UK Company Data Suppliers: An Editorial Buyer's Guide

The buyer market in the UK

Anyone running compliance, lending, or M&A work against UK entities eventually hits the same question: which supplier should I source company data from? The buyers are varied. Banks and regulated lenders need credit signals layered over the official register. Anti-money-laundering platforms and fund administrators want consistent KYC inputs that hold up to FCA scrutiny. Law firms and in-house counsel need clean Companies House extracts for transactions, litigation, or board-level work. Foreign counterparties running due diligence on a UK target want a single view that stitches the companies register to credit, insolvency, and beneficial ownership data.

The regulatory drivers are clear. The Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 and the Terrorism Act 2000 underpin criminal liability for money laundering and terrorist financing. The Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing and Transfer of Funds (Information on the Payer) Regulations 2017 (MLRs), as amended to 2023, set the customer due diligence standard for regulated firms. The Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023 (ECCTA) has materially changed how Companies House operates: identity verification for directors and People with Significant Control (PSC) became mandatory from 18 November 2025, with a 12-month transition window for existing individuals. The UK GDPR and the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 govern how personal data on directors and beneficial owners can be processed downstream. The FCA regulates the three main consumer credit reference agencies (Experian, Equifax, TransUnion) as well as Creditsafe, each of which holds commercial data alongside its consumer bureau.

Supplier choice matters because the data is not the same. A Companies House search tells you a company is registered. A commercial credit report tells you whether it pays its trade creditors. A risk-monitoring alert tells you when a winding-up petition or County Court Judgment (CCJ) lands. A FAME or Orbis record tells you where the beneficial owners sit across eight layers of corporate structure. The freshness, the API, the pricing model, and the regulatory framing all differ. This guide covers the six categories a UK compliance buyer typically chooses from.

The six supplier categories

The UK market is a stack, not a flat list. At the top is the free official source. Below it are the FCA-licensed credit reference agencies. Below that sit the specialist risk monitors and the enterprise global data platforms. Knowing which layer you need before you contact a supplier saves months of wasted procurement.

1. Companies House direct (Find and update company information)

Companies House is the official registrar for England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. Every limited company, limited liability partnership, and overseas company registered to trade here sits in its books. There is no upstream source more authoritative.

The free search tier gives you company name, registration number, registered office address, filing history, accounts (where lodged), confirmation statements, charges, and details of officers. The PSC register is public: the People with Significant Control data, which records individuals or entities that own or control more than 25% of shares or voting rights, is searchable by company via the main portal and downloadable in bulk via the Companies House data product. Bulk data downloads (full company data snapshots) are available free of charge from the Companies House data download page.

The Companies House API is free after registration. The rate limit is 600 requests per five-minute window (approximately 2 per second). Free, structured, machine-readable access to most company data fields makes Companies House the best starting point for any technical stack. There is no charge per call up to the rate limit; developers requiring higher volume can request increases through the developer portal.

The limits of the free tier are real. ECCTA identity verification means director and PSC data quality is improving through 2025 and 2026, but the register still reflects what companies choose to file, not independently verified ground truth. Accounts are lodged as PDFs, many scanned. There is no credit scoring, no CCJ or insolvency signal, no trade-payment behaviour, and no monitoring feed. PSC data stops at the first registered controller: it does not trace multi-hop beneficial ownership across foreign holdcos, BVI vehicles, or trust structures. The Insolvency Service and The Gazette publish insolvency notices and winding-up orders, both free, but consuming them in production requires a separate integration.

Best-fit buyers: regulated firms and corporates that need the official certified document as part of a KYC file, developers building UK company lookups into product flows, and any buyer starting a due diligence exercise who wants the free baseline before commissioning a paid report.

2. Creditsafe UK

Creditsafe is a private company headquartered in Cardiff, founded in 1997. It is one of the UK’s largest commercial credit reference agencies by customer count, serving over 100,000 businesses globally. It is FCA-regulated (FRN 742313) for consumer credit activities in the UK and claims a database of over 430 million company reports across 200 countries, updated from more than 9,000 sources daily.

Creditsafe’s UK credit report pulls together Companies House filings, CCJs from court records, Gazette insolvency notices, trade-payment behaviour from its contributor network, and a proprietary credit score. The monitoring product pushes daily alerts when a tracked company changes status, files new accounts, receives a CCJ, or has a new charge registered. Its compliance module covers KYC, PEPs and sanctions screening, and AML checks. Creditsafe integrates pre-built with Salesforce, NetSuite, Microsoft Dynamics, SAP, and Sage, which matters for buyers embedding checks into existing credit-approval or onboarding workflows.

Pricing is subscription-led and quote-based; Creditsafe does not publish standard GBP tier prices on its public site. Indicative market data from third-party software reviewers [VERIFY: confirm current pricing with Creditsafe directly] suggests annual contracts typically run from roughly USD 2,500 to USD 15,000 (GBP 2,000 to GBP 12,000) for SME and mid-market buyers depending on volume, geography, and which modules (compliance, monitoring, API) are switched on. Creditsafe positions itself explicitly as more affordable than Experian, which is a useful calibration even if not a precise figure.

Best-fit buyers: UK-focused credit controllers, SME lenders, trade credit teams, and compliance functions wanting a subscription that covers credit, CCJs, insolvency, monitoring, and basic KYC in one platform at a price point below the global enterprise tier.

3. Experian UK (Business)

Experian UK operates as part of the global Experian group, which is listed on the London Stock Exchange (EXPN) and holds FCA authorisation as a credit reference agency. Its UK commercial product line covers Experian Business Express for credit checks on customers and suppliers, My Business Profile for self-monitoring, and a broader enterprise suite covering decisioning analytics, identity, fraud, and the Commercial CAIS (Credit Account Information Sharing) data pool covering over eight million UK businesses.

For self-service buyers, Experian Business Express publishes a per-report price of GBP 24.99 (USD 31) for a one-off UK company credit report. Subscription plans bundle ten reports for approximately GBP 450 (USD 568) per year or twenty for GBP 750 (USD 946) per year [VERIFY: check current Experian Business Express pricing page]. My Business Profile, which lets a business director monitor their own company credit score, runs at GBP 24.99 (USD 31) per month after a two-month free trial.

At the enterprise tier, Experian’s commercial data sits inside platforms like Experian Ascend (integrated in 2026 [VERIFY: see press release May 2026]) and the Aperture data studio. Enterprise pricing is contract-only and not publicly listed. Access to the full CAIS dataset, Delphi scoring, and Mosaic for commercial enrichment is priced in multi-year agreements negotiated through the enterprise sales team.

The differentiating asset for compliance buyers is the global graph: Experian can stitch UK company data to its international entity graph, which matters when the UK target is owned by a foreign holdco. UBO depth from Companies House PSC data is supplemented by Experian’s proprietary cross-jurisdictional ownership enrichment.

Best-fit buyers: regulated lenders using Delphi or CAIS for credit policy decisions, multinationals with UK and international entities who want one supplier relationship across jurisdictions, and any institution already holding an Experian master services agreement at group level.

4. Equifax UK (Commercial)

Equifax UK is the UK arm of the NYSE-listed Equifax group, and is FCA-regulated as a credit reference agency alongside Experian and TransUnion. Its commercial credit product covers business credit reports for UK companies, drawing on the UK Commercial Credit Database (UKCD), which aggregates trade-payment data, court records, and Companies House filings.

Equifax’s UK commercial pricing is not published publicly; all quotes come through direct sales engagement. Based on disclosed US pricing as a reference point, Equifax business report access typically runs from USD 40 (GBP 32) for a one-off to subscription tiers from roughly USD 480 (GBP 380) per year for low-volume plans [VERIFY: contact Equifax UK for current GBP commercial pricing]. Enterprise contracts covering portfolio monitoring, decisioning integration, and the full commercial database are quoted individually.

The distinguishing asset Equifax brings is its Ignite analytics environment and the breadth of its UKCD trade-payment contributor network. For buyers running credit-policy decisioning or portfolio monitoring at scale, Equifax’s commercial scoring models and the depth of its trade-payment contributor network compete directly with Experian’s CAIS. TransUnion is the third FCA-licensed consumer CRA in the UK but has a smaller commercial (business-to-business) data footprint compared to Equifax and Experian.

Best-fit buyers: large trade creditors, invoice financiers, and lenders who want a second credit bureau source alongside Experian to test score correlation, and institutions with existing Equifax consumer bureau relationships who want to extend into commercial data.

5. Red Flag Alert and Company Watch (specialist risk monitors)

Two UK-specific suppliers occupy the risk-monitoring niche with proprietary scoring models that differ from the standard credit bureau approach.

Red Flag Alert is a Manchester-based platform that places companies into clearly defined risk categories (rather than a single numerical score) using its own insolvency-risk methodology. The monitoring product pushes real-time alerts on CCJs, gazette notices, charge registrations, directorship changes, and Companies House filings. The compliance module covers AML, PEPs, sanctions, and adverse media. Red Flag Alert starts at GBP 200 (USD 253) per month [VERIFY: confirm current pricing from Red Flag Alert], with API integrations available for HubSpot, Salesforce, Dynamics, Zoho, and Pipedrive. The platform is particularly used by accountancy practices, legal firms, construction trade creditors, and financial services businesses that want a warning system rather than a one-off credit report.

Company Watch uses three proprietary metrics: the H-Score (a financial health forecast built from filed accounts), the TextScore (which analyses the language of annual report narratives for distress signals), and the Probability of Distress (a percentage-based forward-looking risk measure). The platform offers Bronze, Silver, and Gold subscription tiers with quote-based pricing (not publicly listed); add-ons include Enhanced Due Diligence reports, Vigilance monitoring, and direct BigQuery access for quantitative teams. Company Watch is widely used by credit analysts, procurement risk teams, and analysts who want to interrogate filed financials with a scoring framework rather than rely on a bureau black-box score.

Best-fit buyers for Red Flag Alert: credit controllers, trade finance teams, and AML-compliance functions wanting real-time alert coverage on a portfolio. Best-fit buyers for Company Watch: credit analysts and financial risk teams who want model transparency and the ability to scenario-test filed accounts.

6. Dun and Bradstreet UK and Bureau van Dijk (FAME/Orbis)

Two global enterprise platforms serve the upper end of the UK market with coverage that goes well beyond what Companies House and the domestic bureaus provide.

Dun and Bradstreet (D&B) is the oldest global commercial data provider, holding over 300 million business records worldwide and assigning DUNS (Data Universal Numbering System) numbers as a de facto standard business identifier for procurement, trade credit, and government contracting. The DUNS number is free to claim for a UK company. D&B’s commercial products in the UK include D&B Credit for risk assessment, D&B Finance Analytics for payables and receivables intelligence, and D&B Hoovers for sales prospecting. Enterprise pricing starts at approximately USD 10,000 (GBP 7,900) per year for entry-level plans, with full enterprise bundles typically running USD 25,000 to USD 50,000 (GBP 19,700 to GBP 39,400) per year or more depending on products and volume [VERIFY: current D&B UK pricing from dnb.co.uk or procurement documents]. D&B’s value proposition for UK buyers is the global supply chain risk use case: when a UK buyer needs to assess counterparties across multiple jurisdictions simultaneously, D&B’s consistent DUNS-linked entity resolution is hard to replicate.

Bureau van Dijk (BvD), now a Moody’s Analytics company, produces FAME, the UK and Ireland-specific product within the Orbis family. FAME covers over 21 million UK and Irish companies with detailed financial histories, corporate family trees, M&A activity, and ownership chains. It is the dominant platform in UK academic libraries, investment banking due diligence, and restructuring advisory. Academic institution pricing runs from approximately GBP 31,000 (USD 39,100) per year for up to five named users [VERIFY: current FAME/Orbis pricing from Moody’s or JISC documentation], scaling down per-user as seat count increases. Enterprise commercial pricing is negotiated separately and not published.

Best-fit buyers for D&B: UK procurement teams running global supplier risk, credit teams with multi-jurisdictional portfolios, and buyers where DUNS-number interoperability with existing ERP or government-tender systems matters. Best-fit buyers for FAME/Orbis: M&A advisory, restructuring, academic researchers, and any team that needs deep historical financial profiles and corporate ownership trees rather than just a credit score.

Comparison matrix

How to choose

The choice is not which supplier is best but which layer of the stack you need for the specific use case. Three questions decide it.

First: is the work UK-only or cross-border? UK-only compliance buyers can get very far with Companies House free data plus a single domestic bureau such as Creditsafe or Experian Business Express. The moment the ultimate beneficial owner sits in a foreign jurisdiction (a common pattern: UK operating company owned by a British Virgin Islands or Cayman holdco, or a Luxembourg intermediate), the PSC register tells you who is registered, not who ultimately controls the asset. For cross-border UBO chains, Experian’s global graph, D&B’s global entity resolution, or FAME’s corporate family trees become necessary rather than optional.

Second: what is the volume and workflow integration need? For fewer than 20 checks a month, Experian Business Express pay-per-report (GBP 24.99 / USD 31 each) or Companies House free lookup plus a boutique report from Endole (GBP 39 / USD 49 per month for unlimited searches) covers most needs. For 50 to 500 checks a month, a Creditsafe or Experian subscription with monitoring is cost-effective. Above that, enterprise API contracts with D&B, Experian enterprise, or Equifax commercial start to be the right vehicle, both on unit economics and on the SLA and audit-trail documentation they provide.

Third: is credit scoring or financial risk modelling the primary use case? If the output feeds a credit decision (lending, trade credit, invoice finance), the FCA-licensed CRA tier (Experian, Equifax, Creditsafe) is appropriate, and the choice between them comes down to which scoring model is calibrated for your customer segment. If the output feeds a financial distress early-warning system or a buy-side M&A analysis, Company Watch’s H-Score / PoD or FAME’s financial history extraction may be more directly useful than a generic credit score.

Three personas illustrate the decision. A UK trade creditor managing 300 active customer accounts runs a Creditsafe subscription for daily monitoring on the whole portfolio, pulls Companies House extracts on-demand when a new customer is being added, and escalates to a full FAME profile for any customer above GBP 250,000 (USD 316,000) in exposure. A bank AML team onboarding UK corporates uses Experian or Equifax commercial credit as the bureau layer, Companies House direct for the official PSC register extract, and a PEPs-and-sanctions feed (which Creditsafe or Red Flag Alert can provide) for the sanctions screening layer. A US private equity fund diligencing a UK acquisition pulls a FAME profile for the financial history, a D&B global report for the group structure, and Companies House certified extracts as the source-of-truth documents for the data room.

Regulatory and compliance posture

Three regulatory tracks shape UK data supplier relationships.

UK GDPR and the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025. The Information Commissioner’s Office enforces UK GDPR, which applies to personal data on directors, PSCs, and beneficial owners. The Data (Use and Access) Act 2025, which received Royal Assent on 19 June 2025, introduces a new “recognised legitimate interests” lawful basis for processing and reforms the automated decision-making regime. For credit reference agency outputs, this means buyers can continue to rely on legitimate interests for credit decisioning that does not involve special-category data. The ICO can levy fines of up to GBP 17.5 million (USD 22.1 million) or 4% of global annual turnover for serious breaches.

FCA credit reference agency licensing. Experian, Equifax, and Creditsafe are FCA-regulated for credit reference activities. Buyers using their data for regulated lending or consumer credit decisions are consuming data from a supervised firm, which is relevant to audit defensibility. Company Watch, Red Flag Alert, and D&B do not carry FCA CRA licensing (they are not processing consumer credit data in the same regulated sense) but may carry FCA authorisations for other regulated activities.

ECCTA 2023 identity verification. From 18 November 2025, the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023 made identity verification mandatory for all new directors and PSCs. Existing individuals have a 12-month transition period to verify via Companies House’s GOV.UK One Login integration or through an Authorised Corporate Service Provider (ACSP). Once the transition completes (by November 2026), PSC and director data on Companies House will be systematically verified, materially improving its usefulness as a UBO source. All paid suppliers sourcing from Companies House will benefit from this improvement automatically.

FATF and the beneficial ownership gap. The Financial Action Task Force has historically noted gaps in UK beneficial ownership transparency, including cases where PSC entries name another company (rather than a natural person), effectively obscuring the ultimate owner. The ECCTA reforms address some of these gaps by requiring identity verification, but multi-hop structures that pass through foreign jurisdictions remain opaque at the Companies House level. Buyers conducting enhanced due diligence under the MLRs must satisfy themselves on beneficial ownership beyond what the PSC register shows, which is where the global data platforms earn their cost.

What businessdataguide does

businessdataguide is an editorial publication. We compare suppliers, surface pricing honestly where it is publicly available, flag where pricing must be obtained on request, and refuse to be paid by either side to favour a particular supplier. We are a publisher, not a vendor and not a data redistributor. For the self-serve guide to searching the official UK register, see the UK company search guide.

Frequently asked questions

Is Companies House data free?

Yes, for search and viewing. The core company search, officer details, PSC register, filing history, accounts, and charges are all free to view and free via the API (up to 600 requests per five minutes). Bulk data downloads are also free. There are no fees for reading the register. Filing fees (for the company making filings) are separate and not a buyer concern.

What is the PSC register and does it show the real beneficial owner?

The People with Significant Control register records individuals or entities that own or control more than 25% of shares or voting rights in a UK company. It is the UK’s equivalent of a UBO register. However, the PSC entry can be another company rather than a natural person, meaning the full beneficial ownership chain is not always visible in a single lookup. ECCTA identity verification (mandatory from November 2025) improves data quality for natural persons, but multi-hop international structures remain opaque at the register level. Commercial suppliers like FAME, Experian global, or D&B provide cross-border ownership traversal on top of the PSC base.

Do I need a paid bureau if I already use the Companies House API?

For credit decisions, monitoring, and CCJ/insolvency data, yes. Companies House has no credit data, no CCJ feed, no trade-payment behaviour, and no insolvency prediction scoring. The free API is excellent for identity verification (confirming a company exists and who its registered officers are) and for legal document retrieval (certified accounts, charge registrations). For credit risk assessment, a commercial bureau (Creditsafe, Experian, Equifax) is necessary.

Which supplier is best for AML compliance in the UK?

Creditsafe and Red Flag Alert both offer bundled AML modules (PEPs, sanctions, adverse media) alongside their credit and monitoring products. Experian’s enterprise suite also covers identity and compliance. For FCA-regulated firms, the data source must be documented and defensible; FCA-licensed CRA data (Experian, Equifax, Creditsafe) carries the clearest audit trail for credit-related inputs. For AML screening specifically (PEPs, sanctions), many regulated firms combine a bureau product with a dedicated sanctions-screening feed from a specialist such as Refinitiv World-Check, Dow Jones Risk and Compliance, or LexisNexis.

What is the Insolvency Service and how does it relate to company data suppliers?

The Insolvency Service administers corporate and personal insolvency in England and Wales, working alongside the The Gazette, the official public record for legal notices. When a company enters administration, receivership, or liquidation, or when a winding-up petition is filed, notices appear in the Gazette. Commercial suppliers (Creditsafe, Red Flag Alert, Company Watch, Experian) all integrate Gazette feeds as part of their risk-alert infrastructure. For buyers who want raw Gazette feeds without a bureau layer, the Gazette offers a direct data service.

Which is cheapest for a one-off UK company check?

Companies House is free. If you need a credit score or more enriched data, Endole at GBP 39 (USD 49) per month gives unlimited searches for routine lookups. Experian Business Express charges GBP 24.99 (USD 31) per one-off report. Creditsafe and other bureau providers are subscription-led and harder to use for genuine one-offs. For a sole practitioner or small team doing fewer than five company checks per month, the free Companies House portal plus a single Experian or Creditsafe pay-per-report is usually the most cost-effective path.