Corporations Canada search vs a company data API

Corporations Canada is the authoritative source for federal corporations and has its own search tool and an API. A company data API does something different: the same data in the same shape as other countries, with lookup, batch and alerts built in.

What Corporations Canada gives you

Corporations Canada, within Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, runs the Federal Corporation Search, a screen where a person finds a corporation by name, corporation number or Business Number and sees its details. It also lists a Federal Corporation API on the government API Store, which takes a corporation number or a 9-digit Business Number and returns the corporation in real time; the API Store needs an account. If you need the register itself, certified documents or the live record, this is the authority.

What a company data API adds

• One shape. The Canadian record comes back in the same fields as every other country, so your onboarding or KYB code is written once.
• Name search and autocomplete. name= is a normalized partial match ranked by score, for a type-ahead field.
• Batch. POST /companies/lookup resolves up to 100 corporations per call.
• Both identifiers. company_number= for the corporation number and business_number= for the BN.
• Change alerts. POST /monitor sends a webhook when a corporation's status, name, legal form or registered address changes.

	Corporations Canada	Prometiam API
Source of truth	Yes, the register	Corporations Canada open data, adapted by Prometiam; not an official extract
Lookup	By name, corporation number, Business Number	name=, company_number=, business_number=
Many at once	One at a time	Up to 100 per call
Alerts	No	Webhooks through POST /monitor
Other countries	No	27 countries in one schema
Freshness	Live	Read daily

Shared limits, and where the API is narrower

Both routes cover federal corporations only: neither includes provincial or territorial companies (Quebec REQ, Ontario, British Columbia, Alberta and the others). The API is also narrower than the federal source. It serves corporations under the Canada Business Corporations Act (CBCA) and the Canada Cooperatives Act, plus the historic federal forms that remain on the register; not-for-profit corporations and other federal bodies are left out, and the record has no directors, activity code, share capital or insolvency notices. The Federal Corporation API on the API Store and the government search remain the place for those.

Which to use

Use Corporations Canada when you need the official record or a document, or if you only look up the odd corporation and are happy with its screen. Use the API when a form, a supplier file or a nightly job needs the answer in code, with many at a time, a name search and a notification when a corporation is dissolved or amalgamated.

Canada is included in every plan at no upcharge. The 14-day free trial includes 500 credits, needs a card and charges nothing; Starter (EUR 9.99 a month, 1,000 credits) follows unless you cancel. A company record costs 1 credit; an error response costs nothing. See pricing for the plans.

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Contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence – Canada (Corporations Canada, Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada)