UK Company Due Diligence Pack (Companies House)

Turn a list of UK company numbers or names into one clean row per company: status, key dates, registered office, SIC codes, active officers, persons with significant control (PSC), charges, and a ready-made risk_flags array. Data comes straight from the official Companies House Public Data REST API, not from scraping web pages.

Who it's for

• KYB / compliance teams: quick first-pass checks on counterparties, with beneficial-ownership (PSC) data included.
• B2B sales and RevOps: qualify and screen UK leads (is the company active, are accounts overdue, is it newly incorporated?).
• Procurement and supplier checks: monitor suppliers for dissolution, insolvency, overdue filings and outstanding charges.

What it does

1. Accepts company numbers (e.g. 00445790) and/or company names. Names are resolved with the Companies House search endpoint: an exact name match on an active company wins, then an exact match on an inactive one, then the top active result. The result records match_confidence (exact, exact_inactive, fuzzy, or company_number if you supplied a number). Always review fuzzy matches.
2. Fetches the profile, and optionally officers, PSC and charges.
3. Computes risk flags and outputs one dataset item per company.
4. Throttles requests below the documented API limit (600 requests per 5 minutes) and retries on HTTP 429 and 5xx with backoff.

Input

Field	Description
apiKey	Your free Companies House API key (secret). Or set env CH_API_KEY.
companyNumbers	List of company numbers (short numeric ones are zero-padded).
companyNames	List of names to resolve.
includeOfficers / includePSC / includeCharges	Default true. Turn off to reduce API calls.
maxItems	Max companies processed (default 100).

You need your own free API key from the Companies House developer hub (register an application and create a REST key).

Output fields

company_number, company_name, status, status_detail, type, date_of_creation, date_of_cessation, registered_office, registered_office_in_dispute, sic_codes, accounts_next_due, accounts_overdue, confirmation_statement_next_due, confirmation_statement_overdue, has_insolvency_history, active_officers_count, officers (name, role, appointed_on), resignations_last_12_months, psc (name, kind, natures_of_control), charges_total, outstanding_charges, risk_flags, match_input, match_confidence, source_urls, fetched_at.

Risk flags

dissolved, liquidation, administration, receivership, voluntary-arrangement, insolvency_history, accounts_overdue, confirmation_statement_overdue, outstanding_charges, recently_incorporated (under 12 months), no_active_officers, frequent_officer_changes (3 or more resignations in the last 12 months), registered_office_dispute.

Flags are automated indicators derived from public data, not a credit rating or legal advice.

Example output

{
  "company_number": "00445790",
  "company_name": "TESCO PLC",
  "status": "active",
  "type": "plc",
  "date_of_creation": "1947-11-27",
  "accounts_overdue": false,
  "confirmation_statement_overdue": false,
  "active_officers_count": 12,
  "officers": [{ "name": "EXAMPLE, Jane", "role": "director", "appointed_on": "2020-01-01" }],
  "psc": [],
  "charges_total": 0,
  "outstanding_charges": 0,
  "risk_flags": [],
  "match_confidence": "company_number",
  "source_urls": ["https://api.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/00445790"],
  "fetched_at": "2026-01-01T00:00:00.000Z"
}

(Illustrative; values are not a live snapshot.)

Pricing (pay per event)

• $0.01 per company pack (event company-pack), charged once per company successfully returned.
• Failed lookups (not found, no name match, API errors) are not charged.
• The run stops gracefully when your maximum charge limit is reached.

Data source and licence

Data comes from the official Companies House Public Data API.

Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Companies House material is Crown copyright. Under OGL v3.0 it may be reused, including commercially, provided the source is acknowledged (Companies House: public task, copyright and Crown copyright).

Officer and PSC records include personal data (names, month and year of birth, nationality). You are responsible for using the output lawfully, e.g. under UK GDPR, for your own purpose. This Actor is not affiliated with or endorsed by Companies House.

Limits

• Requires your own API key; the shared limit is 600 requests per 5 minutes per key. A company with all sections needs up to 4 requests (plus 1 for a name search), so about 120 to 150 companies per 5 minutes.
• Officers and PSC use the first 100 records only; charges use the API's default page.
• Covers companies registered at Companies House (England and Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland). Not financial statements or filing documents.
• Data is as current as Companies House's API at run time.

FAQ

Do I need a Companies House account? Yes, a free developer account and API key. Can I search by name? Yes; check match_confidence. Are you scraping? No, only the official REST API. Is a flag a guarantee? No, it is an automated signal from public records; verify important decisions at source.