UK Companies House Search (Official API)

Search UK registered companies and pull their profile, officers and filing history — straight from Companies House, the UK government's own register. No scraping.

Four modes

Search companies — find companies by name, with number, status, type, incorporation date and registered address.

Company profile — one company in full: status, jurisdiction, SIC codes, registered office, whether it has charges or insolvency history, previous names.

Officers — directors and secretaries, their role, appointment and resignation dates.

Filing history — every document filed, with date, type, category and description.

You bring your own free key

Companies House gives API keys free to anyone:

1. Register at developer.company-information.service.gov.uk
2. Create an application — choose the Live environment (Test returns fake data)
3. Create a REST key
4. Paste it into this Actor

No identity verification, no UK address, no company required. It takes about five minutes. The key stays yours and the rate limit (600 requests per 5 minutes) is yours to use.

Output

Every row is flat — no nested objects to unpack.

Mode	Key fields
Search	company_number, title, company_status, company_type, date_of_creation, address
Profile	the above plus jurisdiction, sic_codes, has_charges, has_insolvency_history, previous_company_names
Officers	name, officer_role, appointed_on, resigned_on, address
Filing history	date, type, category, description, transaction_id, pages

Addresses are joined into a single readable string. SIC codes come back as text, not as a raw array, so a spreadsheet shows 47110 rather than ['47110'].

Examples

Find companies named Tesco:

{ "api_key": "your-key", "mode": "search", "query": "tesco", "max_results": 50 }

Tesco PLC's directors:

{ "api_key": "your-key", "mode": "officers", "company_number": "00445790" }

Use cases

• KYC and supplier due diligence on UK counterparties
• Enriching a CRM with registered company details
• Monitoring directorship changes at companies you deal with
• Tracking filings — accounts, confirmation statements, charges
• Research on UK company formation and industry mix

Limits worth knowing

• Companies House allows 600 requests per 5 minutes per key. Large pulls are paced.
• A company number that does not exist returns a clear NOT_FOUND row, not an error and not an empty result you cannot interpret.
• Coverage is companies registered in the UK under the Companies Act 2006.

Running locally

pip install -r requirements.txt
# key from ~/.secrets/companies_house_key or the CH_API_KEY environment variable
python -m tests.test_ch

Attribution

Data from Companies House, an executive agency of the UK Department for Business and Trade, published under the Open Government Licence v3.0. This Actor is not affiliated with or endorsed by Companies House. The register reflects what companies have filed.