UK Company Lookup – Companies House Official API (No Personal Data)

Check UK companies in bulk by company number or company name. Data comes straight from the official Companies House Public Data API, not from scraping web pages.

Each company becomes one clean row:

• company name, number, status (active, dissolved, liquidation…), type and jurisdiction
• incorporation and dissolution dates
• registered office address (one line plus separate fields)
• SIC codes with plain-English descriptions
• accounts and confirmation statement dates: next due, overdue flag, last made up to
• insolvency history and charges flags, previous company names
• link to the company's Companies House page
• optional add-on: a filing history summary (latest N filings with date, form type, category and description)

What it does NOT do

• No directors, officers or PSC (beneficial owner) personal data. Names, birth dates and home addresses of people are never requested or returned. In the filing history add-on, any person's name inside a filing description is replaced with [omitted].
• No financial figures from accounts, no documents or PDFs, no charges detail.
• Not live-streamed: each run reads the register at the moment it runs.

If you need officer data, this is not the right tool. Company-level data keeps your output simpler to handle under UK GDPR.

Typical uses

• KYB / supplier onboarding: check that a company exists, is active and is not overdue on filings
• CRM clean-up: add status, SIC description and registered office to a list of company numbers
• Lead lists by name: search names, keep active companies only
• Monitoring: re-run a list on a schedule and compare companyStatus and accountsOverdue

Input

Field	Meaning
companyNumbers	e.g. 00445790, SC090312, OC301540. Leading zeros are optional.
searchQueries	Company names; the top maxResultsPerQuery matches are looked up in full.
activeOnly	Skip companies that are not active.
currentNameMatchOnly	Companies House search also matches previous names. Turn on to keep only companies whose current name contains every searched word. Every search row has matchedOn (currentName / previousNameOrOther).
includeFilingHistory, filingHistoryCount	Filing history add-on.
maxCompanies	Safety cap per run (default 1,000).
apiKey	Optional: your own free Companies House REST API key (see below).

Example:

{ "companyNumbers": ["00445790", "SC090312"], "searchQueries": ["rolls royce"], "maxResultsPerQuery": 5, "activeOnly": true }

Output (one row per company)

{
  "companyNumber": "00445790",
  "companyName": "TESCO PLC",
  "companyStatus": "active",
  "companyStatusDescription": "Active",
  "companyTypeDescription": "Public limited company",
  "dateOfCreation": "1947-11-27",
  "registeredOfficeAddress": "Tesco House, Shire Park, Kestrel Way, Welwyn Garden City, AL7 1GA, United Kingdom",
  "sicCodes": [{ "code": "47110", "description": "Retail sale in non-specialised stores with food, beverages or tobacco predominating" }],
  "accountsNextDue": "2026-08-31",
  "accountsOverdue": false,
  "confirmationStatementNextDue": "2027-06-23",
  "hasInsolvencyHistory": false,
  "companiesHouseUrl": "https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/00445790",
  "input": "tesco", "inputType": "nameSearch", "searchRank": 1, "matchedOn": "currentName",
  "retrievedAt": "2026-10-18T07:00:00+00:00",
  "attribution": "Contains public sector information from Companies House. ..."
}

(The values above are illustrative.) Company numbers that don't exist come back as a free row with "error": "not_found". Malformed numbers come back as "error": "invalid_company_number".

Pricing (pay per event)

Event	Price
Company record	$0.001 per company ($1 per 1,000)
Filing history add-on	$0.0005 per company, only when switched on
Actor start	$0.00005 per run

Not-found and invalid numbers are not charged. Set a maximum charge per run in Apify and the Actor stops cleanly when it is reached.

Speed and API key

Companies House allows 600 requests per 5 minutes per API key. One company uses 1 request, plus 1 for the filing add-on and about 1 per 100 search matches.

• Without your own key the Actor uses its own key. Each run is throttled to 300 requests per 5 minutes so it is fair to all users, which works out to about 60 companies a minute.
• With your own free key (apiKey) you get your own full quota, about 120 companies a minute. Get one at developer.company-information.service.gov.uk: create an application, then create a REST API key. Your key is stored as a secret input.

When Companies House answers "too many requests", the Actor waits and retries automatically.

Data source, freshness and licence

Contains public sector information from Companies House.

• Source: Companies House Public Data API. The register is updated continuously as filings are accepted, and each run reads live data.
• Companies House states that it imposes no rules or requirements on how information on the public register is used (Companies House data products). You remain responsible for complying with data protection and other law when you use the output.
• SIC, status and type descriptions come from the Companies House api-enumerations. They are Crown copyright, used under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
• This Actor is independent. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by Companies House or the UK Government.
• Registered office addresses are company addresses on the public register. For some small companies this may be an individual's address, so handle the output accordingly.

FAQ

Is this scraping? No. It only calls the documented official API and respects its rate limit.

Why no directors? It keeps the tool focused and lowers your data protection burden. Company status, filings and SIC codes answer most onboarding and enrichment questions.

Scotland / Northern Ireland / LLPs? Yes: SC…, NI…, OC…, SO… and other prefixes all work.