UK Company Check — Companies House Register & Financials

Give this Actor a list of UK companies — by company number or name — and it returns one row per entry, including the ones that were not found. Every row is built from the official Companies House Public Data API and the Companies House Document API:

• status — active, liquidation, administration, receivership, voluntary arrangement, dissolved — and the proposal to strike off published in the Gazette;
• filing deadlines: accounts and confirmation statement, with the register's own overdue markers;
• insolvency cases with type, dates and insolvency practitioners;
• charges (mortgages, debentures): how many are outstanding and who holds the latest ones;
• current directors and persons with significant control (beneficial owners), with the nature of their control;
• balance sheet figures from the latest accounts filed electronically: equity, net assets, current and fixed assets, cash, creditors, employees — and turnover and profit where the company filed them — for the latest period and the one before.

No scraping, no proxy, no browser. No API key needed — the Actor brings its own.

Built for supplier and customer onboarding (KYB), credit and collections teams who need to know whether a counterparty is still trading, and periodic re-checks of a customer or supplier book.

What you get per entry

Field	Example
query, queryType	445790, companyNumber
found, status, statusDetail	true, active · liquidation · administration · dissolved · … · not_found; active-proposal-to-strike-off
riskFlags, riskDetails	["proposal_to_strike_off", "accounts_overdue"], with dates, cases and charge holders
companyNumber, name	00445790, TESCO PLC
companyType, jurisdiction	{"code": "plc", "description": "Public limited company"}, england-wales
incorporatedOn, ceasedOn	1947-11-27, null
registeredOffice	street, town, region, postcode, one-line form
industry, sicCodes	SIC 2007 code and description
previousNames	with the dates each name was used
accounts	last made up to, type, next due, overdue
confirmationStatement	last made up to, next due, overdue
officers	active and resigned counts, active directors, resignations in the last 12 months, current officers with role, appointment date, nationality and country of residence
personsWithSignificantControl	current PSCs: individuals and corporate entities, nature of control, registration number of corporate PSCs
charges	total, outstanding, satisfied; the latest outstanding charges with persons entitled
insolvencyCases	type, dates (wound-up-on, administration-started-on, …), practitioners
accountsDocument	made up to, filed on, accounts type, machineReadable
financials, financialHistory	balance sheet figures of the latest period and the one before, with currency
nameMatch, matchedName, matchedNameType, matchRank	for name queries: exact · exact_without_legal_form · all_words; current or former name
url, note, warnings, checkedAt, error	link to the Companies House page; plain-language explanations; error text for rows that could not be checked

Risk flags

Flag	Meaning
liquidation, administration, receivership, voluntary_arrangement, insolvency_proceedings	the company's status at Companies House
dissolved	dissolved, closed or removed (since)
proposal_to_strike_off	the registrar has published a first Gazette notice — the company will be struck off unless the notice is withdrawn or objected to
accounts_overdue, confirmation_statement_overdue	the register marks the filing as overdue (active companies)
insolvency_history	the company has insolvency cases on the register, current or past
outstanding_charges	registered charges that are not satisfied
negative_equity	equity (or net assets) below zero in the latest machine-readable accounts
no_active_directors	an active company without a current director or member
undeliverable_registered_office, registered_office_in_dispute	flags of the register on the registered office address
registrar_annotation	a notice by the registrar on the company, e.g. a strike-off for false information
incorporated_last_12_months, name_changed_last_12_months	young company, recent change of name
dormant_accounts	the latest accounts were filed as dormant

Input

{
  "companies": [
    "00445790",
    "SC045551",
    "Rolls-Royce Holdings plc"
  ],
  "maxMatchesPerName": 1,
  "includeOfficers": true,
  "includePSC": true,
  "includeFinancials": true
}

Option	Default	Meaning
companies	—	Company numbers or names; also {"companyNumber": …} or {"name": …}
maxMatchesPerName	1	Rows per name query, best match first (1–10)
includeOfficers	true	Current officers and resignations in the last 12 months
includePSC	true	Current persons with significant control
includeFinancials	true	Figures from the latest machine-readable accounts
includeRawRecord	false	The untouched Companies House JSON under raw
apiKey	—	Optional: your own free Companies House key, for your own rate limit

00445790, 445790 and SC45551 all work — missing leading zeros are added. UK VAT numbers are recognised and returned as an error row: they are not linked to the Companies House register. Duplicates in your list are checked once.

Name queries are matched strictly. The register's search is a relevance search and always returns something. This Actor only accepts a company whose name — or a former name the search matched on — contains every word of your query, ranks exact matches and active companies first, and says how it matched. If nothing qualifies, the row is not_found and note lists the closest names the register suggested.

Speed

Companies House allows 600 requests per five minutes per API key. A company takes one request for its profile plus one each for officers, PSCs, charges, insolvency and accounts where they exist — about five for an active limited company. The Actor spaces its requests to stay under the limit and pauses on its own if the limit is reached, so a run never fails because of it.

Measured 12 October 2026: 100 active limited companies in under five minutes (293 seconds, 527 requests), with officers, PSCs, charges and accounts — plan roughly 50 minutes for 1,000 companies. Checking very large lists? Enter your own free key under apiKey to get your own limit.

Limits, honestly

• Figures only from machine-readable accounts. Most small and micro companies file their accounts electronically (iXBRL); large companies and groups usually file PDF documents, which carry no machine-readable figures. accountsDocument.machineReadable says which case applies; the filing dates are always there. In a test run of 100 randomly picked active limited companies, 88 had machine-readable accounts (83 with the previous period as well); of 45 companies in liquidation or administration, 37.
• Small companies rarely publish a profit and loss account. UK law lets them file a balance sheet only, so turnover and profit are usually empty — in 8,329 accounts filed on one day, about 2 % contained them.
• Figures are as filed. The Actor reads the tagged values of the filing; it does not correct them.
• Officers carry no dates of birth or addresses. The register publishes month and year of birth and service addresses; this Actor leaves them out.
• This is not a credit report. It states what the register says on the day you ask.

Personal data

Names, nationalities and countries of residence of directors and persons with significant control are published by Companies House on its public register. If you store them, you are the controller for that copy — keep only what your purpose needs.

Pricing

Pay per event:

Event	What it covers
actor-start	once per run
company-check	one company row — including "not found"

Rows with an error are free: an invalid company number or a source that did not answer is never billed. Officers, PSCs, charges, insolvency cases and financial figures are included in the company price. A spending limit you set on the run is respected — the run stops cleanly when it is reached.

Source

Public register information from Companies House, retrieved through the Companies House Public Data API and Document API. This Actor is not affiliated with Companies House.

Related Actors

• Norway Company Check — the same list check for Norwegian companies: Brønnøysund registers, roles and annual accounts.
• Finland Company Check — the same list check for Finnish companies: PRH/YTJ status, registered loss of share capital, tax registers and digital financial statements.
• Poland Company Check — the same list check for Polish companies: KRS court register and VAT white list, with bank account verification.
• German Insolvency & Bankruptcy Check — a list of names against the official German insolvency register, one row per name, found or not.

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