GLEIF LEI Lookup — 18 Fields, Name or LEI, No API Key

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Resolve companies to their Legal Entity Identifier and pull the registered legal record from the official GLEIF API. Look up by company name or by LEI, and get 18 fields per entity: LEI, legal name, other names, legal form code, category, entity status, jurisdiction, legal and headquarters addresses with their countries, registration status, initial registration date, last update date, next renewal date, managing LOU, and BIC codes.

Pure HTTP against api.gleif.org. No API key, no login, no browser — and results are deduplicated by LEI across both lookup modes.

Why use this GLEIF LEI lookup

• Two lookup modes in one run. leis resolves known identifiers directly; legalNames searches by company name and returns up to matchesPerName candidates. Both can be supplied in the same input.
• 18 fields, including the ones KYB actually uses. Jurisdiction, entity status, registration status and next_renewal_date are what tell you whether an LEI is live, lapsing or retired.
• Both addresses. GLEIF distinguishes the legal address from the headquarters address; this Actor returns both, formatted, plus their ISO country codes.
• BIC codes where GLEIF has mapped them. bic comes back as an array, which is how GLEIF actually publishes it.
• Deduplicated output. The same entity reached from a name search and a direct LEI lookup is emitted once.
• Unmatched names are labelled, not dropped. A name with no GLEIF match emits a no_match row so your join does not silently lose a company.

Look up companies by name

{
  "legalNames": ["Apple Inc.", "Volkswagen AG", "Nestle S.A."],
  "matchesPerName": 3
}

GLEIF name search is exact-ish on the registered legal name, so matchesPerName: 3 gives you the alternatives to disambiguate against.

Enrich a list of known LEIs

{
  "leis": [
    "HWUPKR0MPOU8FGXBT394",
    "529900W18LQJJN6SJ336",
    "5493006MHB84DD0ZWV18"
  ]
}

Direct lookups are exact and never ambiguous. LEIs are normalised to upper case and stripped of separators before the request.

Check which LEI registrations are lapsing

{
  "legalNames": ["Deutsche Bank AG", "Barclays PLC", "Societe Generale"],
  "matchesPerName": 1
}

registration_status plus next_renewal_date tell you whether a counterparty's LEI is ISSUED, LAPSED or RETIRED — a standing check worth scheduling for a regulated book.

Resolve names and LEIs in the same run

{
  "legalNames": ["Anthropic PBC"],
  "leis": ["HWUPKR0MPOU8FGXBT394"],
  "matchesPerName": 5
}

Mixed input is fine. Direct LEI lookups run first, name searches second, and the shared dedupe set means an entity reached both ways appears once.

What data does the GLEIF lookup return

{
  "lei": "HWUPKR0MPOU8FGXBT394",
  "legal_name": "APPLE INC.",
  "other_names": ["Apple Computer, Inc."],
  "legal_form_code": "XTIQ",
  "category": "GENERAL",
  "status": "ACTIVE",
  "jurisdiction": "US-CA",
  "legal_address": "ONE APPLE PARK WAY, CUPERTINO, CA, US, 95014",
  "legal_country": "US",
  "hq_address": "ONE APPLE PARK WAY, CUPERTINO, CA, US, 95014",
  "hq_country": "US",
  "registration_status": "ISSUED",
  "initial_registration_date": "2012-06-06",
  "last_update_date": "2026-04-18",
  "next_renewal_date": "2027-04-18",
  "managing_lou": "EVK05KS7XY1DEII3R011",
  "bic": ["APLEUS66XXX"],
  "scraped_at": "2026-08-01T11:00:00.000Z"
}

Field group	Fields
Identity	lei, legal_name, other_names[]
Classification	legal_form_code, category, status, jurisdiction
Addresses	legal_address, legal_country, hq_address, hq_country
Registration	registration_status, initial_registration_date, last_update_date, next_renewal_date, managing_lou
Banking	bic[]
Provenance	scraped_at

Fields GLEIF does not publish for an entity are omitted from that row. Nothing is inferred or filled in from another registry.

How the lookup works without an API key

GLEIF publishes the full Global LEI Index as a free, open JSON:API. This Actor calls api.gleif.org/api/v1/lei-records with a 250 ms pause between requests, retries 429 and 5xx with a capped backoff, and normalises each record into a flat row. Null values are stripped before the push, because Apify's dataset schema rejects a null in a declared string field — a real bug this Actor hit in July 2026 and fixed.

What can you build with LEI data

KYB and onboarding. Resolve a counterparty name to a canonical legal entity with jurisdiction, status and address before you open an account.

AML and sanctions screening prep. LEI plus registered legal name is a far better screening key than a trade name.

Entity resolution. Join messy internal company names to a stable global identifier and carry other_names[] for future matching.

Regulatory reporting. EMIR, MiFID II and SFTR reporting all require counterparty LEIs; registration_status tells you which ones will fail validation.

How much does it cost to look up LEIs

Pay per record delivered: $0.005 on the Apify Free plan, $0.0025 on Gold and above. Names with no GLEIF match and LEIs that do not resolve are emitted as labelled rows and are not charged as records.

How do I use GLEIF data in Claude or ChatGPT

https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=themineworks/gleif-lei-lookup

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: 'YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN' });

const run = await client.actor('themineworks/gleif-lei-lookup').call({
  legalNames: ['Apple Inc.'],
  matchesPerName: 3,
});

const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();

GLEIF LEI lookup FAQ

What is an LEI? A 20-character ISO 17442 identifier for a legally distinct entity that participates in financial transactions. It is issued by a Local Operating Unit and maintained in GLEIF's global index.

Do I need an API key? No. GLEIF's API is free and open.

Why did my company name return no match? GLEIF matches on the registered legal name, not the trade name. Try the full legal form (Volkswagen AG, not VW), and raise matchesPerName.

What does registration_status mean? ISSUED is live, LAPSED means the annual renewal was missed, RETIRED means the entity no longer exists as registered.

Is bic always present? No. GLEIF only carries BIC where an ISO 9362 mapping exists, which is mostly financial institutions.

Complete your KYB and compliance pipeline

• EU VAT Checker (VIES) — validate the entity's EU VAT registration against the official VIES service.
• Company KYB Resolver — one call that returns LEI and SEC EDGAR CIK together.

Found a bug or want a field added? Open an issue on the Actor's Apify Console page.

Related guides

• GLEIF LEI Lookup API: Resolve Legal Entity Identifiers Without an API Key

Last verified: 2026-08