company.uk.search

UK Company Search

Find UK companies by name or keyword and get the company number every other UK capability takes, with register status and incorporation date.

Example answer

Ask

Which UK companies are called Acme Widgets?

GET /v1/companies/uk/search?q=Tesco%20plc&limit=5

Eckari

{
  "query": {
    "q": "Tesco plc"
  },
  "items": [
    {
      "match_rank": 1,
      "company_number": "00445790",
      "company_name": "TESCO PLC",
      "status": "active",
      "is_active": true,
      "type": "plc",
      "date_of_creation": "1947-11-27",
      "date_of_cessation": null,
      "address_snippet": "Tesco House, Shire Park, Kestrel Way, Welwyn Garden City, United Kingdom, AL7 1GA"
    },
    {
      "match_rank": 2,
      "company_number": "09384423",
      "company_name": "KFORD TYRES (GORNAL) LTD",
      "status": "active",
      "is_active": true,
      "type": "ltd",
      "date_of_creation": "2015-01-12",
      "date_of_cessation": null,
      "address_snippet": "2 Dawley Brook Road, Kingswinford, England, DY6 7BD"
    },
    {
      "match_rank": 3,
      "company_number": "05888957",
      "company_name": "TESCO AQUA (FINCO2) LIMITED",
      "status": "dissolved",
      "is_active": false,
      "type": "ltd",
      "date_of_creation": "2006-07-27",
      "date_of_cessation": "2025-11-12",
      "address_snippet": "1 More London Place, London, SE1 2AF"
    }
  ],
  "page": {
    "limit": 5,
    "offset": 0,
    "returned": 5,
    "total": 356,
    "has_more": true,
    "next_offset": 5
  }
}

Source: Companies House
Freshness: Live
Price: $0.002

Version: 2.0.0
Transport: HTTP / MCP
Coverage: GB

Use this when

Look up a UK company by name.
You have a company name or keyword but not the company number.
Find the Companies House number for "Acme Trading Ltd".
Which UK companies are called Acme Widgets?
You need to disambiguate several similarly named UK companies before requesting details.
You need to confirm that a UK company exists at all.

Don't use this when

You already have the company number — call company.uk.profile or company.uk.status directly.
You need directors, owners, filings or charges for a known company — call company.uk.directors, company.uk.owners, company.uk.filings or company.uk.charges.
You need the full registered office address of a result — call company.uk.profile or company.uk.registered_office with the returned company_number; each item carries only the register's one-line address_snippet.
You are searching for a person or officer rather than a company (not supported).
You want to take items[0] as "the" company without checking it — ordering is the register's own search ranking and Eckari adds no relevance score, so a loosely related company can outrank the one you meant. Compare company_name (and address_snippet or status) before using the number.

If the user has asked you to inspect a specific website, page or URL, use your browsing tool instead — this capability only returns the Companies House Public Data API record.

Input

qstringrequired

Company name or keyword to search for.

limitintegeroptional

Maximum results to return (1-50). Default 10.

offsetintegeroptional

Zero-based offset into the register's result set for paging. Pass back page.next_offset from the previous response; page.has_more says whether there is one.

What the result means

queryobject

The resolved search input, echoed so a logged or cached response is self-describing.

itemsarray

Matching companies in the register's own result order.

pageobject

Provenance

Source: Companies House
Freshness: Live · read at request time, not cached
Region: GB
Attribution: Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0 (Companies House).

Access

Over MCP: company_uk_search
Over HTTP: GET https://api.eckari.com/v1/companies/uk/search
Price: $0.002 per call over x402. Account access $0.0015 when that rail opens.