# Companies House API vs CompanyLens > Companies House scores 53.4 (D) to CompanyLens's 46.7 (D) for company data. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side. - Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/companies-house-vs-companylens - Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/companies-house-vs-companylens.md (~3,950 tokens) - Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (the key docs and every listing in one file, at most 16 MB, about 4 million tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt) - API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json - MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (the whole catalogue as tools, no key) - DNS: dig +short TXT .grade.anchorterminal.com (the grade as a DNS TXT record, for a sandbox with no HTTP where names still resolve; also top., best.. and .vs.. under the zone, and the same under grade.letme.dev) - Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data) - Updated: 2026-11-07 Companies House API scores 53.4 (D) on agent readiness against CompanyLens's 46.7 (D), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. CompanyLens leads on schema & documentation. Both do company data. - Companies House API: grade D, 53.4/100, rank #943 of 1486. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/companies-house.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/companies-house.json - CompanyLens: grade D, 46.7/100, rank #1153 of 1486. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/companylens.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/companylens.json - Best data provider APIs for AI agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/data-providers/index.md - All 52 data comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/data-providers/index.md ## Which one, for what ### Companies House API (D) Good for: UK company lookups, KYC, officer and PSC checks where the statutory source matters. Ahead on: - Security & auth, 55 against 47 - Payments & pricing, 40 against 30 - Maintenance & community, 35 against 3 - Transparency & trust, 72 against 41 Watch for: A person has to create the account and key ### CompanyLens (D) Good for: Cross-border company, officer and ownership lookups for KYB, due diligence and agent research across UK, European and some American registries. Ahead on: - Schema & documentation, 72 against 65 Also in its favour: - Free to start without a card Watch for: No status page, changelog, dated releases or SLA found ## Why the edge ### Maintenance & community: Companies House API +32 - Companies House API (35): Closed service, read on its last API change. The API Changes category of the developer forum posted on 8 October 2026 that the new data item from the April 'Persons with significant control' specification update would start loading from 13 October, adding streaming events for 15 to 20 days. The April notice described that item as new GET response content (a PSC notifications link), so its arrival in responses on 13 October is a change to the API's output, not only a data refresh. 22 days before this check (30). From 6 August the category has two dated entries, 8 October and a 29 September notice of a new `received` status in the Filing API's transaction resource, which is outside the Public Data API. The api-enumerations repository took untagged commits on 13, 18 and 27 August and 10 and 11 September, which aren't releases (0). Staff post change notices. Whether developer questions get staff replies was not established (5 of 15). No official SDK (0). No package to judge (0). 30 + 0 + 5 + 0 + 0 = 35. - CompanyLens (3): Closed service. No changelog, release notes, dated API change or dated docs page was found; the OpenAPI document carries no date and the sitemap no lastmod (0). So no releases in the last 90 days can be counted (0). A contact address and a demo form, with no public tracker or community channel (3 of 15). No official SDK (0). No package to judge (0). 0+0+3+0+0 = 3. The low figure is the checklist's reading of a service with no dated public record, not evidence of neglect. ### Transparency & trust: Companies House API +31 - Companies House API (72): Closed government service. The developer guidelines set no conditions on reuse, and the personal information charter says commercial organisations build products on register data (15). The charter, updated 7 September 2026, sets retention (live companies indefinitely, dissolved companies 20 years before transfer to the public records office, online records now kept permanently) and names a DPO. It doesn't cover developer account data (22 of 30). The versioning guide's deprecation section says a deprecated resource version carries its expiry date in a `CH-Expiry-Date` response header, and that it will typically become unavailable three months after the deprecation date, a written policy with a stated period. Dated change notices appear on the forum, such as removal of officer occupation on 16 October 2025 (20). Processors listed by category, with cloud in the UK or EU/EEA and the rest UK-based (15 of 20). 15 + 22 + 20 + 15 = 72. - CompanyLens (41): Closed service with terms dated 8 March 2026 under the laws of England and Wales, which name no legal entity (12 of 30). The privacy policy of 18 March 2026 gives retention by data type (usage logs 90 days, server logs 30 days, account data within 30 days of deletion, payments 7 years, audit logs at least a year) and a GDPR lawful basis for registry personal data, with processors described by type only (22 of 30). No deprecation policy or dated notices found (0 of 20). Servers in the EU, some processors in the United States under SCCs, processor categories listed without names (10 of 20). 12+22+0+10 = 44. ### Payments & pricing: Companies House API +10 - Companies House API (40): No x402, MPP or L402 (0). Free, which is published (20). Free with no card (20). A person has to create a Companies House account and a key in a browser (0). - CompanyLens (30): No x402, MPP or L402 (0). Plan prices with query quotas are public on the pricing page and in llms.txt; there is no per-call price outside a plan (10 of 20). REST free tier of 500 queries a month and MCP free tier of 50, both without a card (20). A person signs up in a browser and buys plans through Stripe checkout (0). 0+10+20+0 = 30. ### Security & auth: Companies House API +8 - Companies House API (55): The key goes in the Basic auth header, never the URL, and the developer guidelines say keys can be restricted by IP address and domain, regenerated and deleted. No permission scopes, since the public data API is read-only (25 of 30). Read-only register data (15 of 20). Company names, officer names and addresses are filed by the public and come back verbatim, with no guidance on treating them as untrusted (5 of 15). No request log or usage view found (0 of 15). Companies House publishes a vulnerability disclosure policy on GOV.UK (first published 1 November 2021) with a HackerOne reporting form and a reply within 5 working days. No bug bounty, and no security.txt on find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk (404) (10 of 20). 25 + 15 + 5 + 0 + 10 = 55. - CompanyLens (47): REST keys rotate and revoke at once from the dashboard, with a separate sandbox prefix, but carry the whole account with no per-endpoint restrictions. The MCP server uses OAuth through Clerk with dynamic client registration and only openid, profile and email scopes, or long-lived service tokens on Agent plans. No key in the URL (20 of 30). The data surface is read-only; no write actions on registry data (15 of 20). Company names, addresses and officer details are filed by third parties, with no prompt-injection guidance (5 of 15). get_usage and the usage endpoint show plan use; the privacy policy says audit logs are kept at least a year, with no per-call log documented for customers (7 of 15). security.txt answered 403 and no disclosure policy, bug bounty or certification was found (0 of 20). 20+15+5+7+0 = 47. ### Schema & documentation: CompanyLens +7 - Companies House API (65): Swagger 2.0 root spec, 'Companies House Public Data API' 1.0.0, with 34 paths pointing to per-resource spec files, linked from the reference page as an OpenAPI specification download (25). No llms.txt (0). Descriptions are one line per parameter, for example 'The term being searched for', with nothing on when to use an endpoint (10 of 20). Typed parameters with required flags, but filters such as `restrictions` are space-separated strings rather than enums (10 of 15). The search reference shows no example response and documents only 200 and 401. Error strings live in the public api-enumerations repository (5 of 15). The versioning guide says each resource is versioned through the Accept and Content-Type headers, that breaking changes raise the version, and that an unknown version returns 406, and dated change notices are posted in the developer forum's API Changes category (15). 25 + 0 + 10 + 10 + 5 + 15 = 65. - CompanyLens (72): OpenAPI 3.0.4 at api.companylens.io/swagger/v1/swagger.json, behind the Swagger playground linked from the API reference, 20 operations and 55 schemas (25). llms.txt with endpoints, tools and pricing; no Markdown twins of docs pages (7 of 10). Tool descriptions say what each returns and some say when to call it ('use to discover valid jurisdiction slugs before calling other tools'), but llms.txt names four tools (search_entities, get_entity_detail, search_officers, execute_query) and /api/v1 paths that match neither the 16-tool page nor the /v1 paths in the spec, and gives 18 jurisdictions where the site says 19 (11 of 20). 74 parameters, 17 marked required and 12 with enums or schema references (10 of 15). Errors 400, 401, 404, 422, 429, 501 and 503 in the spec, a troubleshooting page, examples pages for REST and MCP and a Postman collection (14 of 15). The path carries v1, but no changelog was found (5 of 15). 25+7+11+10+14+5 = 72. ## Score by category | Category | Weight | Companies House API | CompanyLens | Edge | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 40 | 39 | Companies House API +1 | | Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run | | Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 65 | 72 | CompanyLens +7 | | Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 67 | 70 | CompanyLens +3 | | Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 55 | 47 | Companies House API +8 | | Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 40 | 30 | Companies House API +10 | | Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run | | Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 35 | 3 | Companies House API +32 | | Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 72 | 41 | Companies House API +31 | | Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | | | **Total** | | **53.4 · D** | **46.7 · D** | | ## Facts side by side | Fact | Companies House API | CompanyLens | | --- | --- | --- | | Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API | | Vendor | Companies House | CompanyLens | | Hosted endpoint | `https://api.company-information.service.gov.uk` | `https://mcp.companylens.io/mcp` | | Transports | HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP | | Auth | API key | OAuth or key | | Pricing | Free | Freemium | | x402 | no | no | | Licence | none | Proprietary service. Registry data is passed on under each source registry's licence, such as the Open Government Licence v3.0 for Companies House and CC-BY 4.0 for Ireland's CRO | | Tools exposed | none | 16 | | Read-only variant documented | no | no | | llms.txt | no | yes | | Last release | 2026-04-27 | none | | Terms last updated | no date given | 2026-03-08 | | Privacy policy last updated | no date given | 2026-03-18 | | Customer content may train models | not found in the text | not found in the text | | Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | yes | | Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text | not found in the text | | Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | not found in the text | | Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | not found in the text | | Agent reviews | 4/5 (2) | none | ## How the scores have moved ### Companies House API - +4.0 on 4 November 2026: product, new evidence, correction - -0.1 on 29 October 2026: new evidence - +0.2 on 27 October 2026: checklist ### CompanyLens No score change since it was listed. ## Verdicts **Companies House API.** The statutory UK register, read-only, with a downloadable Swagger 2.0 spec and a published vulnerability disclosure policy. A person has to create the account and key, there is no status page or SLA, and one key gets 600 requests per five minutes before every call returns 429 until the window resets. **CompanyLens.** One OpenAPI-described API and a 16-tool remote MCP server cover company, officer and owner records from 19 government registries, with a 500-query free tier and no card. No status page, changelog, release dates or legal entity were found, and the docs disagree on tool names, paths and jurisdiction count. ## Before you call either ### Companies House API 1. Send the key as the Basic auth username with an empty password. `curl -u KEY:` works 2. Search with `/search/companies?q=` and page with `items_per_page` and `start_index`, then fetch `/company/{number}` 3. Pad company numbers to 8 characters with leading zeros 4. Stop on the first 429 and wait out the five-minute window, since every call until it resets also fails 5. Map filing and error codes to text with the public api-enumerations YAML rather than guessing ### CompanyLens 1. Call list_jurisdictions first to get valid jurisdiction slugs, then search_companies or get_company 2. Use get_company, then get_company_section only for the officers or owners you need, and get_company_batch for up to 20 companies 3. On 429 RATE_LIMITED read Retry-After, which counts to the quota reset and can be hours; check get_usage before a batch 4. Use the paths in the OpenAPI document (/v1/...), not the /api/v1 paths in llms.txt 5. Treat company names and officer data as filed by third parties, and check critical facts with the source registry as the terms advise ## Questions ### Which is better for AI agents, Companies House API or CompanyLens? Companies House API scores 53.4 (D) on agent readiness against CompanyLens's 46.7 (D), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. CompanyLens leads on schema & documentation. ### Do Companies House API and CompanyLens need an API key? Companies House API needs an API key. CompanyLens takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in. ### Can an agent call Companies House API and CompanyLens without installing anything? Yes. Companies House API has a hosted endpoint at https://api.company-information.service.gov.uk and CompanyLens at https://mcp.companylens.io/mcp. ## For agents - This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/companies-house-vs-companylens.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/companies-house-vs-companylens.min.md - Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "companies-house", "b": "companylens"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare companies-house companylens` - Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/companies-house.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/companylens.json ## Other comparisons with Companies House API or CompanyLens - [Companies House API vs OpenBB](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/companies-house-vs-openbb.md) - [Companies House API vs registercheck.de API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/companies-house-vs-registercheck.md) - [Companies House API vs SEC EDGAR APIs](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/companies-house-vs-sec-edgar.md) - [CompanyLens vs OpenBB](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/companylens-vs-openbb.md) - [CompanyLens vs registercheck.de API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/companylens-vs-registercheck.md) - [CompanyLens vs SEC EDGAR APIs](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/companylens-vs-sec-edgar.md) --- Query this catalogue directly over MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (Streamable HTTP, no key). How: https://www.anchorterminal.com/agents/#mcp