We found 10 major errors on OpenCorporates in minutes
We picked four of them at random and checked them against the official Companies House register. OpenCorporates got all four wrong.
Claude estimates roughly 100,000 changes a day and ~700,000 a week, and that is officer records alone. Accounts, addresses, PSC filings and charges come on top. On UK companies alone, that leaves a huge population of potentially wrong records on OpenCorporates at any given moment.
Every claim below is attached with evidence. Company numbers are included so you can check them yourself.
Four examples
| Company | Companies House (official, checked 10 Sep 2026) | OpenRegistry | OpenCorporates |
|---|---|---|---|
BRUCE & COMPANY LIMITEDSC190660 |
Active, proposal to strike off | Active, proposal to strike off | Active Error: strike-off warning missing |
G.R.I.T HP UK LTD15150296 |
2 officers, incl. Teresa Dawn Swinton, Secretary (appointed 9 Sep 2026) | 2 officers, including Swinton | 1 officer Error: a serving officer is missing |
BRIDGEHAVEN SPECIALTY UK LTD12782688 |
Esther Ruth Felton, RESIGNED 7 Sep 2026 | Felton under Resigned officers | Esther Ruth Felton, director, 1 May 2023– (i.e. current) Error: a resigned director shown as active |
LEXORA LAW CHAMBERS LTD17450921 |
Active, incorporated 10 Sep 2026 | Active, officer Ilyas Mohammed | "Found 0 companies" Error: company missing entirely |
The evidence
Each company below shows the same record twice: what OpenCorporates reports, next to what the official Companies House register says at the same moment.
1. BRUCE & COMPANY LIMITED SC190660
A company on its way to being dissolved. One of the strongest risk signals the register carries, and it is absent from OpenCorporates.
2. G.R.I.T HP UK LTD 15150296
The secretary is missing. The same OpenCorporates page also contradicts itself: it claims "Last Update From Source: 9 September 2026", the very day the secretary was appointed, while also stating "Last Change Recorded: 3 June 2026." It says it checked the source, and it says nothing has changed in three months. Both cannot be true.
3. BRIDGEHAVEN SPECIALTY UK LTD 12782688
A resigned director shown as active. Look at the OpenCorporates screenshot again and a second defect appears. The beneficial owners include both "David Emil Paulson" and "David Emil Paulsson". "Erik William Matson" is listed twice. The director list carries "ARTUR NIEMCZEWSKI" and "ARTUR PAWEL NIEMCZEWSKI", the same man, counted twice.
Duplicated beneficial owners are not cosmetic. They inflate the UBO count and corrupt the screening step AML rules exist to enforce.
4. LEXORA LAW CHAMBERS LTD 17450921
This one is not stale, it is absent. The company was incorporated on the morning of 10 September 2026 and appears on the official register immediately. OpenCorporates returns nothing, because a cached index cannot contain a company it has not ingested yet. Around 2,000 companies are incorporated in the UK on a normal working day, and every one of them is invisible to a scraper until its next pass.
5. OpenRegistry, queried live, gets all four right
- BRUCE & COMPANY — "Active, proposal to strike off"
- G.R.I.T HP UK — 2 officers, including Teresa Dawn Swinton
- BRIDGEHAVEN — Esther Ruth Felton correctly under "Resigned officers"
- LEXORA LAW CHAMBERS — present, Active, officer Ilyas Mohammed
Four for four, with no cache to go stale.
Why this keeps happening
OpenCorporates scrapes and caches. A cache is a snapshot of a moving target. When the target moves 100,000 times a day, the snapshot is wrong somewhere, constantly. A faster cron job does not fix that. Not caching does.
The more reliable solution: OpenRegistry
OpenRegistry queries the government registry at the moment you ask. There is no cache layer to go stale, and no scrape to silently drop a record.
- Live — every call hits the official registry in real time
- Unmodified — the registry's own field names and values, with the source traceable back to the government record
- Cross-border — national registries well beyond the UK, through one interface
- MCP-native — plugs directly into Claude and other AI agents, which is Evidence 7 above
- Cheaper API — OpenRegistry API is much cheaper than OpenCorporates.
If you are doing KYB, AML screening, supplier onboarding, or investigative work, "probably right" is not a standard you can defend.
Check the three companies yourself
All Companies House data on this page was verified live on 10 September 2026 via the official Companies House API. Company numbers are included throughout so every claim can be independently checked.
About this page. OpenRegistry is published by Sophymarine, so this comparison is written by a party with a commercial interest in one of the tools on it. Figures and product claims for the other vendors come from each vendor's own public material, linked inline where applicable. Reviewed 2026-09-10.