Companies House API: UK Company Search & New Companies

What does UK Companies House do?

It's a Companies House API client for UK company search and company number lookup: it pulls data from Companies House, the UK's official register of companies, through the official Public Data API. Not affiliated with Companies House. You can:

• Look up companies by name or company number: full profile, status, type, registered office, SIC codes with descriptions, previous names, accounts and confirmation-statement dates, and insolvency flags.
• Build lead lists from filters: SIC codes, location, incorporation or dissolution dates, status, type, and name contains or excludes.
• Monitor new incorporations. With "Only new companies" turned on, a daily schedule returns only companies you haven't seen before, for example every new software company in Manchester.
• Add filing history (with document links) and charges (mortgages and the lending organisations) when you need them.

It uses the official API rather than scraping the website, so it doesn't break when the Companies House site changes.

What you get

A real run with "queries": ["Tesco PLC", "01003142"] (first rows shown):

Company	Number	Type	Status	Incorporated	City	SIC	Accounts due
TESCO PLC	00445790	Public limited company	active	1947-11-27	Welwyn Garden City	47110	2027-08-26
TESCO ATRATO DEPOT PROPCO LIMITED	06969533	Private limited company	active	2009-07-22	Welwyn Garden City	82990	2027-11-26
ROLLS-ROYCE PLC	01003142	Public limited company	active	1971-02-23	London	25300	2027-06-30

Each row is a full JSON record with the registered office, SIC descriptions, previous names, accounts and confirmation-statement dates, insolvency flags and, if you ask for them, filings and charges.

Run it on a schedule: Slack, e-mail, Google Sheets or a webhook

Set it up once and get new UK incorporations that match your filters automatically:

1. Save a task. Fill in the input (or paste the JSON below in the JSON editor) and click Save as a new task.

   { "sicCodes": ["62012"], "location": "Manchester", "incorporatedWithinDays": 7, "onlyNew": true, "monitorName": "manchester-software" }
   

2. Schedule it daily. Open Schedules in the left menu of the Apify Console, create a schedule, pick the time and add your task. Each run then returns only companies that earlier runs haven't, so you pay only for new ones.
3. Send the results somewhere. In the task's Integrations tab:
   • Slack: "Send notification via Slack" when a run succeeds.
   • E-mail or Google Drive: "Send results email via Gmail" attaches the rows; "Upload results to GDrive" saves them as a file.
   • Google Sheets, CRM, n8n: connect the task through Make, Zapier or n8n (listed under Automation platforms) and add a row per result.
   • Webhook: add an HTTP webhook for the event Run succeeded with your URL. The payload includes resource.defaultDatasetId; fetch the rows from https://api.apify.com/v2/datasets/<defaultDatasetId>/items.

Who uses it

• Sales and lead generation: new UK companies in your target SIC codes and area, every day, while they're still choosing suppliers.
• KYB and supplier checks: status, registered office, accounts and confirmation-statement deadlines, insolvency flags and charges for a list of companies.
• Accountants and formation agents: new incorporations in your area, and accounts and confirmation-statement due dates (with an overdue flag) for each company.
• AI agents: one call answers "is this UK company active, and what does it do?"

How to use it

Look up companies: put names or numbers in Company names or numbers:

{ "queries": ["Tesco PLC", "01003142", "SC123456"], "includeFilings": true, "maxFilings": 5 }

Lead list: active software companies in Manchester incorporated this year:

{ "sicCodes": ["62012", "62020"], "location": "Manchester", "companyStatus": ["active"], "incorporatedFrom": "2026-01-01", "maxResults": 500, "fullProfile": false }

Daily new-incorporations feed: the same filters with a rolling window, "incorporatedWithinDays": 7, plus "onlyNew": true, "monitorName": "manchester-software". Save it as a task and schedule it daily. You only get, and only pay for, companies that weren't in earlier runs.

Output example

{
  "query": "Tesco PLC",
  "matchedBy": "name",
  "country": "GB",
  "registryId": "00445790",
  "registryIdType": "Company number",
  "name": "TESCO PLC",
  "previousNames": [{ "name": "TESCO STORES (HOLDINGS) PUBLIC LIMITED COMPANY", "from": "1981-12-14", "to": "1983-08-25" }],
  "legalForm": "Public limited company",
  "status": "active",
  "statusDetail": "active",
  "jurisdiction": "england-wales",
  "incorporationDate": "1947-11-27",
  "address": { "street": "Tesco House, Shire Park, Kestrel Way", "postalCode": "AL7 1GA", "city": "Welwyn Garden City", "country": "United Kingdom", "full": "Tesco House, Shire Park, Kestrel Way, Welwyn Garden City, AL7 1GA, United Kingdom" },
  "activities": [{ "code": "47110", "scheme": "UK SIC 2007", "description": "Retail sale in non-specialised stores with food, beverages or tobacco predominating", "primary": true }],
  "accounts": { "lastMadeUpTo": "2026-02-28", "lastType": "group", "nextDue": "2027-08-26", "overdue": false },
  "confirmationStatement": { "lastMadeUpTo": "2026-06-18", "nextDue": "2027-07-02", "overdue": false },
  "flags": { "hasCharges": false, "hasInsolvencyHistory": false, "hasBeenLiquidated": false, "registeredOfficeInDispute": false, "undeliverableRegisteredOffice": false },
  "filings": [{ "date": "2026-09-16", "category": "capital", "type": "SH03", "description": "Capital return purchase own shares", "documentUrl": "https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/00445790/filing-history/.../document?format=pdf&download=0" }],
  "source": { "registry": "Companies House (UK register of companies), Public Data API", "url": "https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/00445790", "attribution": "Source: Companies House" },
  "retrievedAt": "2026-10-15T09:30:00.000Z"
}

Use it from code, Make, Zapier or an AI agent

Run it with one HTTP call and get the results back as JSON:

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/postatelier~uk-companies-house/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=$APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{ "sicCodes": ["62012"], "location": "Manchester", "incorporatedWithinDays": 7, "onlyNew": true }'

from apify_client import ApifyClient
client = ApifyClient("<APIFY_TOKEN>")
run = client.actor("postatelier/uk-companies-house").call(run_input={ "sicCodes": ["62012"], "location": "Manchester", "incorporatedWithinDays": 7, "onlyNew": true })
for item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    print(item)

It also works from Make, Zapier, n8n and Google Sheets through Apify's integrations. AI agents can call it as a tool through the Apify MCP server, with the Actor name postatelier/uk-companies-house.

Pricing

Pay per event:

Event	Price
Company returned	$0.003 ($3 per 1,000 companies)

Filing history, charges and full profiles are included at no extra cost. Companies skipped by monitoring and queries with no match are free.

Examples: 1,000 companies cost $3. A daily feed of 30 new incorporations a day costs about $2.70 a month. Apify's free plan includes $5 of monthly credit, enough for about 1,600 companies.

Status values

status is one of:

• active
• insolvency: in liquidation, administration, receivership, a voluntary arrangement or insolvency proceedings
• inactive: dissolved, closed or converted
• unknown

statusDetail keeps Companies House's exact wording.

Company data only

This Actor never requests officer, director or PSC (beneficial owner) data. Filings about officers and PSCs are left out entirely, and filing descriptions only carry dates, capital figures, charge numbers and registered-office addresses. Charge holders are listed only when every named party is clearly an organisation (a bank, a limited company, a trustee company). Anything that could be a private individual, such as the trustees of a family pension scheme or an estate's executors, is dropped. We would rather drop a lender than return a person.

Good to know

• Speed and rate limits: Companies House allows 600 requests per 5 minutes per API key. The Actor paces itself and waits out rate-limit responses rather than failing. The built-in key is shared by all users of the Actor, so at busy times big jobs slow down. A full profile costs one request; filings and charges cost one more each. Expect about 100 companies a minute with full profiles, and much faster with fullProfile: false (search results come 1,000 at a time).
• Big jobs: the filtered search returns at most 10,000 companies per run. Split by date range or SIC code for more. You can also add your own free API key for your own rate limit.
• Data source: Companies House public register, made available under the Companies Act 2006. Companies House places no restrictions on re-use of register information. Keep "Source: Companies House" when you republish.

Related Actors

• European Company Registry Search: the same lookup for France, Norway, Finland, Czechia and Poland, plus LEI and VIES VAT checks.
• Secretary of State Business Entity Search: US companies and new LLCs from nine state registries.
• Public Tenders & Procurement: UK Find a Tender and Contracts Finder, EU TED and US SAM.gov notices.

FAQ

Do I need a Companies House API key? No. The Actor brings its own. The optional key field is only for very large jobs.

Can I get directors or shareholders? No. This Actor returns company-level data only, by design.

Something broke or looks wrong? Open an issue. A daily health check runs against the API, and we aim to fix problems within a day.