UK Companies House Search & Company Data

What does UK Companies House Search & Company Data do?

UK Companies House Search & Company Data pulls official UK company data from the Companies House public data API and returns it in one clean, normalized schema. Search companies by name, look them up by company number, or run an advanced search by SIC code, incorporation date, status and location. Add filing history, persons with significant control (PSC), charges and, if you need them, officers.

It is built for KYB (Know Your Business), due diligence, B2B lead generation, CRM enrichment and AI agents that need verified UK company data.

You use your own free Companies House API key. It takes about 2 minutes to get one (see below). Without a key the Actor still looks up company numbers with basic data from the public Companies House URI service, so you can try it right away: the prefilled input looks up Tesco PLC keyless and searches "tesco" when a key is set.

Running on Apify gives you an API, scheduling, webhooks, integrations (Google Sheets, Make, Zapier, n8n, Slack), monitoring, and an MCP tool for AI agents.

Why use this UK company data tool?

• KYB and onboarding. Check that a UK customer or supplier exists, is active, and is not in liquidation or administration. See insolvency history and outstanding charges.
• Due diligence. Accounts and confirmation statement due dates and overdue flags, filing history with readable descriptions and PDF links, PSC (beneficial owners), charges with lenders.
• Lead generation. Find every active company with a given SIC code in a town, or all companies incorporated last month. Get name, SIC labels, registered address and incorporation date.
• CRM enrichment. Add status, type, SIC codes with labels and address to company numbers you already have.
• AI agents and LLM tools. Stable field names and ISO dates work well as a tool call through the Apify MCP server.
• Respects the rules. Uses the official REST API only, never scrapes the Find and update website, and stays under the 600 requests per 5 minutes limit.
• GDPR-aware. Officers are off by default. When on, only name, role, appointment date and nationality are kept.

How to get a free Companies House API key (2 minutes)

1. Open the Companies House Developer Hub and sign in or register. It is free.
2. Go to Your applications and create an application. Choose the Live environment.
3. Click Create new key and pick REST. Leave the IP address and JavaScript domain fields empty (Apify IPs change).
4. Copy the key and paste it into the Companies House API key field. It is stored encrypted and never logged.

How to search UK companies

1. Open the Actor and go to the Input tab.
2. Paste your API key.
3. Enter company names in "Search by company name", company numbers in "Look up by company number", or fill any advanced search filter.
4. Pick the extra sections you need: PSC, filings, charges, officers.
5. Click Start. Download the results as JSON, CSV, Excel or HTML, or read them through the Apify API.

Input

All fields are on the Input tab. The main ones:

Field	What it does
apiKey	Your free Companies House REST API key (secret)
searchQueries	Company names or keywords, e.g. tesco
maxResultsPerSearch	Max companies per name search (1 to 1,000)
companyNumbers	Company numbers, e.g. 00445790, SC045551, OC300001. Works without a key
advancedSicCodes	SIC 2007 codes, e.g. 62012
advancedIncorporatedFrom, advancedIncorporatedTo	Incorporation date range
advancedStatus, advancedCompanyType	Status and type filters
advancedLocation	Town, county or postcode, e.g. Manchester
fetchFullProfile	Complete search hits with the full profile (on by default)
includePsc, includeFilings, includeCharges	Extra sections
includeOfficers	Officers, off by default (personal data)
requestsPer5Minutes	Your rate-limit budget, default 550 of the 600 allowed

Example: active software companies in Manchester incorporated in 2025, with PSC.

{
    "apiKey": "YOUR-KEY",
    "advancedSicCodes": ["62012", "62020"],
    "advancedLocation": "Manchester",
    "advancedStatus": ["active"],
    "advancedIncorporatedFrom": "2025-01-01",
    "advancedIncorporatedTo": "2025-12-31",
    "maxResultsAdvanced": 500,
    "includePsc": true
}

Output

One item per company. Nested sections are null unless requested. Example (shortened):

{
    "companyNumber": "00445790",
    "name": "TESCO PLC",
    "status": "active",
    "statusLabel": "Active",
    "type": "plc",
    "typeLabel": "Public limited company",
    "incorporationDate": "1947-11-27",
    "dissolutionDate": null,
    "sicCodes": [
        {
            "code": "47110",
            "label": "Retail sale in non-specialised stores with food, beverages or tobacco predominating"
        }
    ],
    "registeredAddress": {
        "addressLine1": "Tesco House, Shire Park",
        "locality": "Welwyn Garden City",
        "postalCode": "AL7 1GA",
        "full": "Tesco House, Shire Park, Kestrel Way, Welwyn Garden City, AL7 1GA, United Kingdom"
    },
    "accountsNextDue": "2027-08-26",
    "confirmationStatementNextDue": "2027-07-02",
    "hasInsolvencyHistory": false,
    "hasCharges": true,
    "filings": [
        {
            "date": "2026-06-30",
            "type": "CS01",
            "description": "Confirmation statement made on 2026-06-18 with no updates"
        }
    ],
    "dataSource": "api",
    "url": "https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/00445790",
    "source": "UK Companies House",
    "licence": "Open Government Licence v3.0",
    "attribution": "Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. ...",
    "fetchedAt": "2026-09-27T12:00:00.000Z"
}

You can download the dataset in various formats such as JSON, HTML, CSV, or Excel. The Output tab has four views: Overview, KYB and compliance, Lead generation, and Officers, PSC, filings and charges. A SUMMARY record in the key-value store lists counts, not-found numbers, errors and the licence.

Data fields

Field	Description
companyNumber, name	8-character company number and registered name
status, statusLabel, statusDetail	Active, dissolved, liquidation, administration and more
type, typeLabel, subtype, jurisdiction	ltd, plc, llp, CIC and more; England/Wales, Scotland, NI
incorporationDate, dissolutionDate	ISO dates
sicCodes	SIC 2007 codes with labels
registeredAddress	Registered office, split and as one line
accountsNextDue, accountsOverdue, accountsLastMadeUpTo	Accounts filing status
confirmationStatementNextDue, confirmationStatementOverdue	Confirmation statement status
hasInsolvencyHistory, hasCharges	Risk flags
previousNames	Former company names with dates
psc	Persons with significant control and natures of control
filings, filingsTotal	Filing history with readable descriptions and document links
charges, chargesSummary	Charges with lenders, and outstanding and satisfied counts
officers, officersActiveCount	Name, role, appointed date, nationality only
dataSource	api, search-index (search hit only) or keyless-uri
url, source, licence, attribution, fetchedAt	Provenance for every record

How much does it cost to get UK Companies House data?

Pay per result. No monthly rental.

• $3 per 1,000 companies.
• $1 per 1,000 for each extra section per company (officers, PSC, filings, charges).
• $0.001 per run start.

A KYB check of 200 suppliers with PSC and charges costs about $1. 5,000 leads by SIC code cost about $15. The Companies House API itself is free. The Apify free plan covers about 1,600 companies a month.

Tips and advanced options

• Fast, cheap name lists: turn off "Fetch full company profile". Search hits then need no extra request, but have no SIC codes or due dates.
• Rate limit: Companies House allows 600 requests per 5 minutes per key. Each company profile is one request, and each extra section at least one more. The Actor waits by itself when the budget is used up and reads the rate-limit headers, so other apps on the same key are respected. Lower requestsPer5Minutes if you share the key.
• Large advanced searches: up to 5,000 companies per API call, so 10,000 hits without profiles take a few seconds.
• Keyless mode: without a key only company-number lookups run, with basic data from the official public Companies House URI service (data.companieshouse.gov.uk). It has no insolvency flag, overdue flags, jurisdiction or sections. Name search and advanced search are skipped with a message on how to get a key. If nothing can run without a key, the run still succeeds with one free help item in the dataset, and only the $0.001 start is charged.
• Not found and invalid numbers: each one gets a free row in the dataset, so a CRM import keeps one row per input: companyNumber as you gave it, normalizedNumber, found: false and error (not-found or invalid-number). These rows are never charged. Company records have found: true. The numbers are also listed in the log and in SUMMARY. The keyless service leaves out many companies dissolved years ago. The API with a key finds more of them.
• Maximum cost per run: set it on the run to cap spending. The Actor checks the budget before each company and stops cleanly when the next company would go over it.

Licence, GDPR and FAQ

Licence. Companies House data is published under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Every record carries the required attribution: "Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0".

GDPR note. Officers and individual PSCs are natural persons. Their data is personal data under UK GDPR, even though it is on a public register. This Actor minimises it: officers get only name, role, appointment date and nationality. Individual PSCs get only name, natures of control, notified and ceased dates and nationality. Home and service addresses, dates of birth, occupations and country of residence are never copied. Officers are off by default. Filing descriptions can contain officer names, as on the public register. When you process this data, you are the data controller. You need a lawful basis and must follow UK GDPR, for example for direct marketing to individuals.

Does it scrape the Companies House website? No. It uses the official REST API and the official public URI service only.

Why do I need my own key? The rate limit is per key. Your own key gives you the full 600 requests per 5 minutes and keeps your usage separate.

What happens if my input is invalid? The run still ends SUCCEEDED and you pay only the $0.001 start fee. No company is charged. The dataset gets one help row, and the run status message says the same:

{
    "error": true,
    "errorCode": "EMPTY_INPUT",
    "message": "Give at least one search query, company number, or advanced search filter.",
    "howToFix": "Add a company number to \"companyNumbers\" ..."
}

Codes: EMPTY_INPUT (nothing to look up), INVALID_INPUT (a wrong company number, SIC code, date, status or limit), API_KEY_REQUIRED (only keyed features were asked for and no key was given), INVALID_API_KEY (Companies House rejected the key) and NO_RESULTS (nothing matched). Company numbers that are not found or not valid still get their own free row with error set to not-found or invalid-number. If every Companies House call fails because the service is down, the run fails instead.

Something missing or broken? Open an issue on the Issues tab. Custom solutions, such as bulk snapshot processing or monitoring for new filings, are available on request.