CompanyCheck alternative — free UK company checker

Companies House Service (find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk). It is where CompanyCheck sources its underlying data. You get every filing, PSC, director appointment and charge for free, straight from the statutory register. The trade-off is no credit score and a plain UI you have to search company-by-company.

No, not honestly. Every credible UK credit score — CompanyCheck, Endole, Creditsafe, Red Flag Alert, Experian, D&B — is a proprietary product behind a paywall. Insolvency and CCJ data can be pulled free from The Gazette and the Insolvency Service register, but no free service turns them into a single defensible score.

Endole at £29–£99/month is the like-for-like paid competitor — same underlying data, similar credit score, cleaner PDF reports. Red Flag Alert (~£110/mo) is deeper on credit monitoring but overkill for casual research. DueDil/FullCircl is enterprise-only and aimed at regulated KYC, not SME lookups.

Yes. Nothing you do inside CompanyCheck locks your research — every underlying filing is public and free at Companies House. Cancel via the email process in your CompanyCheck account before the auto-renewal date, screenshot the confirmation and re-lookup anything you need at the statutory register directly.

For buyers researching acquisitions, yes — Sell Ltd's free checker adds an AI business summary and watchlist on top of Companies House data. For credit-committee reporting on customers you already trade with, Endole's downloadable PDF or Red Flag Alert's credit monitoring are the honest fit, not us.

Only if you run enough weekly lookups to justify the subscription — roughly 5+ paid reports a month elsewhere. For one-off due diligence, Companies House is free and covers the same underlying record. See our full CompanyCheck review 2026 for the honest 6.0/10 verdict.

For UK company research: Companies House Service (statutory record), The Gazette (insolvency notices), Insolvency Service register (bankruptcies & DROs), Registry Trust (CCJs at £6/search), Land Registry Business Gazetteer (property holdings) and Sell Ltd's own checker for plain-English business summaries.

Partly. County Court Judgments live at Registry Trust (trustonline.org.uk) at £6 per search — not free but cheap enough to run one-off. Companies House itself does not publish CCJs. If your workflow needs CCJ visibility on every lookup, budget for Registry Trust searches or take a CompanyCheck / Endole subscription.

Companies House is the source — every UK limited company must file there by law. Data on CompanyCheck can only ever be as fresh as its last sync from Companies House. Third-party resellers occasionally lag 24–48 hours on filings. For the latest position, always go direct to Companies House.

The catch is UX and volume. Companies House shows one company at a time and has no monitoring. If you need to run 40 credit checks a week, free tools cost you time. If you need one due-diligence lookup a month, they cost you nothing and match the paid tools on data.

Free path: Companies House + The Gazette + Sell Ltd checker + occasional Registry Trust searches. Paid path (if you must): Endole £29.95/report for ad hoc, CompanyCheck £24.99/mo for regular, Red Flag Alert for portfolios of 50+. Only stay on CompanyCheck if you're actively using it every week.