OpenCorporates alternative · Pricing

OpenCorporates pricing, and what's actually free at OpenRegistry

Most teams who hit OpenCorporates' pricing page leave with the same two facts. The free API is technically free but capped at 50 calls a day. Paid plans require a custom quote. Below are the equivalent numbers for OpenRegistry, on a single page.

Tier-by-tier

	OpenRegistry	OpenCorporates
Anonymous (no signup)	20 req/min/IP, all tools	Not available
Free, signed in	30 req/min/user, all tools	50 calls/day, 200/month per OC's API docs
Free for open data / NGO / journalism	Same as above	Application-based, higher caps once approved
Pro	$9 / month: 180 req/min/user, 10-country fan-out	Custom quote
Max	$29 / month: 900 req/min/user, 30-country fan-out	Custom quote
Enterprise	Custom: 3000 req/min, unlimited fan-out, full source-provenance fields	Custom quote
Commercial use on free tier	Allowed	Public-benefit projects only

The OpenCorporates free-API caps come from api.opencorporates.com. The per-day cap is set defensively because the public key is shared across the open-data community.

What "free" actually buys

OpenRegistry's free tier

Every tool: search_companies, get_company_profile, get_officers, get_persons_with_significant_control, get_shareholders, get_charges, list_filings, get_financials, fetch_document.
Every wired jurisdiction. The current list is in /docs/ and updates as registers come online.
Real bytes from fetch_document on filings the upstream registry publishes for free. UK CS01s, Iceland annual reports, Norway årsrapporter, Korea DART filings, and the rest.
Commercial use is allowed. You can wire it into a paying SaaS without a licence conversation.

OpenCorporates' free tier

200 calls a month on the public key.
Open-data licence with re-publication restrictions if you embed in a closed product.
Non-profits, academics, and registered journalists can apply for an upgraded free key with higher caps.
Per-row data is the same as the paid tier. Paid plans buy volume and redistribution rights, not extra fields.

What you save by switching

A typical KYB-style integration runs two or three calls per onboarded customer (search, profile, PSC). On OpenCorporates' 200-a-month free cap that is roughly 70 onboardings before you need a sales conversation. The same workload sits on OpenRegistry's anonymous tier for $0 indefinitely. The ramp to Pro at $9/month buys 180 req/min, which is about one full workflow run per second.

Where OpenCorporates' licence wins. If you redistribute the data downstream, say by shipping a public dataset built on top of it or embedding tens of thousands of company snippets in a static site, OC's open-data licence is genuinely useful. OpenRegistry does not compete on bulk redistribution. We are a query-time API plus an MCP transport.

Why OC's pricing isn't on its pricing page

Each OC commercial customer gets a different volume and redistribution deal, so a single quoted number would not fit. That is defensible for enterprise contracts, and it is unhelpful for a developer who just wants to know what 1 req/sec for a year would cost. OpenRegistry's pricing is on the upgrade page: $9 Pro, $29 Max, public, clickable.