Companies House Direct vs Paid Resellers: A UK Compliance Buyer's Comparison

Quick verdict

Companies House is free, authoritative, and, following the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023 (ECCTA), getting better. For most one-off identity checks (confirming a company exists, reading its registered officers, verifying its address), the free portal or free API does the job. Paid resellers (Endole, Company Check powered by Experian, Beauhurst, Creditsafe) earn their cost when you need enrichment the register does not carry: credit scores, CCJ data, trade-payment behaviour, insolvency monitoring, historical financial analytics, or bulk API access beyond the 600-requests-per-5-minutes free limit. The decision is not binary. Most mature compliance stacks run Companies House as the free foundation layer and layer a paid reseller on top for the signals Companies House cannot generate. Details below.

Companies House: what you get for free

Companies House holds the official register for England and Wales, Scotland (Companies House Scotland office), and Northern Ireland (Companies Registry). As of 2025, it holds records for over 5 million active and dissolved entities.

What the free portal gives you. Every UK-registered company’s name, registration number, incorporation date, registered office address, company type, and status (active, dissolved, in administration, etc.) are visible without creating an account. Officers (directors, secretaries) are listed with appointment and resignation dates, and address information (partial, for privacy). Charges (mortgages and fixed or floating charges) are listed. Confirmation statements and annual accounts (where filed) are in the filing history. The PSC register records People with Significant Control: any individual or entity holding more than 25% of shares, voting rights, or appointment rights, or otherwise exercising significant influence.

The free API. The Companies House Public Data API is free after developer registration. It covers company search, company profile, officers, PSC filings, charges, insolvency cases, filing history, and document metadata. Rate limit is 600 requests per five-minute window. Bulk data downloads (full company snapshots updated regularly) are also free, covering company profiles and PSC data, which is valuable for teams building their own internal database.

What changed with ECCTA. The Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023 mandated identity verification for all new directors and PSCs from 18 November 2025, with a 12-month transition for existing individuals. This means that by late 2026, director and PSC data on the register will be systematically verified using government-issued photo ID through GOV.UK One Login or an Authorised Corporate Service Provider (ACSP). Companies House now also has enhanced querying powers to cross-reference filing data, and it can reject filings it considers inconsistent. For compliance buyers, ECCTA materially improves data quality on the register as the transition completes, at no cost to the buyer.

What the register does not give you. No credit score. No CCJ (County Court Judgment) data. No trade-payment behaviour. No Gazette insolvency notices integrated into the company record (you have to check the Gazette separately). No monitoring or alerting: the Companies House email alerts service notifies on specific company filing events but is not a risk-monitoring product. Accounts are lodged in PDF, often as scanned images, and are not machine-readable structured data. PSC entries frequently point to a corporate controller (another company) rather than to the natural person ultimately in control, leaving a gap that no Companies House query can close for complex holding structures.

Paid resellers: what they add

Several categories of paid supplier build on Companies House data. They differ in what they add and for whom.

Endole

Endole is a UK business intelligence platform that aggregates Companies House filings with credit scores, ten years of financial account history, CCJ data, charge data, director networks, and group structure information. Pricing is GBP 39 (USD 49) per month (no contract, cancel anytime) or GBP 25 (USD 31) per month billed annually as GBP 300 (USD 379) per year; both tiers give unlimited company and director searches, unlimited reports, and CSV export. The annual plan gives 15,000 row exports per year versus 1,000 per month on the monthly plan. API access is available at premium data rates of GBP 0.60 to GBP 3.00 (USD 0.76 to USD 3.79) per response, with a free tier. Endole is positioned at developers and small to mid-sized teams that need enriched UK company data without a full enterprise contract.

What Endole adds over Companies House: a proprietary credit score and credit limit recommendation, CCJ and charge history formatted for quick review, the director network graph (showing all other companies a director is connected to), and financial trend analysis from filed accounts. Endole does not provide the depth of trade-payment behaviour data that a credit bureau like Creditsafe or Experian provides, nor does it cover monitoring at the same sophistication level.

Company Check (Experian Business Express white-label)

Company Check (companycheck.co.uk) is a long-running UK portal that resurfaces Companies House data in a cleaner interface, with basic credit scores and filing history. The service has historically been the accessible entry point for smaller buyers doing occasional checks. Since Experian acquired and integrated the Business Express platform, the Company Check brand [VERIFY: confirm current ownership and product relationship between Company Check and Experian Business Express] may co-exist with Experian’s own direct-to-buyer channel. Per-report pricing at the self-serve tier is typically in the GBP 5 to GBP 25 (USD 6 to USD 31) range depending on report depth.

Beauhurst

Beauhurst takes a different approach: it tracks growth-stage and private UK companies using data from Companies House, HMRC equity investment disclosures, patent offices, media, and equity crowdfunding platforms. Coverage extends to approximately 13 million UK companies (compared to roughly 5 million active entities on Companies House alone). Beauhurst’s value proposition is equity and investment intelligence: it tracks funding rounds, investor networks, and high-growth company profiles that are invisible in a standard credit bureau report. Pricing is enterprise-only and not publicly disclosed.

Creditsafe (as reseller plus bureau)

Creditsafe sits above the pure-reseller tier because it operates its own bureau database. But for the reseller comparison: at its entry level, Creditsafe gives a credit score, credit limit, CCJ data, and Gazette monitoring on top of the Companies House foundation. It is effectively an enriched reseller at the lower tiers and becomes a full bureau product at higher tiers where trade-payment data and compliance modules are switched on.

The ECCTA shift and data quality

One thing often missed in reseller comparisons: the ECCTA identity verification mandate applies equally to Companies House’s base data. When a director or PSC is verified via GOV.UK One Login or an ACSP, Companies House records the verification status. Paid resellers that source from Companies House will benefit from this cleaner base data automatically. However, resellers that add credit or trade-payment data sourced from their own contributor networks are not affected by ECCTA; that data quality is a function of their contributor base, not the register.

API depth comparison

The Companies House free API returns structured JSON for company profiles, officer lists, PSC lists, charges, insolvency, and filing history. Rate limit: 600 requests per five minutes. No per-call cost. No SLA beyond what GOV.UK publishes. Endole’s API covers over 100 data points per company and is priced at GBP 0.60 to GBP 3.00 (USD 0.76 to USD 3.79) per response at the premium data tier, with a free tier. Creditsafe’s API is subscription-priced and covers credit score, monitoring webhooks, and compliance data beyond what Companies House exposes. Experian Business Express offers an API for enterprise buyers on custom contract.

For a developer building a production lookup: the Companies House API is excellent for identity verification and officer lookup at low to moderate volume. At higher volume or when credit data is needed, Endole’s API is a practical mid-tier. For bank-grade SLA and the full credit bureau data set, Creditsafe or Experian enterprise is the appropriate tier.

Pricing comparison

UBO and PSC depth

This is where the Companies House vs reseller debate has a firm answer: neither side gives you multi-hop UBO.

Companies House PSC data covers the direct layer. If the PSC of a UK company is another company (domestic or foreign), the trail stops at that entity. ECCTA has not changed this: the identity verification mandate applies to natural persons, not to corporate PSC entries. For buyers doing enhanced due diligence under the Money Laundering Regulations 2017, tracing to the ultimate natural person behind a complex structure requires cross-jurisdictional data that neither Companies House nor the domestic resellers provide. That is the territory of global platforms: Experian’s global graph, D&B’s DUNS-linked entity network, or FAME/Orbis from Moody’s Analytics.

Paid UK resellers (Endole, Company Check) surface the same first-hop PSC data from Companies House, sometimes reformatted into a director network graph. They do not add UBO depth for international structures. For a UK subsidiary of a US or Cayman parent, the PSC entry pointing to the foreign parent is as far as these tools take you.

Compliance posture

Companies House data is public record: you do not need a data processing agreement with Companies House to use the register data for compliance purposes, though you remain a data controller under UK GDPR for how you handle personal data (director names, addresses) downstream. Paid resellers are data processors or independent data controllers depending on the contract structure; review the data processing agreement before using reseller data for regulated KYC decisions.

For buyers subject to the MLRs, the quality of the data source matters for demonstrating reasonable steps in a regulatory examination. Companies House direct data is unimpeachable as the official source. Paid resellers add enrichment and convenience but are derived sources; the auditor may ask how you verified the enrichment against the primary record. A hybrid approach, Companies House for the official document and a bureau for the enrichment signals, is the most defensible model.

Best-fit buyer profiles

Companies House direct only: sole practitioners, small legal firms, or consultants doing fewer than five entity checks per month where the identity check (does this company exist, who are its directors) is all that is needed. Foreign buyers doing a first-pass pre-LOI check on a UK target. Developers integrating company lookup into an onboarding product where the free API rate limits are sufficient.

Companies House plus Endole: small to mid-sized credit controllers, compliance teams, and procurement offices doing 5 to 200 checks per month who need credit scores, CCJ history, and the director network graph without entering a credit bureau contract. At GBP 39 (USD 49) per month, Endole gives unlimited searches that would cost multiples on a per-report bureau model.

Companies House plus Creditsafe or Experian: regulated lenders, AML compliance functions, and any buyer that needs FCA-licensed bureau data for credit decisions, monitoring at portfolio scale, or documented audit trails for regulatory examination.

Beauhurst: growth-stage investors, corporate development teams, and commercial intelligence teams that need investment round history, equity ownership, and high-growth company tracking rather than credit risk signals.

Comparison matrix

What businessdataguide does

businessdataguide is an editorial publication for B2B compliance data buyers. We compare suppliers without being paid by either side to favour a particular option. We are a publisher, not a vendor and not a data redistributor. For the official Companies House search walkthrough, see the UK company search guide.

Frequently asked questions

Is Companies House sufficient for AML KYC in a regulated firm?

For identity verification (confirming a company is registered and who its officers are), yes. For credit risk assessment, insolvency monitoring, PEPs and sanctions screening, the register alone is not sufficient. Regulated firms under the Money Laundering Regulations 2017 need a documented process that includes credit bureau data, sanctions screening, and ongoing monitoring. Companies House is the foundation; the bureau and compliance layers sit on top.

Does Endole have an API?

Yes. Endole publishes an API at endole.co.uk/developers with per-call pricing at GBP 0.60 to GBP 3.00 (USD 0.76 to USD 3.79) for premium data, plus a free tier. The API covers company profiles, director data, credit scores, financial history, and CCJ data.

Can I use Companies House bulk data for commercial purposes?

Yes. Companies House publishes bulk data under the Open Government Licence, which permits commercial use. The bulk download includes company profiles, officer data, and PSC data. However, you cannot redistribute raw registry data commercially in a way that could be confused with an official Companies House product, and personal data in the bulk download (director addresses, PSC home addresses) must be handled in accordance with UK GDPR.

What is the difference between a CCJ and an insolvency notice?

A County Court Judgment (CCJ) is issued by a county court when a company fails to repay a debt; it is a warning signal for payment risk. An insolvency notice (filed in The Gazette) records a formal insolvency event: administration, receivership, voluntary or compulsory liquidation, winding-up orders. Both are risk signals, but at different severity levels. Commercial bureaus like Creditsafe and Experian integrate both. Companies House records the formal insolvency status (in administration, wound up) in the company record but does not integrate CCJ data.

Are free tier data points from Companies House real-time?

Filing events appear on Companies House as soon as they are processed. Electronic filings process within 24 hours in most cases. However, companies file accounts with a lag (small companies can file up to nine months after year-end). The register reflects what has been filed, which means director changes not yet filed will not appear until the next confirmation statement or filing is made.