read them through the Apify API.

Advanced options let you limit GLEIF searches to legal-address countries (for example DE and SE), set retries, and change the User-Agent the Actor sends.

How to find businesses by area and industry

Use this to build a list of the restaurants in Oslo, the hair salons in Helsinki, or every company registered in your municipality in the last 30 days.

1. In the Input tab, open Businesses by area and industry.
2. Under Municipalities or cities, add one or more places. Norway: a municipality name or its four-digit number, such as Oslo, Bergen or 0301. Finland: a city or town, such as Helsinki or Espoo.
3. Pick the Country for area search: Norway or Finland.
4. Pick one or more Industries, add your own Industry codes, or leave both empty for every industry.
5. Optional: add Postal codes to narrow each place, and a Registered since date (for example 2026-01-01 or 30 days) for a feed of new businesses. With a date, the newest companies come first.
6. Set Results per area and Max results, then click Start. Rows appear in the Businesses by area view.

The area search returns active companies only. Bankrupt, dissolved and deleted companies are left out, and so are sole traders and companies whose name is a person's name. The address is the company's business address.

Industries you can pick:

Industry	Industry codes
Restaurants and food service	56.1
Bars and cafés	56.3
Hotels	55.1
Hair and beauty	96.2
Gyms and fitness centres	93.13
Construction	41, 42, 43
Electricians and plumbers	43.2
Cleaning	81.2
Real estate agents	68.31
IT consulting and software	62
Marketing and advertising	73.1
Accounting and bookkeeping	69.2
Legal services	69.1
Architecture and engineering	71.1
Retail shops	47
Car repair	95.31

Both registries use NACE based industry codes (Norway SN2025, Finland TOL 2025). A code includes every code under it, so 56.1 covers 56.110 in Norway and 56111 in Finland. The row keeps the company's main industry code; a company is listed when its main industry matches.

How much does it cost to search company registries?

The Actor uses pay-per-event pricing. You pay a small fee when the run starts and one company-record event for each company found and saved to the dataset. You pay only for companies found. A registration number that the registry does not know, or that belongs to a natural person, returns one error row for free. Name searches that match nothing add no rows and no company-record events. Invalid input stops the run before any lookup, with nothing charged.

The price is $3.50 per 1,000 companies found ($0.0035 per company) on every plan. Worked example: searching 20 company names with 10 results per search in all three registries gives up to 600 companies, which costs up to $2.10 plus the start fee. Looking up 1,000 organisation numbers costs up to $3.50 plus the start fee; numbers that return no company cost nothing. Listing the 500 newest restaurants in Oslo costs $1.75 plus the start fee. You can set a maximum cost per run in Apify Console; the Actor stops cleanly when it is reached.

Input example for a company registry search

{
    "companyNames": ["Equinor"],
    "registrationNumbers": ["0112038-9", "OW6OFBNCKXC4US5C7523"],
    "registries": ["gleif", "norway", "finland"],
    "maxResultsPerSearch": 3,
    "maxResults": 100,
    "activeOnly": true
}

Area search example, new restaurants and bars in Oslo since January:

{
    "areas": ["Oslo"],
    "areaCountry": "norway",
    "industries": ["restaurants", "cafes-bars"],
    "registeredSince": "2026-01-01",
    "maxResultsPerArea": 500
}

All input fields:

Field	Console name	What it does
companyNames	Company names	Names or parts of names, up to 100
registrationNumbers	Registration numbers	LEI codes, Norwegian organisation numbers, Finnish Business IDs, up to 1,000
registries	Registries	gleif, norway, finland (name searches)
maxResultsPerSearch	Results per search	Per name and registry, up to 1,000
maxResults	Max results	Whole run, up to 10,000
activeOnly	Active companies only	On by default; applies to name searches
areas	Municipalities or cities	Places for the area search, up to 20
areaCountry	Country for area search	norway or finland
industries	Industries	Plain-language industries from the table above
industryCodes	Industry codes	NACE based codes such as 56.1 or 4321, up to 20
postalCodes	Postal codes	Business-address postal codes, up to 50
registeredSince	Registered since	A date or a period such as 30 days
maxResultsPerArea	Results per area	Per place (and postal code), up to 10,000
leiCountries	LEI countries	Legal-address countries for GLEIF name searches
maxRetries	Max retries	0 to 3
userAgent	User-Agent	User-Agent sent to the registries

Output example: one company registry record

{
    "recordType": "company",
    "registry": "PRH",
    "registryName": "Finnish Patent and Registration Office (PRH), YTJ open data",
    "country": "FI",
    "companyName": "Nokia Oyj",
    "otherNames": ["Oy Nokia Ab", "Nokia Networks", "Nokia Matkapuhelimet", "Nokia Telecommunications", "Telenokia", "Nokia Mobile Phones", "Nokia Mobira", "TCC Nokia", "NMP Trading", "Nokia Home Communications", "Nokia Internet Communications", "Vertu", "Nokia Abp", "Nokia Corporation"],
    "registrationNumber": "0112038-9",
    "lei": null,
    "legalForm": "Public limited company",
    "legalFormCode": "OYJ",
    "status": "active",
    "statusDetail": "Registered",
    "foundedDate": null,
    "registeredDate": "1896-12-19",
    "closedDate": null,
    "industryCode": "70100",
    "industryDescription": "Activities of head offices",
    "industryCodeSystem": "TOIMI4 (Finnish TOL, NACE based)",
    "employees": null,
    "employeeBand": null,
    "website": "www.nokia.com",
    "street": "Karakaari 7",
    "postalCode": "02610",
    "city": "ESPOO",
    "municipality": null,
    "municipalityCode": null,
    "addressCountry": "FI",
    "vatRegistered": true,
    "inLiquidation": false,
    "bankrupt": false,
    "lastUpdated": "2026-08-19T10:04:06",
    "sourceUrl": "https://avoindata.prh.fi/opendata-ytj-api/v3/companies?businessId=0112038-9",
    "licence": "CC BY 4.0",
    "attribution": "Source: Finnish Patent and Registration Office (PRH), YTJ open data, CC BY 4.0.",
    "query": "0112038-9",
    "queryType": "registrationNumber",
    "error": null,
    "fetchedAt": "2026-09-26T17:01:50.220Z"
}

A registration number that the registry does not know, or that belongs to a natural person, returns a row with recordType set to error and the reason in error, shown in the Errors view.

A run also writes a STATS record to the key-value store with the number of requests per registry, rows per search, and how many records were left out as natural persons.

FAQ about company registry data

Is it legal to use this company registry data?

The Actor reads open data published for reuse. GLEIF publishes LEI data under CC0. The Brønnøysund Register Centre publishes Enhetsregisteret under the Norwegian licence for Open Government data (NLOD). PRH publishes YTJ open data under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 and asks users to name the source. Every row carries its licence and an attribution line; keep that line when you publish the data. This Actor is not affiliated with GLEIF, the Brønnøysund Register Centre or PRH.

Why are some companies missing?

To keep personal data out, the Actor never returns records that can be a natural person: GLEIF sole proprietors, Norwegian sole proprietorships (ENK) and similar forms, foreign-registered units in Norway (NUF, UTLA) and Finnish branches of a foreign trader. PRH does not publish private traders at all. Companies whose name is only a person's name, such as a consultancy named after its owner, are left out as well. Address lines that name a person (c/o) and apartment numbers are removed. Contact e-mails and phone numbers are never read.

Which countries are covered?

GLEIF covers legal entities that hold an LEI in any country, which is mostly banks, funds, listed companies and firms that trade financial instruments. Norway and Finland are covered in full from their national registers, and they are the two countries for the area search. Other national registers may be added later.

Why does a search return fewer rows than Results per search?

Each registry has fewer matches than the limit, the matches were inactive while Active companies only was on, or they were left out as natural persons. The STATS record shows the counts per search.

How fresh is the data?

Each run reads the registries live. PRH updates its open data once a day and GLEIF publishes a new golden copy several times a day.

What are the limits?

Up to 100 company names and 1,000 registration numbers per run, up to 1,000 results per name in each registry, up to 20 places with up to 10,000 results each in the area search, and up to 10,000 rows per run. Lookups by number take up to about one second each, so 1,000 numbers take about 15 minutes. Name searches are faster.

Troubleshooting

A name search with zero rows: every word you type must appear in the company name, so try fewer or shorter words, or turn off Active companies only. If a registry does not answer after several tries, the Actor stops asking it, finishes the other registries and names the missing one in the status message. An input error lists every problem at once so you can fix them in one go.

An area search with zero rows: check the spelling of the place (the status message suggests close Norwegian municipality names), try a wider industry code such as 56 instead of 56.11, or remove the postal code or the Registered since date. In Finland, use the city name from the postal address, such as Espoo rather than a district name.