UK Supplier and Customer Check: Companies House

Before you pay a deposit to a wholesaler or extend credit to a trade customer, check who they are. I match your UK company names or numbers to the Companies House register, with status and SIC activity, plus officers or filings on request. Unmatched names come back at no charge. $0.002 per company.

A real run, 13 September 2026

Six lines as they might sit in a CRM, officers switched off:

You entered	Matched	Company	Number	Status	Main activity	Note
Greggs plc	yes	GREGGS PLC	00502851	active	Manufacture of bread; manufacture of fresh pastry goods and cakes
Monzo Bank Limited	yes	MONZO BANK LIMITED	09446231	active	Banks
Octopus Energy Limited	yes	OCTOPUS ENERGY LIMITED	09263424	active	Trade of electricity	Only active company with this name; 1 dissolved or closed namesake not used
Bright Solutions Ltd	yes	BRIGHT SOLUTIONS LIMITED	14930299	active	Electrical installation	Only active company with this name; 2 dissolved or closed namesakes not used
Acme	yes	ACME LTD	11519884	active	Architectural activities
00000000	no					No company found with that number, not charged

Five matches, $0.01. The two notes are why I built the matching this way: "Bright Solutions Ltd" is the name of three registered companies, and the row tells you which one was used and why. When two or more active companies share a name, the line is not matched and you get the candidates to choose from.

To see the output shape first, run it with empty input: three fictional companies, no key, no charge.

First run

{
  "apiKey": "your-companies-house-key",
  "companies": "Greggs plc\n09446231\nSC123456"
}

A number is looked up directly. A name is matched to a registered company with the same name once case, punctuation and LTD versus LIMITED are ignored; if only a different legal suffix matches (PLC entered, LIMITED registered), the row says so. A company that appears twice in your list is looked up and charged once. Officers are on by default; switch on includePSC for owners and includeFilings for the five latest filings. None of them change the price.

A search instead of a list, for example software companies registered in Glasgow G1:

{
  "apiKey": "your-companies-house-key",
  "searchQuery": "software",
  "sicCode": "62012",
  "postcodePrefix": "G1",
  "maxResults": 50
}

Searches return active companies unless you switch on includeDissolved. A registered office is not always where a company trades.

Getting the key

Register at https://developer.company-information.service.gov.uk/, create an application and add a REST API key. Paste it into apiKey; Apify stores it as a secret and it never appears in the log or the dataset. The key is free and is rate limited by Companies House to 600 requests every 5 minutes; the Actor stays under that and backs off when told to.

When it cannot do the job

• Names or a search without a key: the run stops before any lookup, says how to get a key, and charges nothing. It does not fall back to demo rows.
• Companies House rejects the key: the run stops with that message.
• Every lookup fails at Companies House: the run fails with the first error instead of finishing green.
• Some lookups fail: those rows carry error, the rest are enriched, and the status message says how many matched.
• Your maximum cost per run runs out: the Actor stops before the next company, and the status message and OUTPUT say how many are left to run. A limit below one company's price fails the run before any lookup.

Output

The dataset's Overview table shows what you entered next to what it matched, the match note and any error. Profile fields are columns; officers, PSCs and filings are arrays, so export JSON to keep them or select the profile columns for a spreadsheet.

Field	What it holds
input	the line you entered, or search: plus the query
matched	true when a company was found and enriched
match_note	why a name was matched or not when other companies share it
company_number, company_name	as registered
status, type, date_of_creation, jurisdiction	active, dissolved, liquidation; ltd, plc, llp
sic_codes, sic_code_primary, sic_label_primary	all SIC codes, the first one and its label
address_line_1, address_line_2, locality, region, postal_code, country, registered_address	the registered office, as columns and on one line
accounts_last_made_up_to, accounts_next_due	accounts dates
confirmation_statement_last_made_up_to, confirmation_statement_next_due	confirmation statement dates
has_charges, has_insolvency_history	flags from the profile
officers, officer_count	active officers: name, role, appointed_on, nationality, country_of_residence, occupation
psc_names	current persons with significant control (when enabled)
filings	the five latest filings: date, type, category, description (when enabled)
companies_house_url	the company's public page
candidates	for an unmatched name, up to 3 companies with number, status and address
error	why a row could not be enriched, or null
checked_at	when the run happened

The OUTPUT record counts what was processed and matched, lists the unmatched lines and says whether the run stopped at your cost limit.

Pricing

• Actor events: $0.002 per matched company. Officers and filings are extra API calls but never extra charges. Nothing is charged for a line that finds no company or fails at Companies House, nor for an empty search or the demo.
• Companies House: the API key is free.
• Apify platform: covered by the event price. No proxy or browser is used.

Enrich a list from a script or an automation

Call the run-sync endpoint from a script or an n8n, Make or Zapier HTTP step. It waits for the run and returns the rows, ready to write back to your CRM by input:

curl -s -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/fractionalhqforyou~uk-companies-house-enrichment/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=$APIFY_TOKEN&format=json" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"apiKey":"'"$CH_API_KEY"'","companies":"Greggs plc\nMonzo Bank Limited","includeOfficers":false}' \
  | jq '.[] | {input, matched, company_number, status, sic_label_primary, match_note}'

The run-sync endpoint waits up to 5 minutes. At the Companies House rate limit that is a few hundred companies with officers off; start bigger lists as a normal run and fetch the dataset when it finishes.

Use it from an AI agent

This Actor also runs as an MCP server. Connect to https://fractionalhqforyou--uk-companies-house-enrichment.apify.actor/mcp and call enrich_uk_companies with the same names, numbers or search. The per-company price is the same. Clients that only speak to the Apify MCP server can load apify/actors-mcp-server with fractionalhqforyou/uk-companies-house-enrichment.

Related Actors I publish

• UK Supplier and Customer Risk Watch: watches a list of UK companies for filings and Gazette notices that signal trouble.
• UK Company Growth Signals: ranks UK companies by a published rubric built from their Companies House filings.

Help and maintenance

Built and maintained by Jessy Mariau. For a bug, open this Actor's Issues tab with the run ID and the result you expected, and remove keys and private data before you share an input.