Red Flag Alert alternative — free UK company checker

Companies House Service is free but has no credit score or monitoring. The cheapest paid tool that gives you a credit score is CompanyCheck at £24.99/month — roughly a quarter of Red Flag Alert's entry price. You lose the insolvency-informed early-warning signal but keep the underlying UK company data.

Company Watch (companywatch.net) with its proprietary H-Score, or Creditsafe on a UK-focused contract. Both charge enterprise-level fees like Red Flag Alert. If you specifically want the Begbies-informed insolvency signal, no alternative genuinely replaces it — that's Red Flag Alert's real moat.

For basic credit checks on individual customers, yes — both include a credit score and cost £25–£99/month. For portfolio-level monitoring across 50+ customers with automated alerts and early-warning flags, no. That job is what Red Flag Alert is specifically built for.

Only for buyer-side company research, not for credit-risk monitoring. Sell Ltd's free checker gives you Companies House filings, an AI business summary and a watchlist — good for acquisition targeting. It does not produce a credit rating or insolvency early-warning signal.

Partly. The Gazette (thegazette.co.uk) publishes formal insolvency notices free — but these appear when it's already too late for you to act. Companies House filing patterns (late accounts, changed auditor, resigned director) are also free indirect signals. Neither replaces a portfolio monitor with alerts, but both cost nothing.

Red Flag Alert doesn't publish pricing. Market benchmarks and reseller quotes put entry at £110–£150 per user per month on annual contract, with team tiers at £300–£500/month and enterprise/API at £1,000+/month (redflagalert.com pricing page reads 'request a demo', 1970-01-01).

For global credit portfolios, yes — Creditsafe covers ~200 markets and offers similar monitoring depth. For UK-only portfolios with an insolvency-informed early-warning need, Red Flag Alert's Begbies parentage still edges it. Match on geography: if all your customers are UK, Red Flag Alert; if you sell abroad, Creditsafe.

Experian's Business Delphi score and Dun & Bradstreet's Paydex are bureau-grade credit ratings used by lenders and large corporates. Both are alternatives if you need scoring inside a credit-decisioning engine. Neither has Red Flag Alert's specialist insolvency-signal lens.

Yes if you have engineering time. Companies House has a free API, The Gazette has an RSS/API for insolvency notices, and Insolvency Service publishes bankruptcy data. Wire them into a Google Sheet or a simple watcher and you'll catch the same formal signals Red Flag Alert surfaces — minus the Begbies casework layer and the polished UI.

CreditFocus (from Experian) and Company Watch's mid tier both include monitoring at lower price points than Red Flag Alert, though pricing is still contract-only. For SMEs who need alerts on ~20 customers, this middle band is worth quoting alongside Red Flag Alert.

If you have a UK trade-credit book of 50+ customers and one insolvency hurts, Red Flag Alert earns its £110+/month. Under 20 customers, use Endole £29.95/report for each and skip the subscription. Global portfolio? Creditsafe. Just doing research? Companies House + Sell Ltd checker, free.