How OpenRegistry differs from OpenCorporates, Companies House direct, and Bureau van Dijk
A side-by-side on coverage, freshness, field shape, source-link integrity, cross-border capability, authentication, and pricing. Verbatim from the public README.
| OpenRegistry | OpenCorporates | Companies House API direct | Bureau van Dijk Orbis | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Coverage | 27 national registries | ~140, mostly aggregated | UK only | ~430M companies, aggregated |
| Data freshness | Live — every call hits upstream | Scrape-and-cache (hours–days lag) | Live | 7-day to quarterly refresh |
| Field shape | Verbatim upstream payload + unified envelope | Normalised to OC schema | Per-registry CH schema | BvD's own schema |
| Source identifier preserved | Yes — registry URL reconstructable | OC ID is primary; mapping back is lossy | Native | BvD ID is primary |
| Filing PDFs / iXBRL bytes | Returned raw | Metadata only; bytes paywalled | Native | Paywalled |
| Cross-border ownership chain | One MCP prompt, ≤30 jurisdictions | Manual ID-stitching | Out of scope | Limited to BvD-mastered entities |
| Authentication | OAuth 2.1 + DCR; anonymous tier free | API key (signup) | API key (signup) | Per-seat license, $30k–$50k+/yr |
| Self-serve free tier | 20 req/min/IP — all tools, all jurisdictions | Non-commercial only, throttled | Free, single-jurisdiction | None |
| MCP-native | JSON-RPC over Streamable HTTP | REST | REST | REST |
One-liner
OpenCorporates and BvD are aggregators that re-shape and cache; CH-direct is single-jurisdiction. OpenRegistry is the layer between an AI agent and the original government APIs — verbatim, live, multi-country, no API key for the free tier.
Where OpenRegistry deliberately doesn't have data
Statutorily restricted beneficial-ownership registers post-CJEU C-37/20
(DE, ES, IT, NL, LU, AT, MT, PT) and similar regimes (Cayman BOTA 2023) are not
proxied. The response carries a structured alternative_url pointing at
the AML-obliged-only statutory portal — we don't pretend to have data we don't.
See the errors and back-off page for the exact
response shape.
Why it matters for AI agents
A normalised aggregator shape is one tool's interpretation of an upstream
value. The interpretation can be wrong, and is rarely auditable. For AI agents
with current-generation LLMs (Claude 4.x, GPT-5.x, Gemini 3.x), the verbatim
jurisdiction_data object is read just as fluently as a pre-cooked
dossier — and the cost of not seeing the raw data (silent normalisation
errors that break in production) is much higher.
Read the architectural rationale in "Why OpenRegistry returns raw upstream data — and refuses to summarise".