UK New Company Monitor — incremental lead feed

Watches UK Companies House for newly incorporated companies matching your filter (SIC industry codes, registered-office location, name exclusions) and, on every scheduled run, emits only the companies that are new since the last run — deduplicated, flattened, and enriched with directors and addresses. Optionally POSTs each batch to a webhook (Slack, Zapier, Make, n8n, or your own endpoint).

Most Companies House actors are one-shot lookup tools: you give them a company number or name and they return details. This one is a stateful monitor. Point it at a niche, schedule it hourly or daily, and it maintains its own memory of what it has already seen so you get a clean, no-duplicates stream of fresh sales leads — the same thing lead-list vendors charge a subscription for.

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Who it's for

Buyer	Use
Accountants / bookkeepers	New incorporations in your city → onboarding outreach in week 1
B2B vendors (banking, insurance, payroll, software, fulfilment, telecoms)	Every new Ltd in your target sector, the day it forms
Recruiters / staffing agencies	New entrants in a vertical, before they build a team
Commercial property / coworking	New companies with a residential registered office = likely to need space
Market researchers / journalists	Formation-rate signal for a sector or region
Anyone paying for a "new UK companies this week" list	Replace it with a $0.01/record feed you control

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Quick start (one-time, ~3 minutes)

1. Get a free Companies House API key. Go to https://developer.company-information.service.gov.uk/, create an account, then Your applications → Register an application (Environment: Live), open it and Create new key of type REST. Copy the key.

2. Configure the actor. Paste the key into apiKey, set sicCodes and/or locationQuery for your niche (see recipes below).

3. Run once to seed the state and sanity-check the output. Set incorporatedInLastDays higher (e.g. 7–14) for this first run if you want a backfill.

4. Schedule it. Apify Console → Schedules → Create → this actor → save your inputs → run daily (or hourly for fast-moving niches). Leave incorporatedInLastDays at 1 — later runs are incremental regardless.

5. (Optional) Set webhookUrl to a Slack incoming webhook / Zapier catch hook / n8n webhook node to get the new companies pushed to you each run.

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Input reference

Field	Type	Default	Description
apiKey	string (secret)	—	Required. Companies House REST key (Live environment). Used for HTTP Basic auth.
sicCodes	string[]	[]	5-digit SIC codes. A company matches if it has any of them. Empty = every industry.
locationQuery	string	—	Free-text registered-office filter: a town ("Manchester"), county ("Kent"), or postcode district ("EC1", "M1").
incorporatedInLastDays	integer 1–30	1	First run only (no saved state): how far back to look. Ignored on later runs — those go from the previous run forward.
nameExcludes	string[]	[]	Drop companies whose name contains any of these, case-insensitive (e.g. ["HOLDINGS","NOMINEES","PROPERTY"]).
includeOfficers	boolean	false	Also fetch each company's appointed officers (name, role, appointment date, nationality, occupation). Costs 1 extra API call per company.
webhookUrl	string	—	If set, POST a JSON body (see below) with this run's new companies.
maxResults	integer 1–5000	500	Hard cap on companies emitted per run. Protects against a huge first run or a mis-scoped filter.

SIC code recipes

Niche	sicCodes
Software / SaaS	["62011","62012","62020","62090"]
Digital marketing / agencies	["70210","73110","73120","74100"]
E-commerce / online retail	["47910","47990"]
Construction & trades	["41100","41201","41202","43999"]
Restaurants & food service	["56101","56102","56103","56210","56290"]
Management consultancy	["70221","70229"]
Property / real estate	["68100","68201","68209","68310","68320"]
Financial services / fintech	["64191","64301","64999","66190"]
Health & wellness	["86210","86900","96040"]
Logistics / haulage	["49410","52100","52290","53202"]
Recruitment	["78100","78200","78300"]

Full list: https://resources.companieshouse.gov.uk/sic/

Example inputs

Software companies formed in Greater Manchester, with directors, alerting Slack:

{
  "apiKey": "YOUR_KEY",
  "sicCodes": ["62011", "62012", "62020", "62090"],
  "locationQuery": "Manchester",
  "includeOfficers": true,
  "nameExcludes": ["HOLDINGS", "NOMINEES"],
  "webhookUrl": "https://hooks.slack.com/services/T000/B000/xxxx",
  "maxResults": 300
}

Every new company in a postcode area (any industry), daily digest to a webhook:

{
  "apiKey": "YOUR_KEY",
  "locationQuery": "BS1",
  "webhookUrl": "https://hook.eu2.make.com/xxxxxxxx"
}

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Output

Dataset — one item per new company

Field	Example	Notes
company_number	"14523901" / "SC512233"	Unique registration number
company_name	"EXAMPLE SOFTWARE LTD"	As registered
company_status	"active"	Usually active for fresh incorporations
company_type	"ltd"	ltd, plc, llp, …
date_of_creation	"2026-09-02"	Incorporation date
sic_codes	["62012"]	May be empty if not yet filed
registered_office_address	"1 Example St, London, EC1A 1AA, England"	Single flattened string
postal_code	"EC1A 1AA"	Split out for territory sorting
locality	"London"	Split out for grouping
link	https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/14523901	Public Companies House page
scraped_at	"2026-09-03T09:00:00.000Z"	When this actor emitted it
officers	[{ "name": "DOE, Jane", "role": "director", "appointed_on": "2026-09-02", "nationality": "British", "occupation": "Director", "country_of_residence": "England" }]	Only when includeOfficers: true

Export from the Apify dataset as JSON, CSV, Excel, or via the dataset API into your CRM / Google Sheet / spreadsheet.

Webhook payload

If webhookUrl is set and the run found new companies, the actor sends:

POST <webhookUrl>
Content-Type: application/json
{
  "source": "uk-newco-monitor",
  "window": { "from": "2026-09-02", "to": "2026-09-03" },
  "count": 12,
  "companies": [ /* the same objects as the dataset items */ ]
}

A Slack incoming webhook will render the raw JSON; for a formatted message put a Zapier / Make / n8n step in between. Webhook failures are logged as a warning and do not fail the run (the data is still in the dataset).

RUN_SUMMARY (default key-value store)

{
  "window": { "from": "2026-09-02", "to": "2026-09-03" },
  "new_companies": 12,
  "seen_total": 843,
  "rate_limited": false,
  "finished_at": "2026-09-03T09:00:03.114Z"
}

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How incremental / dedup works

• State store. Cross-run state lives in a named key-value store, uk-newco-monitor-state (the default store is wiped between runs on the Apify platform, so it can't be used for memory). State is namespaced by a hash of your filter — running the same actor from two schedules with different SIC codes or locations keeps two independent seen-sets.
• First run (no state for that filter): searches incorporations in the last incorporatedInLastDays days.
• Every later run: searches from the day before the previous run up to today (Companies House incorporation dates are day-granular), then drops every company_number already in the seen-set. Overlapping date windows therefore never produce duplicates.
• The seen-set is capped at 20,000 numbers (~10 days of all UK incorporations; far more headroom for any real filter).
• maxResults caps a single run. If a filter matches more new companies than that in one run, the rest come through on the next run — nothing is lost.

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Rate limits & cost

• Companies House: 600 requests per 5 minutes across all endpoints. Each run uses ~ceil(matches / 100) search requests plus one per company when includeOfficers is on. A 429 ends the run early but still saves progress and pushes what it collected.
• Apify compute: a typical daily run for a focused niche finishes in a few seconds on the default memory. includeOfficers on a broad filter is the main cost driver (one call per company) — narrow the filter or turn officers off if runs get long.

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Scheduling guidance

Niche size	Suggested schedule	maxResults
One city + tight SIC set	Daily	200–500
Whole region, any industry	Daily, or twice daily	1000–2000
National, single niche	Hourly if you need speed-to-lead, else daily	500

Companies House posts new incorporations continuously through the working day, so an hourly schedule genuinely gets you same-day leads.

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Local development

npm install
npm test          # 14 unit tests, fully mocked — no network, no key needed

# real run against the live API:
mkdir -p storage/key_value_stores/default
echo '{"apiKey":"YOUR_KEY","sicCodes":["62012"],"incorporatedInLastDays":3}' \
  > storage/key_value_stores/default/INPUT.json
npm start

Source layout:

File	Responsibility
src/companiesHouse.js	API client: auth, advanced-search pagination, officers, error mapping. Injectable fetch for tests.
src/filter.js	Pure helpers: date-window logic, name-exclusion predicate.
src/dedupe.js	State persistence: config namespace hash, seen-set + last-run load/save.
src/main.js	Orchestration: read input → search → filter → dedup → dataset + webhook → save state.

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Deploy your own copy

npm i -g apify-cli
apify login
apify push

Then in the Apify Console: Publication → Publish, set Monetization → Pay per result (suggested $0.01 / result), and add a Schedule.

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Troubleshooting

Symptom	Cause / fix
Companies House rejected the API key (HTTP 401)	Wrong key, or you created a Test key instead of Live. Regenerate a Live REST key.
Run emits companies you've seen before	You changed the filter — a different filter = a different state namespace, so it re-seeds. Expected.
First run returns nothing	No incorporations matched in the look-back window. Widen sicCodes, drop locationQuery, or raise incorporatedInLastDays.
rate_limited: true in the summary	Filter is too broad with includeOfficers on. Narrow it, turn officers off, or lower maxResults.
sic_codes empty on some results	The company hasn't filed its SIC codes yet (common in the first days). It still matches a locationQuery-only filter.

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Data source & licensing

Data comes from the official Companies House Public Data API (api.company-information.service.gov.uk). Companies House data is published under the Open Government Licence v3.0 and is free to use, including commercially, with attribution. This actor only reads public register data — no authentication beyond your own free API key, no private data.

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Related actors

Part of a small suite of UK public-register monitors, same publisher, same pattern (incremental, no duplicates, webhook-ready):

• UK Insolvency Notice Monitor — winding-up, administration, bankruptcy (The Gazette)
• UK Food Business Monitor — new food businesses + hygiene-rating changes (FSA)
• UK Public Tender Monitor — public-sector tenders by CPV / value (Contracts Finder)
• UK Company Change Monitor — watchlist diffing: status, charges, officers, filings

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Changelog

• 0.1 — Initial release: advanced-search by SIC / location, incremental dedup via namespaced state store, optional officer enrichment, optional webhook, RUN_SUMMARY.