Why I Built Checkers: Making Company Data More Accessible

Checkers — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 22:44:43 +0000

When I started looking into French company data, one thing quickly became frustrating: the information was technically public, but actually using it wasn't always easy.

There are already several platforms where you can look up French companies, find their financial statements, check their legal status or identify their directors.

Some are really good at what they do.

But I kept running into the same problems: paid features, expensive APIs, limited access to data, and interfaces that weren't necessarily designed for developers who wanted to do something with that information.

So I decided to build Checkers.fr.

The idea was pretty simple: make company data easier to find, easier to understand, and easier to work with.

Public data shouldn't be so complicated

France actually has a lot of useful public company data.

Between INSEE, INPI, BODACC, and other official sources, there's a huge amount of information available:

Company registration details
SIREN and SIRET identifiers
Directors and legal representatives
Financial statements and annual accounts
Legal documents
Insolvency proceedings
Company creation and closure information

The problem isn't necessarily that the data doesn't exist.

It's that it's spread across different sources, comes in different formats, and isn't always convenient to access or analyze.

If you're an entrepreneur trying to check a potential business partner, you probably don't want to navigate five different government websites.

And if you're a developer building a product around company information, you probably don't want to spend weeks figuring out how to retrieve and combine everything.

That's the gap I wanted Checkers to help close.

Building Checkers with Next.js

I chose Next.js to build Checkers.

One of my main goals was to create something that felt fast and straightforward, even when dealing with a lot of company information.

A business information platform can quickly become complicated. Different types of records, financial information, legal documents, company relationships, search results... there's quite a bit to handle.

I wanted the user experience to stay simple.

Search for a company, find it, and get the information you're looking for without having to understand where every piece of data originally came from.

Next.js gave me a solid foundation to build the application and keep improving it as the project grows.

And honestly, I've really enjoyed working with it.

Making data useful, not just visible

This is probably the part that matters most to me.

Displaying company information on a website is useful, but I don't think it should stop there.

People should be able to use the data, too.

For example, someone might want to:

Analyze thousands of companies in a particular industry.
Build an internal tool to check suppliers.
Monitor changes in company information.
Create financial or market research tools.
Combine company data with their own datasets.

I don't want Checkers to be a platform where you can only look at information through a browser.

The longer-term idea is to make that information easy to retrieve and integrate into other projects.

Of course, public availability doesn't mean every dataset can be redistributed without conditions. Source licenses, privacy rules, and applicable restrictions still matter.

But wherever the data can legally be shared and reused, I want to make that process as straightforward as possible.

An API that doesn't cost a fortune

Another thing that bothered me was API pricing.

When you're a solo developer or running a small project, paying a large monthly subscription just to experiment with company data can be hard to justify.

And it gets even more frustrating when the underlying information comes from public sources.

That's why affordability is a core part of the API I'm building for Checkers.

My goal is to keep the pricing as low as possible, essentially covering the infrastructure and server costs rather than turning public information into an expensive product.

I'd rather see developers actually build things with the data.

MCP is coming next

I'm also working on MCP (Model Context Protocol) support.

This is something I'm particularly excited about.

MCP opens up interesting possibilities for connecting AI applications and assistants to external tools and data sources.

Imagine being able to ask an AI assistant to look up a company, retrieve its financial information, compare businesses, or work with company records through a structured interface.

That's the direction I want to explore with Checkers.

The MCP integration isn't available yet, but it's one of the next things on my roadmap.

And just like the API, the goal is to keep it extremely affordable and accessible.

France is only the starting point

Right now, Checkers focuses on French companies.

But I don't want to stop there.

The long-term goal is to cover as many countries as possible, with as much relevant company information as possible.

Obviously, this comes with challenges. Every country has different public registries, data formats, licensing conditions, and levels of transparency.

But that's also what makes the project interesting.

I'd love to eventually have a single place where you can search for a business, understand its situation, and work with its data, regardless of where it's registered.

There's still a lot to build before getting there.

What's next?

Checkers is still evolving, and there are plenty of things I want to improve.

My main priorities are expanding the available data, improving how it can be accessed, developing the API, and releasing the MCP integration.

I'm building this because I genuinely think access to company information can be a lot better than it is today.

Not everything needs to be hidden behind an expensive subscription, especially when we're talking about information that's already public.

If you're interested in open data, business information, or building tools around public datasets, I'd be curious to hear your thoughts.

Have you ever tried working with company data? What was the most frustrating part?

You can check out the project at Checkers.fr.

I'm always interested in feedback, especially from developers who work with public data or APIs.

DEV Community: Checkers