Search UK companies in the Companies House register.

Searches the Companies House company register like its company search page: company name, company number, status line (incorporation date), registered address and link. First page of results (about 20 companies). Officers and other result types are not returned.

No reports yetRead-only, no login

Site: Companies House, United Kingdom
Version: v1
Runs, last 7 days: No reports yet
sha256: 7aeffde4f820…

Run it with your agent

after installing Wield

Ask in plain words. Your agent finds this recipe and calls it:

“Search UK companies in the Companies House register.”

Read-only: it changes nothing on the site. No login needed.

{
  "tool": "run",
  "arguments": {
    "recipe_id": "companieshouse.gov.uk/search-government",
    "params": {
      "query": "tesco"
    }
  }
}

Requests

sent from your browser, in order

1GET/search/companies?qServer-rendered company search results page /search/companies?q=… (read-only GET). Results are li.type-company items in ul#results; the mustache templates inside script tags are not matched.

Parameters

from your agent

querystringrequiredCompany name or part of a name, e.g. 'tesco', 'barclays', 'deliveroo'

Returns

to your agent

companiesobject[]address, company_number, incorporated, name, url

querystring

Where it can send

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

Anything else is blocked by the extension.

Reads from your session

Nothing. Your browser attaches the site's cookies by itself.

Used only in requests to the addresses on the left. Never sent to wield.run or your agent.

Checks

a run passes when

length(output.companies) > `0`
length(output.companies[?name != `null`]) == length(output.companies)
length(output.companies[?starts_with(url, 'https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/')]) == length(output.companies)

Raw recipe

Served as canonical JSON from /api/v1/recipes/companieshouse.gov.uk/search-government, so its sha256 matches the ETag and the index.

Check it yourself

curl -s https://wield.run/api/v1/recipes/companieshouse.gov.uk/search-government | shasum -a 256
# 7aeffde4f82051718d7336dcff3717b812423575d67c9317f6e39563cdb93c68

companieshouse.gov.uk/search-government.json, v1

{
  "description": "Searches the Companies House company register like its company search page: company name, company number, status line (incorporation date), registered address and link. First page of results (about 20 companies). Officers and other result types are not returned.",
  "effect": "read",
  "id": "companieshouse.gov.uk/search-government",
  "keywords": [
    "companies house",
    "companieshouse",
    "company register",
    "companies",
    "company search",
    "firmen",
    "unternehmen",
    "handelsregister",
    "business",
    "limited company",
    "uk",
    "gov.uk",
    "registry"
  ],
  "output": {
    "schema": {
      "properties": {
        "companies": {
          "items": {
            "properties": {
              "address": {
                "type": [
                  "string",
                  "null"
                ]
              },
              "company_number": {
                "type": [
                  "string",
                  "null"
                ]
              },
              "incorporated": {
                "description": "Incorporation date as shown, e.g. '27 November 1947'",
                "type": [
                  "string",
                  "null"
                ]
              },
              "name": {
                "type": "string"
              },
              "url": {
                "type": "string"
              }
            },
            "required": [
              "name",
              "url"
            ],
            "type": "object"
          },
          "type": "array"
        },
        "query": {
          "type": "string"
        }
      },
      "required": [
        "query",
        "companies"
      ],
      "type": "object"
    },
    "value": "{query: params.query, companies: steps.search.companies[?name != `null` && href != `null`].{name: trim(name), company_number: (description && split(description, ' ')[0]) || `null`, incorporated: (description && contains(description, 'Incorporated on') && trim(split(description, 'Incorporated on')[1])) || `null`, address: address || `null`, url: join('', ['https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk', href])}}"
  },
  "params": {
    "additionalProperties": false,
    "properties": {
      "query": {
        "description": "Company name or part of a name, e.g. 'tesco', 'barclays', 'deliveroo'",
        "maxLength": 100,
        "minLength": 2,
        "type": "string"
      }
    },
    "required": [
      "query"
    ],
    "type": "object"
  },
  "provenance": {
    "method": "har",
    "notes": "GET /search/companies?q=… on find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk (the Companies House search) returns server-rendered results in ul#results as li.type-company, with the company link in h3 a, the number and incorporation date in the crumbtrail paragraph and the registered address in the last paragraph. The work item's gov.uk search URL returns unrelated GOV.UK pages, so it was not used. Only the first page is read.",
    "recorded_at": "2026-11-08T16:55:00.000Z",
    "recorded_by": "wield-forge (claude-haiku agent)"
  },
  "requires_login": false,
  "schema": "https://wield.run/schema/recipe/v1.json",
  "site": {
    "country": "GB",
    "id": "companieshouse.gov.uk",
    "language": "en",
    "name": "Companies House",
    "origin": "https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk",
    "origins": [
      "https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk"
    ]
  },
  "steps": [
    {
      "description": "Server-rendered company search results page /search/companies?q=… (read-only GET). Results are li.type-company items in ul#results; the mustache templates inside script tags are not matched.",
      "expect": {
        "content_type": "html",
        "status": [
          200
        ]
      },
      "extract": {
        "html_items": {
          "companies": {
            "fields": {
              "address": {
                "selector": "p:not(.meta)"
              },
              "description": {
                "selector": "p.crumbtrail:not(.inset)"
              },
              "href": {
                "attr": "href",
                "selector": "h3 a"
              },
              "name": {
                "selector": "h3 a"
              }
            },
            "max": 50,
            "selector": "#results li.type-company"
          }
        }
      },
      "id": "search",
      "request": {
        "headers": {
          "Accept": "text/html"
        },
        "method": "GET",
        "query": {
          "q": "{{params.query}}"
        },
        "url": "/search/companies"
      }
    }
  ],
  "task": "Search UK companies in the Companies House register",
  "tos": {
    "notes": "Not reviewed. One search page per call, the same page a visitor loads. The site's terms on automated access were not checked.",
    "reviewed": false
  },
  "verify": {
    "checks": [
      "length(output.companies) > `0`",
      "length(output.companies[?name != `null`]) == length(output.companies)",
      "length(output.companies[?starts_with(url, 'https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/')]) == length(output.companies)"
    ],
    "example_params": {
      "query": "tesco"
    },
    "max_ms": 5000
  },
  "version": 1
}