Which company registers are actually free to search?

8 of the 24 sources below can be queried by name, for free, with no account — so those are the ones this tool asks. The rest are listed with the reason and a link, because a search that stays quiet about what it skipped lets “nothing found” be read as “no such company”.

Every row here was probed live on the date it carries — not copied from a directory. This moves: Switzerland's Zefix search was open and now answers 401, Ireland's went from paid to free in 2024, and Canada's federal API launched in 2026. Catalogue version 2026-09-02.

Searched by this tool

• United Kingdom

  Free, needs an accountWe search thischecked 2026-09-02

  Companies House

  find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk ↗

  What a search gives you

  Company number, status, incorporation date, registered office, SIC codes, accounts and confirmation-statement due dates.

  What it does not

  Nothing material for a first look — this is the deepest free register here.

  Note

  Needs a free API key, which this site already holds for the UK company check. Searched here too so a name you are not sure about still gets a complete answer; for a UK company you know, the UK company check goes much deeper.

• Norway

  Free, no keyWe search thischecked 2026-09-02

  Enhetsregisteret (Brønnøysundregistrene)

  data.brreg.no ↗

  What a search gives you

  Organisation number, legal form, registered address, industry code, employee count, date of incorporation, the year of the last filed annual accounts, and explicit bankruptcy / liquidation / compulsory-winding-up flags.

  What it does not

  Directors and shareholders (a separate paid role register).

  Note

  The benchmark case: open JSON, no key, no signup, and the only register here that publishes insolvency as a plain boolean rather than something you have to infer.

  Attribution

  Data from Brønnøysundregistrene, Norway.

• Finland

  Free, no keyWe search thischecked 2026-09-02

  PRH / YTJ open data

  avoindata.prh.fi ↗

  What a search gives you

  Business ID, registered and trade names with their validity dates, company form, registered address, main line of business, registration date.

  What it does not

  Directors and shareholders. Financial statements are a separate API (iXBRL filers only).

  Note

  Name matching is LOOSE — a search also matches auxiliary trade names, so a query for one company can return another that once traded under a similar name. Treat every hit as a candidate. The API's status fields are numeric codes and PRH does not publish a code list through the API, so they are shown as-is rather than guessed at.

  Attribution

  Data from the Finnish Patent and Registration Office (PRH) / YTJ.

• France

  Free, no keyWe search thischecked 2026-09-02

  Recherche d'entreprises (annuaire-entreprises, DINUM)

  recherche-entreprises.api.gouv.fr ↗

  What a search gives you

  SIREN, legal name, legal form, head-office address, NAF activity code, creation date, employee band, administrative state (active / ceased), and filed turnover figures where published.

  What it does not

  Filed accounts documents (INPI's RNE is a separate API). Officers ARE returned by this endpoint and are deliberately discarded here — see the personal-data rule below.

  Note

  Used in preference to INSEE's Sirene API, which now needs a key. This one is the government's own open front end over the same data and needs nothing.

  Attribution

  Data from the French government's open company search (DINUM / INSEE / INPI).

• Czechia

  Free, no keyWe search thischecked 2026-09-02

  ARES (Ministry of Finance)

  ares.gov.cz ↗

  What a search gives you

  IČO, legal name, legal form, registered seat, VAT number, date of incorporation, date the record was last updated, and which sub-registers the entity appears in.

  What it does not

  Directors and shareholders (in the court register, a separate resource). Sole traders are excluded here: ARES returns them, and a Czech sole trader's registered trading name is their own name.

  Note

  Not in the source research notes at all; found by probing. Open JSON, no key — and it reports whether the entity has a live record in the Czech insolvency register, which no other free source here does.

• Ireland

  Free, no keyWe search thischecked 2026-09-02

  CRO Open Data Portal

  opendata.cro.ie ↗

  What a search gives you

  Company number, status, company type, registration date, registered address, the date of the last annual return, the next annual-return date, and the last accounts date.

  What it does not

  Shareholders and directors are not in the open dataset. Document images and certified copies are still pay-per-call through CRO's CORE service.

  Note

  The research notes call this 'Mixed' and imply downloads only. It is better than that: the Company Records dataset is live-queryable through the portal's CKAN datastore with no key, and carries filing dates — nearly the shape of a Companies House record. Refreshed daily, so it is a snapshot, not the live register.

  Attribution

  Contains Irish Public Sector Data (Companies Registration Office) licensed under CC-BY 4.0.

• United States

  Free, no keyWe search thischecked 2026-09-02

  SEC EDGAR

  sec.gov ↗

  What a search gives you

  CIK number, filer name, state of incorporation and business location, for entities that file with the SEC.

  What it does not

  EVERY COMPANY THAT HAS NEVER FILED WITH THE SEC — which is almost every private US startup. There is no federal company register in the US; incorporation is a state matter and the fifty state portals are separate, mostly unqueryable, and out of scope here.

  Note

  A blank result for a US company means almost nothing. Read a hit as evidence; never read a miss as absence.

• Worldwide

  Free, no keyWe search thischecked 2026-09-02

  GLEIF — Global LEI Index

  gleif.org ↗

  What a search gives you

  Legal Entity Identifier, legal name, registered and head-office addresses, jurisdiction, entity status, the local register's own ID where GLEIF holds it, and the date the record was last validated.

  What it does not

  Any entity without an LEI — which is most companies. LEIs are held mainly by entities that trade in financial markets, so coverage skews large and regulated.

  Note

  The only cross-border source here, so it is the one that can answer when the country is unknown. A hit also gives the local registration number to take to that country's own register.

  Attribution

  Data from the Global LEI Foundation (GLEIF), CC0.

Not searched — and where to go instead

Each of these is a register we looked at and cannot query. The link goes to the register itself, which is where to search it yourself.

• Denmark

  Free, needs an accountchecked 2026-09-02

  CVR / Virk (Erhvervsstyrelsen)

  datacvr.virk.dk ↗

  What a search gives you

  Full company record including filed accounts, through a registered Elasticsearch endpoint.

  Note

  The official API needs credentials from Erhvervsstyrelsen. The unofficial free mirror cvrapi.dk answered one request and then returned QUOTA_EXCEEDED on the next, from a clean IP with a proper User-Agent — so it is not something to build on, and is not used here.

• Netherlands

  Free, needs an accountchecked 2026-09-02

  KVK Handelsregister

  kvk.nl ↗

  What a search gives you

  KVK number, name, address, and (on the paid profiles) filings.

  Note

  The public test key returns only KVK's fictional test companies. Real data needs a registered, chargeable key.

• Australia

  Free, needs an accountchecked 2026-09-02

  ASIC company register / ABN Lookup

  abr.business.gov.au ↗

  What a search gives you

  ABN/ACN, entity name, state, GST registration, entity status.

  Note

  ABN Lookup's name search needs a free GUID from registration. ASIC's own register on data.gov.au is a weekly snapshot published as files.

• New Zealand

  Free, needs an accountchecked 2026-09-02

  NZBN

  nzbn.govt.nz ↗

  What a search gives you

  NZBN, entity name, status, addresses, directors.

  Note

  Free to use, but the API is behind an API-gateway registration; the open URL 404s.

• Japan

  Free, needs an accountchecked 2026-09-02

  National Tax Agency — Houjin Bangou

  houjin-bangou.nta.go.jp ↗

  What a search gives you

  Corporate number, name, address, incorporation and status-change dates.

  What it does not

  Directors, shareholders, financials — none of it is in this dataset.

  Note

  Free, but needs an application ID issued by the NTA.

• India

  Free, needs an accountchecked 2026-09-02

  MCA via data.gov.in

  data.gov.in ↗

  What a search gives you

  CIN, company name, state, registration date, class and category.

  Note

  The shared demo key returns HTTP 429 'Rate limit exceeded'. Needs a personal key.

• Singapore

  Free, needs an accountchecked 2026-09-02

  ACRA via data.gov.sg

  data.gov.sg ↗

  What a search gives you

  UEN, entity name, status, address, entity type.

  What it does not

  Directors and shareholders — those are the paid BizFile+ profile.

  Note

  The open data API sits behind a Cloudflare challenge for automated clients.

• Poland

  Free, no keychecked 2026-09-02

  KRS (Ministry of Justice)

  api-krs.ms.gov.pl ↗

  What a search gives you

  The full current extract for a company: legal form, seat, share capital, registration dates.

  What it does not

  NAME SEARCH. The API resolves a KRS number you already have; it cannot find one from a name.

  Note

  Genuinely open and genuinely good — and useless to this tool, which starts from a name. Listed so a user who has the KRS number knows to go straight there.

• Estonia

  Open data, download onlychecked 2026-09-02

  e-Business Register (RIK)

  avaandmed.ariregister.rik.ee ↗

  What a search gives you

  Open CSV/XML extracts of the whole register, free since October 2022.

  What it does not

  A free live query endpoint. The X-Road service is marked 'tasuline' — chargeable.

  Note

  Estonia genuinely opened its register in 2022, but as downloadable files. Searching one company is free at ariregister.rik.ee in a browser; querying it from code means hosting your own copy of the extract, which is a different product with its own staleness problem.

• Belgium

  Open data, download onlychecked 2026-09-02

  Kruispuntbank van Ondernemingen (KBO/BCE)

  kbopub.economie.fgov.be ↗

  What a search gives you

  Free open-data extracts and a free public web search.

  What it does not

  Any API — the open data is published as monthly CSV extracts, not an endpoint.

  Note

  KBO Public Search is free and works well in a browser; there is simply nothing to call. Search it there, or use the EU-wide BRIS portal.

• EU + Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway

  Web search onlychecked 2026-09-02

  BRIS via the e-Justice Portal

  e-justice.europa.eu ↗

  What a search gives you

  A free live search across all 27 member-state registers plus three EEA states.

  What it does not

  An API or bulk access of any kind — it is a browser search only.

  Note

  The best manual fallback in Europe when a country here is not wired.

• Switzerland

  Free, needs an accountchecked 2026-09-02

  Zefix

  zefix.admin.ch ↗

  What a search gives you

  UID, name, legal form, seat, and the cantonal register entry.

  Note

  The public REST search now answers HTTP 401. It used to be open, which is a good illustration of why every row here carries a date.

• Germany

  Paidchecked 2026-09-02

  Handelsregister

  handelsregister.de ↗

  What a search gives you

  Extracts and filed documents, per document.

  What it does not

  Any open API. The largest economy in Europe is the biggest gap on this page.

  Note

  A basic extract is about €10 and a notarised one about €20. Search is free at handelsregister.de and via BRIS; retrieving anything is not.

• Sweden

  Paidchecked 2026-09-02

  Bolagsverket

  bolagsverket.se ↗

  What a search gives you

  Company data through commercial API packages.

  What it does not

  A free tier of any kind.

  Note

  Bolagsverket sells its register data through paid packages. Basic company details can be looked up free on bolagsverket.se and on allabolag.se, but not by an API.

• Hong Kong

  Paidchecked 2026-09-02

  ICRIS / Companies Registry

  icris.cr.gov.hk ↗

  What a search gives you

  Search and documents, HKD 22–340 per search.

  What it does not

  Any general API, and any free tier.

  Note

  ICRIS charges per search, so there is no free lookup to offer — go to the registry directly and expect to pay.

• China

  Web search onlychecked 2026-09-02

  GSXT / NECIPS (SAMR)

  gsxt.gov.cn ↗

  What a search gives you

  A free official web search.

  What it does not

  An API. Real-name verification is required and most non-mainland traffic is blocked.

Statuses, endpoints and pricing change without notice. If a row here is wrong, the register's own site is the authority, not this page.