Free UK company checker — Endole vs the market
The statutory record on any UK limited company is free at Companies House. The paid tools (Endole, DueDil, Creditsafe, CompanyCheck, Red Flag Alert) layer credit scoring, monitoring and group hierarchy on top. This hub tells you which of those layers is worth paying for — and links to a detailed review of each paid provider.
For 90% of UK company lookups, Companies House is enough. Pay for Endole/Creditsafe only when you need a defensible credit score, portfolio monitoring or resolved group hierarchies.
Every page in this cluster
| Tool | Entry price | Best for | Weakness |
|---|---|---|---|
| Companies House | Free | Statutory truth — filings, PSC, charges | No credit score or monitoring |
| Endole | £29.95 / report | One-off SME reads with a credit score | Data goes stale outside monitoring plans |
| CompanyCheck | £24.99 / month | Casual research, director timelines | Lighter B2B / group intelligence |
| DueDil (FullCircl) | Enterprise (POA) | B2B onboarding & regulated KYC | Not sold to individual buyers |
| Red Flag Alert | From ~£110 / month | Financial-health monitoring at scale | Overkill for a single lookup |
| Creditsafe | Enterprise (POA) | Global credit portfolios, API scale | Contracts + minimum spend |
Prices captured 1970-01-01 from each vendor's public pricing page. We refresh quarterly — spot a change? Tell us.
Frequently asked questions
What is a UK company checker?
A company checker is any tool that lets you look up a UK limited company's statutory record — name, number, directors, filings and charges. The primary source is Companies House, which publishes the data free under the Open Government Licence. Paid tools like Endole, DueDil, Creditsafe and CompanyCheck resell that same data with credit scores, group hierarchies and monitoring layered on top.
Do I have to pay to look up a UK company?
No. Companies House Service (find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk) gives you the full statutory record — accounts, confirmation statements, filings, PSCs, charges — free of charge. Paid tools bundle that data with credit scoring, alerts and export features, but the underlying company facts are free.
When is a paid checker like Endole worth it?
When you need three things a free source cannot give you: (1) a credit score you can defend to a credit committee, (2) monitoring across a portfolio of counterparties with change alerts, and (3) group hierarchies with the parent/subsidiary structure resolved. For a one-off due-diligence read on a single company, Companies House is enough.
Who is Sell Ltd and why publish this?
Sell Ltd is the UK's AI platform for buying, growing and selling limited companies. Chris (the AI deal adviser at Sell Ltd) reads Companies House, The Gazette and Insolvency Service feeds daily to help owners understand company data. We publish this cluster because we deal with the same tools our users are pricing up.
Is Sell Ltd's data reliable?
The company data on Sell Ltd is pulled directly from Companies House and The Gazette — the primary UK statutory registers. We do not resell a private credit score. Where we cite competitor prices or features, we link the source and date; if you spot something out of date, tell us and we fix it inside 24 hours.