Use the source’s official API for targeted, repeatable lookups and an official bulk download for broad, periodic analysis. Before writing code, select the jurisdiction and database, confirm the fields and licence you need, obtain credentials, and record the source’s refresh schedule. The method you choose affects freshness, scale, format, cost, and whether you may redistribute the result.
1. Define the data question before choosing a database
“Company data” can mean a single registration record, a list of every live company, filed accounts, ownership information, directors, industry codes, or a cross-border directory. Write down the minimum fields and geography first.
- Identity: legal name, company number, jurisdiction and former names.
- Status: active, dissolved or other registry status, plus incorporation and filing dates.
- Address and activity: registered office and SIC or equivalent business classification.
- Financial records: accounts, filings or inline XBRL documents where the source supplies them.
- Audit context: source URL, publisher, retrieval time, licence and refresh date.
Do not assume that a commercial directory has permission for scraping or redistribution. Read the database’s developer terms and the licence attached to the exact dataset.
2. API retrieval versus bulk download
| Need | API | Bulk file |
|---|---|---|
| Scale | Individual or frequently targeted records | Broad, scheduled extracts |
| Freshness | Request-time result, subject to the provider’s update process | Snapshot with a stated compilation cadence |
| Format | Usually JSON or XML; you must handle pagination and errors | Often CSV ZIP or filing documents; you must download, unpack and load them |
| Access | Credentials, usage limits and sometimes paid plans | Download rules, file size, licence and storage requirements |
| Coverage | Only the records and fields exposed by the endpoint | All fields included in that release, but not necessarily every product the registry offers |
Use an API when a user enters a company number or when a job needs a small set of current records. Use a bulk file when you are building a searchable index, performing population-level analysis or refreshing thousands of records on a schedule. Keep the retrieval timestamp even when the source appears current.
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3. A repeatable extraction workflow
- Select the authority. Prefer the official registry for the jurisdiction and purpose. A consolidated service can be useful for discovery across countries, but verify each record against its cited source.
- Read the current documentation. Confirm authentication, endpoint paths, required parameters, response format, pagination, quotas, errors, licence and update schedule. If a limit or endpoint is not documented, do not guess it.
- Request a small sample. Test one known company and inspect nulls, date formats, identifiers and nested objects before designing a database schema.
- Store provenance. Save the provider, source URL, retrieval time, dataset release or compilation date, and any licence or attribution requirement beside each record.
- Normalize without destroying originals. Keep the raw response or source row, then create normalized columns for names, dates, status and identifiers. Preserve leading zeroes in company numbers.
- Validate and monitor. Check duplicate identifiers, unexpected status changes, missing required fields and record counts. Alert when a refresh is late or an API response changes shape.
- Respect use restrictions. Apply rate limits, cache only as the terms permit, and obtain permission before publishing or selling derived data.
4. Companies House (United Kingdom)
Targeted API lookups
Companies House documents a RESTful API in which records have unique URIs and are retrieved with HTTP GET requests. Access requires authentication credentials such as an API key, stream key or OAuth access token. Use the company number or another documented identifier, follow the URI returned by the service, and handle the provider’s pagination and error instructions rather than inventing parameters. See the Companies House developer documentation for the current implementation details.
A minimal request pattern is:
GET <documented-company-record-URI>
Authorization: <your documented credential>
Accept: application/jsonIn production, add exponential backoff for transient failures, a bounded retry count, structured logs and a dead-letter queue for records that repeatedly fail. Never place an API key in a browser bundle or commit it to source control.
Monthly live-company snapshot
Companies House describes its free company-data product as “a free monthly snapshot of information for live companies on the public register.” The snapshot contains basic details including company type, registered office, SIC or business activity, status, filing dates and former names. It is split into downloadable ZIP files containing CSV data, compiled to the end of the previous month and made available within five working days after month-end (Companies House data-products guidance, 2022).
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For a bulk pipeline, download every ZIP belonging to the release, verify checksums when supplied, unpack to a staging area, load CSV columns as strings first, and then convert dates and controlled vocabularies. Record the release month: the snapshot is not a request-time feed.
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Accounts and filings
Accounts are separate products. Companies House offers downloadable accounts data, including inline XBRL/HTML and XBRL/XML files, and an XML gateway search service. Choose these routes when the task requires filed financial documents rather than the core live-company snapshot.
5. OpenCorporates for multi-jurisdiction records
OpenCorporates documents a REST API that returns JSON by default and can also return XML. A company lookup uses a jurisdiction code and company number. The reference requires an API key and says usage limits depend on account type. Free API accounts are available for open-data projects or products released under share-alike attribution terms; paid accounts remove those restrictions. Bulk extracts are also offered.
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Check the current plan and licence before commercial use, redistribution or combining the data with another service. OpenCorporates documents provenance fields such as retrieval time, publisher, source URL and known licence. Retain those fields when merging records, and use them to trace a discrepancy back to the primary registry.
6. SEC EDGAR (United States): verify the current interface
The SEC publishes an official overview of EDGAR APIs, but endpoint schemas, rate limits and download formats change and must be taken from the current SEC developer guidance. Do not confuse filer APIs or submission credentials with public retrieval workflows. For a U.S. project, identify the exact EDGAR product, read its present documentation, and record the response version and retrieval date in your pipeline.
7. Designing storage, refreshes and quality checks
Suggested record envelope
{
"source": "companies-house",
"source_url": "https://…",
"retrieved_at": "2026-09-29T12:00:00Z",
"release_or_as_of": "2026-08-31",
"company_number": "…",
"raw": { "…": "original response or row" },
"normalized": { "name": "…", "status": "…" }
}The URL above is a storage example, not a claim about a particular endpoint. Store the real URL returned or documented by your provider.
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Refresh strategy
- Run targeted API lookups on demand, with a cache TTL allowed by the provider.
- Schedule Companies House snapshot ingestion after its five-working-day publication window and mark the as-of month.
- For OpenCorporates, refresh according to the account’s limits and the data’s stated provenance; do not call it real-time unless the provider says so.
- Keep historical versions when an analysis must be reproducible.
Quality checks
- Reject rows without a stable identifier or retain them in a quarantine table.
- Compare row counts with the release notes and detect duplicate identifiers.
- Validate date parsing, status vocabularies, country and jurisdiction codes, and UTF-8 text.
- Reconcile a sample against the primary registry and log every correction.
8. Common failures and fixes
| Symptom | Likely cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| 401 or 403 response | Missing, expired or incorrectly formatted credential | Regenerate credentials, use the documented authentication method and keep secrets server-side. |
| 429 or throttling | Quota or rate limit exceeded | Honor retry headers, add backoff, cache permitted results and reduce concurrency. |
| Empty result | Wrong jurisdiction, identifier or status filter | Confirm the identifier in the source UI, preserve leading zeroes and test a known record. |
| CSV columns shift | Quoted commas, encoding or schema change | Use a CSV parser, detect the header version, load raw files and quarantine malformed rows. |
| Stale analysis | Monthly snapshot treated as live data | Display the as-of date and schedule the next release ingestion. |
| Licence dispute | Data reused outside attribution or share-alike terms | Review the exact account and dataset licence before publication; retain required attribution. |
9. Or skip the browser setup
If you only need a visual copy of a public registry or database page for an audit trail, ScreenshotNeo can capture it through one request. It accepts consent banners like a visitor and removes more than 60 known consent platforms, newsletter popups and chat widgets before capture; bot checks, blank pages, timeouts, failed loads and cache hits are not billed, and response headers identify the page verdict and billing result. Its MCP server provides take_screenshot, get_page_info and capture_pdf tools for Claude, Cursor and other MCP clients.
For extraction, use the database API or bulk file above; a screenshot is evidence of what a page looked like, not structured company data.
curl -G "https://api.screenshotneo.com/v1/shot" -d access_key=YOUR_API_KEY --data-urlencode url=https://stripe.com -o shot.webpSee the ScreenshotNeo documentation for capture options. The service supports full-page and selector captures, device and retina settings, PDFs, custom headers and cookies, JavaScript, waits, request blocking, caching, signed links, asynchronous webhooks, bulk capture and a usage API.
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10. Practical decision checklist
- Have you selected the authoritative jurisdictional source?
- Do you need individual records or a broad, repeatable snapshot?
- Are credentials, quotas, licensing and attribution understood?
- Are fields, identifiers, pagination and file schemas tested on known examples?
- Will every row retain source, retrieval time, release/as-of date and provenance?
- Have you separated registry facts from your own inferred or enriched fields?
- Is there a refresh, retry, validation and licence-review process?
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I scrape any business database instead of using its API?
No. The database’s terms and licence determine whether automated access and reuse are allowed. Prefer documented APIs or official downloads and obtain permission when required.
Are Companies House monthly files real-time?
No. The live-company snapshot is compiled through the end of the previous month and released within five working days after month-end.
Should I combine OpenCorporates data with a national registry?
You can, but retain OpenCorporates’ provenance fields and reconcile important records against the primary registry before publishing conclusions.
Quick Recap
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