UK Companies House Company Lookup - Official API, No PII

Look up UK companies by company number or name through the official Companies House REST API, using your own free API key. Get the live register profile: status, type, incorporation date, registered office, SIC codes with descriptions, accounts and confirmation-statement due dates (with overdue flags), previous names and, optionally, the filing history.

Built for KYB / supplier checks, CRM enrichment, accountants tracking filing deadlines and agents that need clean company data, without personal data: officers, directors and PSC (beneficial owners) are never requested.

Why this one

• Live data from the official register, read through the Companies House REST API with your own free key, not scraped pages.
• Filing deadlines in one record: accounts and confirmation-statement due dates with overdue flags, so a weekly run over a list of company numbers shows what is late.
• More than the bare profile: SIC codes with descriptions and, optionally, recent filing history with readable descriptions and PDF links.
• No personal data: officers, directors and PSC (beneficial owners) are never requested. Not-found numbers, API errors and sample records are free; no start fee.

Quick start: example input, output and cost

{ "apiKey": "your-api-key", "companyNumbers": ["00000006", "SC123456"], "searchQueries": ["acme widgets"], "includeFilingHistory": true }

Output (one item per company; illustrative values, shortened):

{ "companyNumber": "SC123456", "companyName": "EXAMPLE TRADING LIMITED", "companyStatus": "active", "companyTypeText": "Private limited company",
  "incorporationDate": "2020-01-01", "registeredOfficeAddressText": "Edinburgh, EH1 1AA, United Kingdom",
  "sicCodes": ["62012"], "sicDescriptions": [{"code": "62012", "description": "Business and domestic software development"}],
  "accounts": {"nextDue": "2026-09-30", "overdue": false, "lastMadeUpTo": "2024-12-31", "lastAccountsType": "micro-entity"},
  "confirmationStatement": {"nextDue": "2027-01-15", "overdue": false},
  "filingHistory": [{"date": "2026-01-10", "category": "confirmation-statement", "type": "CS01", "descriptionText": "Confirmation statement made on 2026-01-01 with no updates"}] }

Cost: 3 companies with filing history = 3 × $0.00297 + 3 × $0.00049 = $0.0104. No start fee.

Get your free API key (2 minutes)

1. Register at developer.company-information.service.gov.uk (free).
2. Create an application → choose Live → Create new key → type REST.
3. Paste the key into apiKey. It is a secret input: Apify stores it encrypted, the actor sends it only to api.company-information.service.gov.uk (HTTP basic auth) and never logs it.
4. If you restricted the key to IP addresses or domains, Apify's servers must be allowed, otherwise you get HTTP 401.

No key? The run still validates your input and returns one free sample record (isSample: true) so you can see the output format. Nothing is charged.

What you get (one item per company)

Field	Meaning
companyNumber, companyName	Register number and current name
companyStatus, companyStatusText, companyStatusDetail	e.g. active, dissolved, liquidation (+ readable text)
companyType, companyTypeText, subtype, jurisdiction	e.g. ltd = Private limited company
incorporationDate, cessationDate	ISO dates
registeredOfficeAddress (+ …Text)	Premises, lines, locality, region, postcode, country, PO box (no "care of" names)
registeredOfficeIsInDispute, undeliverableRegisteredOfficeAddress	Register flags
sicCodes, sicDescriptions	Nature of business (SIC 2007) with official descriptions
accounts	Accounting reference date, next due, next made-up-to, overdue, last made-up-to, last accounts type
confirmationStatement	Next due, next made-up-to, last made-up-to, overdue
hasCharges, hasInsolvencyHistory, hasBeenLiquidated, isCommunityInterestCompany, canFile	Register flags
previousCompanyNames	Former names with dates
filingHistory[] (optional)	date, category, type (form), descriptionText, madeUpDate, pages, filingUrl (PDF on the official register)
matchedQuery, companyUrl, fetchedAt, source, attribution	Provenance

Input

Field	Default	Meaning
apiKey	none	Your free Companies House REST key (secret)
companyNumbers	none	e.g. 00000006, SC123456 (spaces removed, short numbers padded)
searchQueries	none	Company names / keywords
maxResultsPerQuery	10	Search results looked up per query (1-100)
activeOnly	false	Drop non-active companies from search results
includeFilingHistory	false	Add recent filings ($0.00049 per company when returned)
maxFilingsPerCompany	25	1-100
filingCategories	all	e.g. accounts, confirmation-statement
maxCompanies	100	Safety cap per run

Limits

• UK companies on the Companies House register only. You need your own free Companies House API key.
• No officers, PSCs or other personal data: those endpoints are never called.
• Rate-limited to stay inside Companies House's limits, so very large lists take a while.

Pricing

Event	Price
Company profile returned	$0.00297
Filing history returned (optional, per company)	$0.0005

No start fee. Not-found numbers, invalid input, API errors and sample records are free. Set a maximum cost per run and the actor stops before it is reached.

Responsible use and compliance

• Official API only (api.company-information.service.gov.uk): no scraping of the Find and update company information website.
• Rate limit respected: at most 1 request per second and 480 per 5 minutes (Companies House allows 600 per 5 minutes per key). On HTTP 429 the actor waits once for the window to reset, then stops and reports; it never rotates keys or IPs. Do not run many copies in parallel with the same key.
• No personal data: officers, appointments, PSC, PSC statements, disqualified-officer and officer-search endpoints are never called (enforced by an allow-list in the code). Person names in filing descriptions are replaced with [person]; "care of" names and officer addresses are dropped.
• Licence: Companies House states that it imposes no rules or requirements on how the information on the public register is used; you remain responsible for data protection and other law when you use it. Readable SIC / status / filing descriptions come from Companies House enumerations (Crown copyright, Open Government Licence v3.0). Each item carries an attribution field.
• Honest User-Agent with a contact URL.

Use it in n8n, Make or Zapier

Run the actor with a list of company numbers on a weekly schedule and filter on accounts.overdue or confirmationStatement.nextDue to get filing-deadline alerts.

Maintained by DigiVibeTech. Questions: digivibetech.com/support. Not affiliated with or endorsed by Companies House.