Free UK Business Credit Score Checker

Why free credit scores exist at all

The UK's statutory data — filed under criminal penalty at Companies House — is enough to answer most credit-risk questions about a small business. Not all of them. If a company is late on its accounts, has a live winding-up petition and a floating charge to an invoice-finance lender, no proprietary score is going to save you from that signal. Conversely, if the same company files early every year, has no charges and has been trading for a decade, the statutory record already tells you the counterparty is boring — in credit terms, exactly what you want.

Paid scores earn their fee by adding trade-payment behaviour — do suppliers get paid on time, are there CCJs, is there a pattern of DSO drift. That data is not in Companies House. If your decision is worth £50k+ of exposure, buy the paid score. If it's under £10k, the free version is usually enough.

How our rubric is built

We picked the five signals that empirically correlate hardest with insolvency risk in the UK SME base — and made every one of them visible in the score card. You should be able to disagree with the weighting; you shouldn't have to guess it. Compare that to Experian's Delphi score or Creditsafe's Payment Performance score, both of which are proprietary and non-disclosed. Ours is a rubric, not a model — but a rubric you can read is better than a model you can't.

1. Filings on time (30 pts)

The single strongest signal. Companies that let accounts and confirmation statements go overdue are — after controlling for size and age — dramatically more likely to be in distress six months later. It's the cheapest, most cited signal in academic UK-SME insolvency research and it's the first thing an insolvency practitioner looks at.

2. Filing history exists (20 pts)

A company with three years of clean filings is de-risked by that alone. A brand-new company has no track record — not a red flag, but a reason not to extend credit blindly.

3. No live insolvency events (25 pts)

Administration, liquidation, receivership or a CVA are hard stops. If any of them are on the register, the counterparty is not creditworthy — full stop.

4. Charges (15 pts)

Secured lending is normal. A mortgage over freehold property is not a red flag. A live floating charge to an invoice-finance provider is a working-capital tell — inspect the lender and the classification before drawing conclusions.

5. Company age (10 pts)

Base rate. Companies that survive their first three years have a much better forward survival rate. It's a small-weight factor because a well-run 6-month-old company can be safer than a badly-run 20-year-old — but on average, age is a positive signal.

What this score won't catch

• Phoenix directors. A phoenix pattern shows up in cross-appointments, not a single-company view. Use Director check.
• Payment behaviour. If you need to know whether suppliers get paid, you're in Creditsafe / Experian territory.
• Concentration risk. One client, 80% of revenue — invisible on Companies House. Ask the counterparty directly.
• Micro-entity blind spots. Under FRS 105, micro-entities disclose almost nothing. Score cautiously.

Where this fits in the wider toolkit

Pair the score with Accounts explorer (to eyeball the latest filing), Director check (to look for phoenix patterns) and PSC lookup (to see who actually controls the company). Between those four free tools you have most of what a £600/year Creditsafe seat gives you — for the specific job of checking a small number of counterparties.

For portfolio-scale monitoring, the free stack breaks down. See Best supplier credit check for the paid alternatives ranked honestly.