Companies House Bulk Data: UK Companies + Monthly Changes

Every month, find out which UK companies are new, which have gone from the register (dissolved or struck off), and which have changed. Tracked changes: status, name, SIC codes, registered office, and overdue accounts or confirmation statements. Each change comes with its old and new values. You can also take a snapshot of all live companies that match your filters.

All data comes from the official Companies House Free Company Data Product, the monthly bulk file of every live company on the UK register. No logins, no scraping of the Companies House website, and organisation data only: no officers, no persons with significant control, no "care of" names.

Two modes

Mode	What you get	Use it for
changes	One record per new, gone or changed company since your previous run with the same filters	Monthly monitoring: new competitors in your SIC code, companies going into liquidation in your area, moved registered offices, overdue filings
snapshot (default)	One record per live company that matches the filters	A full list to start from, e.g. all active IT companies in Manchester

How the change feed works

• The Actor keeps a small state per filter set in your account (a named key-value store). Each run compares the current monthly file with that state.
• The first run with a new filter set only builds the baseline. It cannot know what changed before it existed, so as "new" it reports only the companies incorporated between Incorporated from and Incorporated to (default: the last 31 days). Real change records (gone / changed) start from the next monthly file.
• Companies House publishes the file once a month (within 5 working days after the month ends). A run with no new file since the last one returns 0 records and says so in the bulk file report. A monthly schedule (e.g. on the 8th) is enough.
• A company that stops matching your filters (e.g. it leaves status Active) is reported once as changed, then it is no longer tracked. A company that newly matches (e.g. it adds your SIC code) is reported as new.
• Use Only new since last run with the change feed. If a run stops early (Max results or your maximum cost per run), it does not move the state forward. The next run compares the same months again and delivers only what you have not received yet. The first (baseline) run is the exception: it always reads the whole file and saves the baseline, even when it stops delivering early.
• Limit: changes mode tracks up to ~380,000 companies per filter set at the default 1 GB memory (~160,000 at 512 MB, ~1.6 million at 4 GB). That is enough for all IT companies (SIC 62, ~340,000). The whole register (~5.7 million) is too big. Narrow it by SIC code, postcode, status or type, or give the run more memory.

Filters (both modes)

Input	Example	Meaning
sicPrefixes	["62", "6311"]	at least one SIC code starts with one of these
postcodePrefixes	["M1", "SW1A", "E1 "]	registered office postcode starts with it, spaces ignored. A trailing space means an exact outward code ("E1 " = E1, not E14)
companyStatus	["Active", "Liquidation"]	exact status, case-insensitive
companyCategory	["Private Limited Company"]	exact company type, case-insensitive
dateFrom, dateTo	"2026-10-01"	incorporation date range (only when you set them)
keywords	["software"]	company name contains one of these words
maxItems	50	stop after this many results (form default 50, without a value 1000)
onlyNew	true	skip records you already received in earlier runs

Output

Change record (mode changes)

{
  "id": "01895499:2026-11-01:changed",
  "record_type": "change",
  "change_type": "changed",
  "company_number": "01895499",
  "company_name": "AIRTEL LIMITED",
  "company_status": "Active",
  "company_category": "Private Limited Company",
  "incorporation_date": "1985-03-14",
  "postcode": "SS7 1AR",
  "sic_codes": ["61100 - Wired telecommunications activities", "62020 - Information technology consultancy activities"],
  "changed_fields": ["company_status"],
  "old": {"company_status": "Active - Proposal to Strike off"},
  "new": {"company_status": "Active"},
  "company_url": "https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/01895499",
  "file_date": "2026-11-01",
  "previous_file_date": "2026-10-01",
  "licence": "Companies House public register information (no reuse conditions)",
  "attribution": "Source: Companies House, Free Company Data Product (https://download.companieshouse.gov.uk/en_output.html). Companies House imposes no rules on the use of public register information."
}

(Example from a local test; the old status was edited in the test state to show a change.)

Field	Meaning
change_type	new, gone or changed
changed_fields	for changed: any of company_name, company_status, sic_codes, registered_office, accounts_overdue, confirmation_statement_overdue
old, new	old and new values of the changed fields. new: old is null and new holds the tracked fields. gone: old holds the last known values and new is null
file_date, previous_file_date	the two monthly files compared
id	company number + file date + change type (stable, used by Only new)

Company record (mode snapshot)

company_number, company_name, company_status, company_category, country_of_origin, incorporation_date, dissolution_date, registered_office (PO box, address lines, town, county, country, postcode), sic_codes (code + description) and sic (codes only), accounts (reference day/month, next due, last made up, category), accounts_overdue, confirmation_statement (next due, last made up), confirmation_statement_overdue, returns, mortgages (counts of charges), limited_partnership (partner counts only), previous_names (date + name), uri, company_url, file_date, plus licence, licence_url, attribution. *_overdue = the next due date is before the file date.

Each run also writes two reports to the run's key-value store. RUN_REPORT holds the requests, records and success rate. CH_BULK_REPORT holds the file date, rows, seconds and memory per part file, whether the run was a baseline or a compare, and any error.

Coverage and limits

• Live companies only (the bulk file does not list dissolved companies). That is why a dissolved company shows up as gone. The exact reason (dissolved, struck off, converted) is not in the file.
• Monthly data, as of the end of the previous month. For real-time status, check the company_url.
• "Care of" / "for the attention of" text (C/O, FAO, ATTN) and names after a personal title (MR, MRS, MS, MISS, MESSRS, DR) are cut from the registered office address lines, because they can name a person. This affects ~3% of companies. When the whole line was such text, the line is empty.
• No officers, PSC, filing history or accounts figures. They are not in the bulk file, and officers/PSC are personal data that we don't collect.
• Each run downloads the monthly file (7 parts of ~70 MB) from Companies House, one part at a time, and reads it row by row. A full run takes several minutes, mostly reading the file.

Cost

Pay per result:

• $0.003 per change record (change)
• $0.0015 per company record (company)

Examples: 50 companies = $0.075; 10,000 companies = $15; 1,000 changes = $3. Platform usage for reading the file is on us. Set Max results or a maximum cost per run to cap what you pay.

Monthly change alert in 3 steps

1. Pick mode changes and set your filters (e.g. sicPrefixes: ["62"], postcodePrefixes: ["M1"]).
2. Turn on Only new since last run and run it once: this builds the baseline.
3. Add a monthly Schedule in Apify Console (e.g. on the 8th). Each run then delivers that month's new, gone and changed companies. Send them on with an Apify integration (e.g. email, Slack, Google Sheets, Make, Zapier) or a webhook.

FAQ

Do I need a Companies House API key? No. The Actor reads the public monthly bulk file.

How fresh is the data? Monthly, as of the end of the previous month (the Companies House file date is in every record). It is not a real-time feed.

How long does a run take? A quick test (form defaults, 50 results) takes about 20 seconds. A full pass over the file takes several minutes.

Are directors or owners included? No. Officers and persons with significant control are personal data and are not collected.

Why is my first changes run small? It builds the baseline. Real gone / changed records start with the next monthly file (see How the change feed works).

Can I use it from code or an AI agent? Yes: through the Apify API and client libraries (Python, JavaScript), or as a tool for AI agents through the Apify MCP server.

Attribution and licence

Companies House register information is public. Companies House states that it "imposes no rules or requirements on how the information on the public register is used". Every record carries: Source: Companies House, Free Company Data Product (https://download.companieshouse.gov.uk/en_output.html). Companies House imposes no rules on the use of public register information.

Not affiliated with or endorsed by Companies House or the UK Government.