UK Architect Register Scraper

Scrape the official UK Architects Register — the statutory record maintained by the Architects Registration Board (ARB) of every person legally entitled to use the protected title "architect" in the United Kingdom. Search 30,000+ registered architects by name, practice, address, country, website or email — or look up specific architects by their registration number. Get name, practice, address, country, and (where published) telephone, website and email. No login, no cookies, no paid proxy.

What this actor does

• Two modes: search (combinable filters across the whole register) and byRegistrationNumber (exact lookup for one or more known ARB numbers)
• Combinable filters: forename, surname, practice/company name, address, country, website, email, and distance-from-UK-postcode — any combination, all substring/contains matching (postcode filter is proximity-based)
• 265-country enum: covers every country the register uses, including UK home-nation variants (England/Scotland/Wales/Northern Ireland, United Kingdom)
• Sort control: first name, surname or practice name, ascending or descending
• Optional contact-detail enrichment: visits each architect's profile page to also capture telephone, website and email where the architect has published them
• Handles privacy opt-outs correctly: architects who conceal their address are returned with just their name, registration number and country — never with fabricated placeholder data
• Empty fields are omitted — every record only contains fields the register actually has data for

Output per architect

• registrationNumber — ARB registration number (e.g. 095726G)
• fullName
• practiceName — registered practice / employer (e.g. Foster + Partners, or Self Employed)
• addressLine — registered address (excluding country)
• country
• isAddressConcealed — true if the architect has opted to keep their address private (ARB privacy option)
• telephone — only when fetchContactDetails is on and the architect has published one
• website — only when fetchContactDetails is on and the architect has published one
• email — only when fetchContactDetails is on and the architect has published one
• registerUrl — canonical profile page on architects-register.org.uk
• recordType: "architect", scrapedAt

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
mode	string	search	search / byRegistrationNumber
architectForename	string	–	Forename contains (mode=search)
architectSurname	string	–	Surname contains (mode=search)
practiceName	string	–	Practice/company name contains (mode=search)
address	string	–	Address contains (mode=search)
country	select	–	One of 265 countries the register uses
website	string	–	Website contains (mode=search)
email	string	–	Email contains (mode=search)
postcode	string	–	Find architects near this UK postcode, full or partial (mode=search)
radiusMiles	int	50	Search radius in miles from postcode (1–100); ignored unless postcode is set
sortBy	select	default order	firstNameAsc/Desc, surnameAsc/Desc, practiceNameAsc/Desc
registrationNumbers	array	–	ARB numbers to look up (mode=byRegistrationNumber), format 095726G
fetchContactDetails	bool	true	Also fetch telephone/website/email from each profile page
maxItems	int	20	Hard cap (1–1000)

At least one filter (architectForename, architectSurname, practiceName, address, country, website, email or postcode) must be supplied in search mode.

Example: search architects in a city

{
  "mode": "search",
  "address": "Manchester",
  "country": "United Kingdom",
  "sortBy": "surnameAsc",
  "maxItems": 100
}

Example: find a practice's registered architects

{
  "mode": "search",
  "practiceName": "Foster + Partners",
  "fetchContactDetails": true
}

Example: verify specific registration numbers

{
  "mode": "byRegistrationNumber",
  "registrationNumbers": ["095726G", "032702F"]
}

Example: architects registered overseas

{
  "mode": "search",
  "country": "France"
}

Example: architects near a UK postcode

{
  "mode": "search",
  "postcode": "SW1A 1AA",
  "radiusMiles": 10,
  "sortBy": "surnameAsc"
}

Use cases

• Due diligence — verify a contractor or consultant genuinely holds ARB registration before signing a contract
• Lead generation — build lists of architects/practices by region, country or specialism-adjacent practice name
• Fraud prevention — the ARB itself recommends checking the register before commissioning any "architect" service, since the title is legally protected in the UK
• Market research — analyse practice concentration by city, region or country
• Recruitment — find registered architects by geography for hiring outreach
• Compliance / procurement — bulk-verify a supplier panel's registration numbers

Limitations

• telephone, website and email are only returned when the architect has chosen to publish them on their public profile; the ARB does not require architects to provide these, so many records will not have all three.
• A small number of registered architects have no country recorded at all (a genuine data gap on the register itself, not something this actor can fill in) — country is simply omitted for those records rather than guessed.
• Text filters (forename/surname/practice/address/website/email) that contain only non-Latin characters (e.g. pure CJK) are not reliably narrowed by the register's own search backend — it appears to fall back to an unfiltered result set for values its collation can't match. This is upstream behaviour (verified directly against the register's API, independent of this actor), not something this actor introduces or can correct client-side. Latin-script text filters, including accented characters, work correctly.

FAQ

What's the Architects Register? The definitive, legally-mandated record of every UK architect, maintained by the Architects Registration Board (ARB). If someone isn't on the register, they cannot lawfully call themselves an "architect" in the UK. See architects-register.org.uk.

Is the data official? Yes — this actor scrapes the ARB's own public register directly, the same one referenced by arb.org.uk.

Why do some records have no practiceName or addressLine? Architects can opt to keep their address private for personal safety reasons. Those records still return name, registration number, isAddressConcealed: true, and country where available — never a fabricated address.

What does isAddressConcealed mean? true means the architect has used the ARB's privacy option; their full company/address details are not published on the register at all, so this actor cannot recover them either.

How do I find a registration number to look up? Run mode=search first (by name, practice, or location) — every result includes registrationNumber, which you can then feed into mode=byRegistrationNumber for a direct, guaranteed lookup.

Does the search match accents/case? Yes — matching is case-insensitive and (per the register's own database collation) accent-insensitive, so jose will also match José.

How fresh is the data? The register is the ARB's live, authoritative database — every run reads the current, real-time state of the register, not a cached snapshot.