UK Companies House - Company, Officers & PSC (Official API)

Bulk-look up UK companies through the official Companies House API. No scraping, no proxies, no logins. One dataset row per company, with officers, persons with significant control (PSC) and recent filings in the same row. Cheaper per record than the other Companies House actors on the Store.

Before you run: your free Companies House key (2 minutes)

This actor calls the official API with your own key, so the 600 requests / 5 minutes limit is yours alone.

No key yet? Run it once with an empty input: you get one example row (marked demo; no company charge, only the standard actor-start event) so you can see the output before you sign up.

1. Sign in at developer.company-information.service.gov.uk (GOV.UK One Login, free).
2. Your applications → Create an application → environment Live.
3. In the application, Create new key → REST. Copy the key into the apiKey field. It is stored encrypted.

What it does

• Give it company numbers (bulk) and/or company-name searches; get back clean, flat JSON.
• Optionally add officers (current and resigned), PSC and filing history.
• Duplicates across your inputs are removed; unknown company numbers come back as an error: "not_found" row (no company charge; only the platform's $0.00001 per dataset row).
• Respects the Companies House limit of 600 requests / 5 minutes and backs off on HTTP 429.

Input

{
  "companyNumbers": ["00000006", "SC123456"],
  "searchQueries": ["acme widgets"],
  "maxResultsPerQuery": 20,
  "includeOfficers": true,
  "includePsc": false,
  "includeFilingHistory": false,
  "filingHistoryLimit": 10,
  "includeOfficerBirthMonth": false,
  "activeOnly": false,
  "apiKey": "<your Companies House key>"
}

Field	Default	Meaning
companyNumbers	-	Company numbers. Numeric ones shorter than 8 digits are zero-padded.
searchQueries	-	Company-name searches; top maxResultsPerQuery hits each (default 20).
includeOfficers	true	Add officers[].
includePsc	false	Add psc[].
includeFilingHistory / filingHistoryLimit	false / 10	Add the latest filings[].
includeOfficerBirthMonth	false	Add officer birth month and year (Companies House never publishes the day).
activeOnly	false	Skip dissolved, closed, removed and converted-closed companies.
apiKey	—	Needed for real data (without it: one example row, no company charge). Your free Companies House REST key (developer.company-information.service.gov.uk → register an application → create key). 600 requests / 5 min per key. Stored encrypted.

At least one of companyNumbers or searchQueries is required.

Output

One row per company:

company_number, company_name, company_status, company_type, date_of_creation, date_of_cessation, sic_codes[], sic_descriptions[], registered_office_address{}, accounts{next_due, last_made_up_to, overdue}, confirmation_statement{next_due, overdue}, has_charges, has_insolvency_history, jurisdiction, source_url, fetched_at, plus, when enabled:

• officers[]: name, officer_role, appointed_on, resigned_on, nationality, country_of_residence, occupation (and date_of_birth{month, year} if you opt in)
• psc[]: name, kind, natures_of_control[], notified_on, ceased_on
• filings[]: date, category, description, transaction_id, links.document (the Document API metadata link from Companies House; fetching it needs a Companies House API key)

sic_descriptions[] is aligned with sic_codes[] (from the official UK SIC 2007 list; null if a code is not on it).

Pricing (pay per event)

You pay only for what you receive. Apify platform usage is included.

Event	Price
Company row (company)	$0.003
Officer (officer)	$0.001
PSC (psc)	$0.001
Filing (filing)	$0.0005
Actor start (apify-actor-start)	Apify default

Example: 1,000 companies with officers, about 3 officers each = 1,000 x $0.003 + 3,000 x $0.001 = $6.00. If you set a maximum cost per run, the actor stops when it is reached and never bills for data it did not deliver.

Data source and licence

Data comes from the Companies House Public Data API, the UK's statutory company register. Companies House states that its content is available under the Open Government Licence v3.0 unless otherwise stated, and that it imposes no rules on how information on the public register is used (see Companies House data products).

Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

This actor is independent and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Companies House.

Personal data (UK GDPR)

Officer and PSC names, nationalities, occupations and birth month/year are personal data, even though they are published on a public register. You are responsible for having a lawful basis and for complying with UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018 when you use them (for example in marketing, due diligence or KYC). The actor limits exposure by default: birth month/year is off unless you enable it, and it never outputs full dates of birth, addresses of officers or PSC. This is not legal advice; see the ICO guidance.

Limits

• Companies House allows 600 requests per 5 minutes per key. The actor keeps below that (580) and retries on 429. A company with officers takes about 2 requests, so expect roughly one company per second at best.
• Companies House search returns the best matches for a name, not an exhaustive list.

Maintained by rootcause-data. Questions or a missing field? Open an issue on the Actor page.