Nigeria Company Registry Scraper - CAC

Look up Nigerian companies, business names and incorporated trustees in the public register of the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) - the official companies register of Nigeria.

Search by entity name or registration number and get the registered name, RC/BN/IT number, classification, nature of business, registry status and registration date as structured JSON.

No API key. No account. No CAPTCHA to solve.

What you get per entity

Field	Example
approvedName	DANGOTE INDUSTRIES LIMITED
rcNumber	71242
registrationNumberFormatted	RC 71242
classification / classificationLabel	COMPANY / Company
natureOfBusiness	Other manufacturing
status	ACTIVE, INACTIVE, DISSOLVED, STRUCK OFF
registrationDate	1981-05-04
nameMatch	exact, contains, all_terms, partial
companyId	208767
jurisdiction, source, sourceUrl, retrievedAt	provenance for every row

What this is good for

• KYB / onboarding - confirm a Nigerian counterparty exists and is ACTIVE before contracting.
• Supplier and distributor checks - verify the RC number on an invoice, letterhead or bid document belongs to the entity that quoted it, and is not STRUCK OFF.
• Screening at scale - submit a list of registration numbers and get a status for each.
• Lead qualification - filter Nigerian entities by classification and nature of business.

What the public register does NOT contain

Stated plainly, because this gap decides whether this actor fits your use case:

• No directors or officers.
• No shareholders or beneficial owners.
• No registered address.
• No filings, accounts or documents.

CAC releases those only through paid document services. This actor returns what the public register actually publishes and does not invent the rest. If you need directors or ownership for Nigeria, this is a verification tool, not a full KYB profile.

Name search: read this before trusting a result

The register's name search is a similarity search that matches on single words. A search for a company that does not exist still returns a full page of results - NOTAREALFIRMXYZ LIMITED returns 49 entities purely because they all contain the word LIMITED.

Taken at face value, that reads as 49 hits for a company that was never registered, which on a KYB screen is the most damaging mistake this data can cause.

So every row is graded against your query and reported in nameMatch:

Grade	Meaning
exact	the names are identical once case and punctuation are ignored
contains	the entity name contains your whole query
all_terms	it contains every identifying word of your query, in any order
partial	it contains some of them
weak	it contains none - the register matched on boilerplate alone

By default (nameMatchMode: relevant) weak rows are dropped, and results are sorted best match first. Use strict to keep only rows containing every query word, or all to see the register's raw output including the noise. Registration-number lookups are exact and are never graded - they are filtered to the exact digits you asked for.

Result ceiling

The register returns at most 50 matches per search and offers no pagination - page, limit and pageSize are accepted and ignored by the source. When a query hits that ceiling the run says so in its status message rather than presenting a capped list as a complete one. To reach matches beyond it, narrow the name or search by registration number.

One number, more than one entity

RC, BN and IT numbers are issued in separate sequences, so the same digits legitimately belong to unrelated organisations. 71242 returns both DANGOTE INDUSTRIES LIMITED (a company) and INTEGRITY, TRANSPARENCY AND ANTI CORRUPTION FOUNDATION (incorporated trustees).

A bare number therefore searches all three classifications, which is deliberate. Include the prefix (RC 71242) to restrict it to one.

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
companyNames	array	-	Entity names to search, each looked up separately
registrationNumbers	array	-	RC/BN/IT numbers, any format: RC 71242, RC-71242, 71242
maxResultsPerQuery	integer	50	Max records per query (50 is the register's own ceiling)
nameMatchMode	enum	relevant	relevant, strict or all - see above
statusFilter	array	-	Keep only these statuses; empty exports all

Set at least one of companyNames or registrationNumbers. A run with neither fails immediately and is not charged.

Example input

{
  "companyNames": ["DANGOTE INDUSTRIES"],
  "registrationNumbers": ["RC 71242", "BN 2345678"],
  "nameMatchMode": "relevant",
  "statusFilter": ["ACTIVE"]
}

Billing

Charged per search, not per row - one query costs the same whether it returns one entity or the register's full 50.

A search that finds nothing is still an answer, and is charged: on a KYB screen "this counterparty is not in the Nigerian register" is usually the finding you needed. It is written to the dataset as lookupStatus: not_found_in_register so it is never confused with a failure.

Queries that could not be retrieved - the register was down, unreachable or rate-limiting - are not charged, are never written as result rows, and are listed in FAILED_INPUTS in the run's key-value store. A run that retrieves nothing at all fails loudly rather than exiting green with an empty dataset.

Limitations

• No directors, shareholders, beneficial owners or addresses - not published (see above).
• 50 results per search, no pagination - a register limit, not an actor limit.
• Name search is a similarity search - see the grading section; check nameMatch.
• No document downloads - CAC certificates and filings are a paid service.
• natureOfBusiness is free text as recorded at registration; it is not a standard classification code and is often stale for older entities.
• Registration dates before ~1990 are sometimes recorded as 01:00:00Z timestamps in the source; only the date part is returned.

Related registry actors

Part of a fleet of official-registry actors across 11+ countries - Poland (KRS, CRBR, KRZ, MSiG, EKW, KNF, UOKiK, BDO), Germany (Handelsregister), Spain (Registro Mercantil, BORME), Italy, France, Austria, Belgium, Cyprus (DRCOR), Slovakia (RPVS beneficial owners), Czechia, UAE and California.

For Nigeria specifically, pair this with a sanctions and PEP screen on the entity names it returns, since the public register itself carries no ownership data to screen.

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Data source: Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) public search, Federal Republic of Nigeria. This actor is not affiliated with or endorsed by the CAC.