Europe Company Search: FR, NO, FI, UK by Sector, City, Date

Search registered companies in France, Norway, Finland and the United Kingdom from one Actor. Each hit is one dataset row with the same fields: country, id, name, legal form, status, address, activity code and label, registration date, source and licence. A run_summary row closes the dataset.

The rows come from the official registers, not from a scraped commercial directory:

Country	Register	Licence
France	Recherche d'entreprises (SIRENE)	Licence Ouverte 2.0
Norway	Brønnøysund Enhetsregisteret	NLOD 2.0
Finland	PRH YTJ open data v3	CC BY 4.0
United Kingdom	Companies House	Open Government Licence v3.0

France, Norway and Finland need no API key. The UK needs COMPANIES_HOUSE_API_KEY.

Use cases

Lead lists. Pull active restaurants in Lyon (naceCodes: ["56.10A"], city: "Lyon") or new limited companies in Oslo since January (nativeActivityCodes.NO: ["56.110"], legalForm: "llc", createdFrom). Filter the dataset with recordType = company and send it to a CRM.

Market mapping. Compare how many companies in a sector sit in Helsinki and Oslo by running both countries with the same date window and reading foundNO and foundFI on the summary row. Pair this Actor with the country enrichment Actors when a lead needs officers, accounts or a KYB flag.

Input

{
  "countries": ["FR"],
  "naceCodes": ["56.10A"],
  "city": "Lyon",
  "activeOnly": true,
  "maxResultsPerCountry": 100
}

Field	Default	What it does
countries	FR, NO, FI, UK	Any mix of FR, NO, FI, UK.
name	empty	Name or fragment. At least 2 characters.
naceCodes	empty	Sector prefixes. France uses NAF, Norway a næringskode prefix, Finland a TOL prefix, the UK SIC 2007 codes that start with the digits.
nativeActivityCodes	{}	Optional { "FR": [], "NO": [], "FI": [], "UK": [] }. When a country key is set, it replaces naceCodes for that country.
city	empty	Commune or city. France resolves Lyon to postal codes 69001–69009. Norway resolves Oslo to municipality 0301. The UK keeps companies whose registered-office locality is that city.
postalCode	empty	One code for every selected country. France and Finland want 5 digits, Norway 4. A wrong shape errors that country instead of searching the whole register.
legalForm	empty	llc, plc, sole_trader, partnership or association.
nativeLegalForms	{}	Registry codes that replace legalForm for the countries you set.
createdFrom, createdTo	empty	Inclusive YYYY-MM-DD.
activeOnly	true	Drops ceased, bankrupt and liquidated companies. In France it also drops a closed establishment in the requested city.
maxResultsPerCountry	100	Cap 10,000.
minRequestIntervalMs	300	France never goes faster than 150 ms (under 7 requests/second). Finland never goes faster than 300 ms.
companiesHouseApiKey	empty	Secret override of COMPANIES_HOUSE_API_KEY.

You need at least one of name, sector, city, postal code, legal form or creation date. An empty run stops before any request.

56.10A is the French NAF code for traditional restaurants. The same token becomes næringskode prefix 56.10, TOL prefix 5610 and SIC codes 56101, 56102, 56103. It is not crosswalked. Norway's current restaurant code is 56.110 (SN2025) and Finland's is 56111. Pass those in nativeActivityCodes when you search those countries.

Sole traders are 1000 in France and ENK in Norway. Companies House and the Finnish company search do not list sole traders, so those countries return a warning and zero rows for legalForm: "sole_trader".

Output

{
  "recordType": "company",
  "country": "FR",
  "id": "302077821",
  "name": "LE BISTROT DE LYON",
  "legalForm": "llc",
  "legalFormCode": "5499",
  "legalFormLabel": "Société à responsabilité limitée (sans autre indication)",
  "status": "active",
  "statusDetail": "Active",
  "address": "64 RUE MERCIERE 69002 LYON",
  "city": "LYON",
  "postalCode": "69002",
  "activityCode": "56.10A",
  "activityLabel": "Restauration traditionnelle",
  "registrationDate": "2019-06-24",
  "employeesBand": "20 to 49 employees",
  "source": "Recherche d'entreprises (SIRENE)",
  "license": "Licence Ouverte 2.0",
  "sourceUrl": "https://annuaire-entreprises.data.gouv.fr/entreprise/302077821",
  "chargedEvents": "company-found",
  "chargeSimulated": false
}

legalForm is the normalised value (llc, plc, sole_trader, partnership, association, other). legalFormCode is the registry code. employeesBand is the French headcount band or, in Norway, a headcount when the register publishes one. Finland and the UK search payloads do not include a headcount.

The last item is recordType: "run_summary". It counts deliveries, filter drops, per-country errors and the price that applied. Keep recordType = company for a lead export.

Pricing

Pay per event. No start fee and no synthetic event.

Event	Price	When
company-found	$0.002	A company row was delivered. Primary event.
—	$0	Empty search, filtered-out company, duplicate id, registry error, missing UK key, summary row.

1,000 delivered companies cost $2. The pricing JSON is in PUBLISHING.md.

On a local run without pay-per-event pricing, rows still come back with chargeSimulated: true. On the platform, a row is pushed only after Actor.charge accepts it. If the event budget is spent, later companies are not delivered and stoppedReason is charge_limit.

UK API key

Create a key in the Companies House developer hub. On Apify, store it as the secret COMPANIES_HOUSE_API_KEY. You can also pass companiesHouseApiKey for one run. The key is the HTTP Basic username and an empty password. It is not written to the dataset or the log.

The Actor keeps one token bucket of 600 requests per 5 minutes for the whole run, and it retries HTTP 429 and 5xx. Name-only searches use /search/companies. Sector, city, postal code, legal form and incorporation dates use /advanced-search/companies.

Rate limits

• France: at least 150 ms between calls, under the published ceiling of about 7 requests/second. Pagination is 25 rows per page and at most 400 pages.
• Norway: at least 200 ms. A query stops at 10,000 registry hits.
• Finland: at least 300 ms, because the PRH quota is shared by every caller.
• UK: the token bucket above, plus the minimum interval.

Caveats

France has no creation-date query parameter. The Actor pages through the other filters and keeps companies whose date_creation falls inside createdFrom / createdTo. A narrow date on a broad query can read up to 10,000 companies and still return fewer than maxResultsPerCountry. truncated on the summary is then true.

When a French city is set, a row is a company with an establishment in that city's postal codes. A closed establishment, or one whose own NAF code does not match, is dropped. Chains are returned with the local establishment address, not the distant head office.

Norway's registrationDate is the Enhetsregisteret registration date, then the foundation date if the registration date is missing. The live næringskode list follows SN2025.

A postal code is one value for every selected country. Search countries separately when the codes differ. A city name is also sent as-is, so Lyon is the right city for France and the wrong city for Norway.

Companies House advanced search stops at 5,000 hits per query. This build was not smoke-tested against the live UK API; the UK path is covered by mocked tests. Set your own key before a live UK run.

Automate with Make, Zapier or n8n

Put the Apify token in the integration credentials. Do not paste it into the Actor input.

Make. Watch new rows in Google Sheets, then Apify → Run an Actor (synchronous) with the JSON below, then Get dataset items, keep rows where recordType is company, and update the sheet or create the CRM lead.

{
  "countries": ["FR", "NO"],
  "naceCodes": ["62.01"],
  "legalForm": "llc",
  "createdFrom": "2024-01-01",
  "activeOnly": true,
  "maxResultsPerCountry": 200
}

Zapier. Trigger on a new HubSpot company or a schedule. Action Apify → Run Actor with that JSON. Formatter keeps name, city, activityCode and sourceUrl. Update the HubSpot company or append a Google Sheet row. A Finished Actor Run trigger can do the same after a scheduled run.

n8n. Install the official node @apify/n8n-nodes-apify. Use resource Actors, operation Run an Actor and Get Dataset, memory 512, and the input JSON in Input JSON. Authenticate with an Apify API key or OAuth2. An importable workflow is in examples/n8n-europe-company-search.json: Schedule → Run an Actor and Get Dataset → IF recordType equals company. Point the Actor id at YOUR_USERNAME~europe-company-search and add a Slack node on the true branch if you want the lead posted.

Run locally

npm install
npm test
npm run build
npm run smoke
npm start

npm run smoke calls the live French, Norwegian and Finnish registers (restaurants in Lyon, Oslo and Helsinki) and does not call Companies House.

The Actor reads JSON from the Apify input. For a local process run, apify run with storage/key_value_stores/default/INPUT.json is the usual path. examples/input.lyon.json is a starting point.

$npm run package:actor

writes artifacts/europe-company-search-actor.tar.gz without node_modules.

Licence notes

Attribute the register on every redistribution. The French rows include Licence Ouverte 2.0 / Etalab. Norwegian rows include NLOD 2.0. Finnish rows include CC BY 4.0 and name the Finnish Patent and Registration Office and YTJ; this Actor is not an official PRH service. UK rows include the Open Government Licence v3.0. NAF and catégorie juridique labels are bundled from INSEE under Licence Ouverte 2.0. SIC 2007 labels are the Office for National Statistics condensed titles.

Recherche de sociétés en Europe

Cet Actor interroge les registres officiels de France, de Norvège, de Finlande et du Royaume-Uni. Une ligne company par société, puis une ligne run_summary.

Listes de prospection. Restaurants actifs à Lyon : naceCodes: ["56.10A"], city: "Lyon". Sociétés norvégiennes créées depuis janvier : nativeActivityCodes.NO: ["56.110"], createdFrom: "2024-01-01". Filtrez recordType = company avant l'export CRM.

Cartographie de marché. Le même filtre sectoriel sur Oslo et Helsinki, puis foundNO et foundFI dans le résumé. Les codes ne sont pas convertis d'une nomenclature à l'autre : la France reste en NAF rév. 2 (56.10A), la Norvège en SN2025 (56.110 pour les restaurants), la Finlande en TOL (56111), le Royaume-Uni en SIC 2007 (56101).

Tarif. Événement unique company-found à 0,002 $, événement principal. Une recherche vide, une société hors filtre, un doublon ou une erreur de registre ne sont pas facturés. Pas d'événement synthétique.

Clé Royaume-Uni. Variable secrète COMPANIES_HOUSE_API_KEY, ou champ secret companiesHouseApiKey. Le jeton reste dans les identifiants Make, Zapier ou n8n, jamais dans l'entrée. Le plafond Companies House est de 600 requêtes par 5 minutes.

Licences. France : Licence Ouverte 2.0. Norvège : NLOD 2.0. Finlande : CC BY 4.0 (PRH / YTJ). Royaume-Uni : Open Government Licence v3.0.

Limites utiles. La France n'a pas de filtre de date de création : l'Actor pagine puis filtre date_creation, à moins de 7 requêtes par seconde. La Finlande attend au moins 300 ms entre deux appels. Les entreprises individuelles britanniques et finlandaises ne sont pas dans ces moteurs de recherche.