UK companies

UK company search

Companies House publishes more about UK limited companies than almost any registry in the world. The trouble is that finding what you actually need (a director's other appointments, a beneficial owner, the share split inside the latest CS01, a charge against a company) takes you across five different parts of the same service. OpenRegistry pulls every one of those into a single live endpoint. Free tier.

What you get

The same data Companies House publishes, returned live on every call, with the upstream field names preserved. No daily crawl, no aggregator schema in the middle.

By search intent

How a typical workflow looks

An AI agent connected to the OpenRegistry MCP endpoint walks a complete KYB dossier on Monzo Bank Limited in five tool calls.

// 1. Resolve the company
search_companies({ jurisdiction: "GB", query: "monzo bank" })
// → 09446231 — Monzo Bank Limited — active — incorporated 2015-02-06

// 2. Profile
get_company_profile({ jurisdiction: "GB", company_id: "09446231" })

// 3. Officers
get_officers({ jurisdiction: "GB", company_id: "09446231" })

// 4. Persons with Significant Control
get_persons_with_significant_control({ jurisdiction: "GB", company_id: "09446231" })

// 5. Recent filings + registered charges
list_filings({ jurisdiction: "GB", company_id: "09446231", limit: 25 })
get_charges({ jurisdiction: "GB", company_id: "09446231" })

Full walkthrough at /docs/case-studies/kyc-dossier-five-calls.

Connecting

The fastest path is to point a Model Context Protocol client at https://openregistry.sophymarine.com/mcp. Claude Desktop, Cursor, Cline, Goose, and Zed all speak MCP natively.

// claude_desktop_config.json
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "openregistry": {
      "url": "https://openregistry.sophymarine.com/mcp",
      "transport": "http"
    }
  }
}

A REST surface is also live at https://openregistry.sophymarine.com/api/v1/companies (search) and per-tool endpoints (/api/v1/companies/{jur}/{id}/officers, /api/v1/documents/{jur}/{id}, ...) — see /api for the full endpoint table. Call list_jurisdictions with jurisdiction: "GB" for the full schema.

Where the data comes from. Companies House publishes a free public-data API and a free document-download surface. Both have their own rate limits, idiosyncrasies, and authentication models. OpenRegistry fronts both, adds an MCP transport, and unifies the response shape across the other 26 jurisdictions we wire. The underlying record is still CH's. We do not change it.

Pricing

The free tier is 30 requests per minute per user. Pro at $9 a month is 180 per minute. Max at $29 a month is 900 per minute and adds the cross-border fan-out cap to 30 jurisdictions per call. All tiers see the full UK data set; the difference is throughput, not coverage. Full pricing on the upgrade page.

Frequently asked questions

Can I search Companies House for free through OpenRegistry?

Yes. The free tier permits 30 requests a minute per user. Every UK tool — search, profile, officers, PSC, filings, charges — is on the free tier. Companies House itself is free; OpenRegistry adds a unified MCP transport on top so AI clients can call it without writing a custom HTTP wrapper.

How do I find every UK company a person is a director of?

Two calls: search_officers(GB, <name>) returns matching officer ids, then get_officer_appointments(GB, <officer_id>) returns every UK appointment that officer has ever held. The officer id is the stable handle — two different people with the same name have two different ids. See /companies/uk/directors for a worked example.

What is the PSC register?

Persons with Significant Control. Introduced by the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Act 2015 (live from April 2016) and tightened by the Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) Act 2022. PSC captures any natural person or registrable legal entity that controls more than 25% of shares or voting rights, has the right to appoint or remove a majority of the board, or otherwise exercises significant influence. A 10% direct shareholder does not appear in PSC. See /companies/uk/psc.

Can I download UK company filings (CS01, accounts) for free?

Yes. list_filings enumerates every statutory filing the company has submitted; fetch_document returns the raw bytes — iXBRL XHTML for modern accounts and CS01s, PDF for older filings. The data comes straight from Companies House, which publishes filings free. See /companies/uk/filings.

Is OpenRegistry the same as Companies House?

No. Companies House is the statutory UK registry — the source of truth. OpenRegistry queries Companies House live on every call and adds a unified MCP transport plus 26 other national registries on the same endpoint. The data is theirs; we transport it.

Does OpenRegistry cover UK LLPs and Scottish partnerships?

UK Limited Liability Partnerships (OC-prefix) are in the Companies House register and reachable through get_company_profile and the per-LLP filings. Scottish Limited Partnerships (SL-prefix) are also in CH. Sole traders and unincorporated businesses are not on Companies House and therefore not in the OpenRegistry GB surface.

How does pricing work above the free tier?

Pro is $9 a month for 180 requests per minute per user. Max is $29 a month for 900 per minute. Enterprise is custom and adds full source-provenance fields to every response. All tiers see the full UK data set; the difference is throughput and cross-border fan-out, not coverage. Pricing.