Sign up

Free tool

Free UK company check: search Companies House by name or number

Type a UK company name or a Companies House number and get the company from the register: name, number, type, status, incorporation date, registered-office town and SIC activity, live. The format of a number is checked first, including the Scottish, Northern Irish and LLP prefixes.

Updated 6 November 2026

The same lookup with curl
curl "https://api.prometiam.com/functions/v1/risk-api/companies/search?company_number=00445790&country=GB" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer rk_live_your_api_key"

What the check shows

  • Status: as the register states it, including an active company with a strike-off proposal pending, and a dissolved one.
  • Company number and type: the eight-character number and the legal form (private limited company, PLC, LLP and so on).
  • Incorporation date: when the company was formed, so you can see how young a counterparty is.
  • Registered-office town: the town of the registered office, to compare with the address you were given.
  • SIC activity: the standard industrial classification the company declared.

What to look for when you check a UK company

  • Is it active? Active means the company is on the register and not dissolved. Dissolved means it no longer exists as a company. Active with a strike-off proposal pending means Companies House has started to strike it off, usually because filings are missing.
  • How old is it? A company incorporated last month with large commitments is worth a second look. Age is a prompt for questions, not a verdict.
  • Do the address and activity fit? The registered office is where the company is served documents, not necessarily where it trades. Compare the town and the SIC activity with what the company told you.
  • Who runs it and who owns it? Officers and persons with significant control (PSC) are on the company record, not in this free check. With an API key they come back as appointments, and a PSC is flagged is_beneficial_owner.
  • Are the accounts up to date? The record carries the next accounts and confirmation-statement due dates, and an accounts_overdue flag when accounts are late. A strike_off_proposed flag marks a pending strike-off.
  • Is there an insolvency notice? The United Kingdom is one of the sixteen insolvency markets of the API (FR, DE, GB, AT, CH, NO, FI, US, NL, DK, HR, SE, ES, LV, EE, SG), corporate notices only, taken from the Gazette. An empty result means no notice was found, not that the company is solvent.

This check reads the register; it is not a credit report. The API serves no credit scores and no share capital for UK companies, and monitors UK companies (status change, dissolution, sanctions matches and corporate events (Companies House filings and Gazette notices)). Companies House itself states that it does not check the accuracy of the information filed, so a clean record shows what was filed, not that it is true. Searching officers by name and reading corporate events need a Starter plan or above; a trial key has 25 calls a month on each.

Search by name or by number

The lookup sends the name or number to the Prometiam API, which holds the Companies House register, and returns up to five matches. A number is matched exactly, leading zeros included; anything else runs as a name search, which is partial and ignores case and punctuation.

The officers, persons with significant control, filings, corporate events and insolvency notices behind a company are one call away with a free trial key — 500 credits over 14 days, card required, nothing charged for 14 days.

How a company number is built

A UK company number is eight characters and it carries no check digit. Companies incorporated in England and Wales get eight digits, padded with leading zeros — Tesco is 00445790, and the zeros are part of the number. A Scottish company starts with SC, a Northern Irish one with NI, and six digits follow.

Other prefixes name other kinds of entity: OC, SO and NC for limited liability partnerships, FC for an overseas company with a UK establishment, IP and RS for societies, CE for a charitable incorporated organisation. The validator accepts the real prefixes and rejects the rest, which is the only check the number allows.

FAQ

Is this the same as the Companies House search?
It reads the same register, through the Prometiam API, and shows the headline fields of a company in one card. The official service at find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk searches by company name, number or officer name and also lets you view document images and filings. This check is for a quick status read and for seeing what the API returns before you build on it.

How do I check that a UK company is real?
Search its name or number, confirm the status is active and that the number, incorporation date, town and activity match what the company gave you. A register entry shows that the company exists and what it filed; it does not show that the company is creditworthy or that the filed information is accurate.

Do I need the leading zeros?
Yes for the lookup: 445790 and 00445790 are different strings and the register holds the eight-character form. The tool pads a bare number for you before searching.

Is the company number the same as the VAT or UTR number?
No. The company number is issued by Companies House at incorporation; the VAT number comes from HMRC on registration and the UTR is the tax reference. Only the company number is on the public register.

Can I do this in code?
Yes: GET /companies/search?company_number=00445790&country=GB with an API key returns the same record as JSON; the free trial covers 500 credits over 14 days, card required, nothing charged for 14 days.