Introduction
UK Companies House holds records for over 4.5 million registered companies. For B2B sales teams, compliance analysts, legal researchers, and investors, it is one of the richest sources of structured business intelligence available anywhere in the world.
The problem is scale. Pulling company data in bulk filtered by industry, with beneficial ownership (PSC) information automatically attached is still a largely manual process for most teams in 2026. Either you click through records one by one, or you build your own API integration and maintain it yourself.
This article explains how the Gov.UK Business Scraper by Techforce Global automates that entire workflow using the official Companies House Advanced Search API, why PSC enrichment is the most important missing feature in every other Companies House tool currently available on Apify ( @apifyblog ), and what this means practically for compliance, due diligence, B2B sales, and legal research teams.
What Is UK Companies House and Why Does the Data Matter?
Companies House is the official UK government registry of companies. Every limited company, limited liability partnership, and public limited company registered in the UK must file information here including its directors, shareholders, registered address, accounts, and Persons with Significant Control (PSC).
The PSC register is particularly valuable. Since 2016, UK law has required every company to declare individuals or entities that:
- Hold more than 25% of shares or voting rights
- Have the right to appoint or remove the majority of directors
- Exercise significant influence or control over the company
This beneficial ownership data is exactly what AML, KYC, compliance, and due diligence workflows require. It answers the fundamental question that regulators, investors, and legal teams all need answered:
who actually controls this company?
PSC beneficial ownership data has been mandatory in the UK since 2016
but bulk extraction with it automatically attached has remained a manual
task. Until now.
The Problem: Manual PSC Lookup at Scale
The Companies House website and API both provide access to PSC data. The problem is not availability it is the workflow required to get it at scale.
Using the Companies House API directly, retrieving PSC data for a single company requires:
- A search request to find the company and get its company number
- A separate API call to the PSC endpoint using that company number
- Parsing and merging the PSC response with the company record
- Handling rate limits, pagination, and error cases
- Repeating this for every company in your dataset
For 100 companies, this means 200+ individual API calls plus the code to handle them reliably. For teams without engineering resources compliance analysts, sales researchers, legal teams this is simply not an option. And for teams that could build it, it takes days of engineering time to do properly.
Manual research through the Companies House website is the fallback but at 5 to 10 minutes per company including PSC lookup, a list of 100 companies represents 8 to 16 hours of work.
The Solution: Gov.UK Business Scraper With Automatic PSC Enrichment
The Gov.UK Business Scraper by Techforce Global is an Apify ( @apifyblog ) Actor built on top of the official Companies House Advanced Search API. It automates the full workflow company search, record extraction, and PSC enrichment in a single run.
How It Works
- You define your search criteria in the Apify input form
- The actor sends a search request to the Companies House Advanced Search API
- For every matching company, it automatically calls the PSC API endpoint
- PSC data is merged with company records into a single structured output
- Results are exported as JSON, CSV, or Excel
The entire process including PSC enrichment for every company runs asynchronously using Python and httpx for concurrent requests. A 100-company run with full PSC enrichment completes in minutes, not hours.
Input Configuration and Filtering Options
The actor supports the following filters, all configurable through the Apify visual interface no code required:
Output Structure: Company Data + PSC in One Record
Each item in the output dataset represents one company, with PSC data automatically merged into the same record.
Company Fields
- company_name — Full registered company name
- company_number — Official registration number
- company_status — active, dissolved, liquidation, etc.
- company_type — private-limited-company, plc, llp, etc.
- date_of_creation — Incorporation date
- date_of_cessation — Dissolution date (where applicable)
- registered_office_address — Full address string
- sic_codes — Array of SIC industry codes
PSC / Beneficial Ownership Fields — Auto-Enriched Per Company
- name — Full name of the person or corporate entity
- nationality — PSC nationality
- country_of_residence — Country where PSC is resident
- date_of_birth — Month and year of birth
- natures_of_control — Share ownership %, voting rights, directorial control
- notified_on — Date PSC was added to the register
- ceased — Whether control has ended (boolean)
- address — Correspondence address of PSC
Practical Use Cases With Example Inputs
Use Case 1 — B2B Sales: Active London Tech Companies
Goal: Build a prospect list of all active software development companies in London incorporated after 2020, with beneficial ownership data attached for personalised outreach.
SIC Code: 62012 (Business and domestic software development)
company_status: active
location: London
incorporated_from: 2020-01-01
size: 100
Output: 100 active London software companies + PSC names and ownership %
for each
Use Case 2 — AML / Compliance: Dissolved Financial Companies
Goal: Identify financial intermediaries that dissolved in a specific date range for AML risk review, with PSC records attached to identify individuals.
SIC Code: 64999 (Financial intermediation not elsewhere classified)
company_status: dissolved
dissolved_from: 2022-01-01
dissolved_to: 2024-12-31
size: 100
Output: Dissolved financial companies in date range + full PSC
beneficial ownership records
Use Case 3 — Due Diligence: Verify Ownership Before a Contract
Goal: Before signing a services agreement, verify the ownership structure and PSC of a specific company by name.
company_name_includes: Target Company Name
company_status: active
size: 5
Output: Company record + PSC details — ownership %, nature of control,
nationality, address
n8n Workflow Integration Example
The actor integrates with n8n using the HTTP Request node and the Apify API. A typical automated pipeline:
- Schedule trigger — runs weekly or monthly
- HTTP Request node — calls Apify to run the Gov.UK Business Scraper with your filters
- Wait node — waits for run to complete
- HTTP Request node — fetches results from Apify dataset
- Google Sheets node — appends new company + PSC records to your tracker sheet
- HubSpot node — creates contacts from PSC names for outreach
Pricing Pay Per Event, No Monthly Subscription
Most Companies House scraper tools currently available operate on a monthly subscription model typically ranging from $9 to $29 per month, with additional usage fees charged on top of that. For teams that only need occasional bulk extractions, this means paying a recurring fee regardless of whether the tool is actively used.
The Gov.UK Business Scraper uses pay-per-event pricing you pay only for what you extract, with no recurring monthly commitment. This makes it cost-effective for both occasional users (a quarterly compliance review, a pre-deal due diligence run) and high-volume teams running weekly B2B prospecting at scale. You are never paying for idle capacity
How It Compares to Other Companies House Tools
Based on a review of publicly available Companies House scraper tools on Apify as of April 2026:
*Based on a review of publicly available Companies House scraper tools as of April 2026. Pricing and features are subject to change.
Getting Started
The actor is live on Apify with a free trial available. Setup takes under 2 minutes.
- Go to: https://apify.com/techforce.global/gov-uk-business-scraper
- Click 'Try for free'
- Fill in your search criteria — SIC code, status, location, date range
- Click Run
- Export your results as JSON, CSV, or Excel
🔗 Actor: https://apify.com/techforce.global/gov-uk-business-scraper
📅 Book a consultation: https://calendly.com/techforce-infotech-pvt-ltd/intro-meeting
📧 Contact: bhavin.shah@techforceglobal.com
🌐 Website: www.techforceglobal.com
Summary
UK Companies House holds the data that compliance, sales, legal, and investment teams need but accessing it at scale with PSC beneficial ownership enrichment has required either manual effort or custom API development. The Gov.UK Business Scraper automates the full workflow: company search, PSC enrichment, and structured export in a single run.
It is the only actor on Apify that combines advanced Companies House search filtering with automatic PSC enrichment, SIC code industry targeting, and pay-per-event pricing. If your team works with UK company data, it is the most comprehensive tool currently available on the platform.
Top comments (0)