NewcoSignal vs Companies House bulk data
The free monthly snapshot is the whole register. Here is when it is enough, and when a daily feed is worth having.
The first-mover advantage
Day 1
New company incorporates at Companies House
Within 24 hours
NewcoSignal alerts you - before they've chosen any suppliers
Companies House Bulk Data
Shows you the same company - when relationships are already formed
The key difference
The free Companies House bulk snapshot covers every live company once a month and needs processing. NewcoSignal ingests daily and hands you only the new companies that match.
Which tool is right for you?
Choose NewcoSignal if you...
- Anyone who wants new companies without downloading and processing large files
- Teams who need daily or weekly alerts, not a monthly snapshot
- Sellers who want sector categories, region filters and formation-agent filtering
- Teams who want an export or CRM sync with no spreadsheet work
Choose Companies House Bulk Data if you...
- Developers and analysts who want the whole register to load into their own systems
- Anyone who wants a free, official dataset with no account
- Research and analysis across all live companies
- Teams happy to do their own processing and deduplication
1,500+
new UK companies every day
500+
SIC code categories to filter by
Free
to get started, no contract
Feature comparison
| Feature | NewcoSignal | Companies House Bulk Data |
|---|---|---|
| Built on the official Companies House register | ||
| Free to use | ||
| Covers new companies | ||
| Daily updates of new companies | ||
| Ready to read without processing large files | ||
| Saved searches with email alerts | ||
| Formation-agent addresses and likely shells filtered | ||
| Full register of all live companies in one file |
Companies House publishes a free bulk snapshot called Basic Company Data. It covers live companies, is updated within five working days of the previous month end, and is a CSV in a ZIP of about 471MB, either as one file or in seven parts of 50 to 70MB. It is free of charge and the page says it will not be supported. For research across the whole register, it is the right place to start, and it is the dataset that much of the market is built on, including ours.
It is not designed for prospecting new companies. The snapshot is monthly, so a company registered early in a month does not appear until the following one, and a third-party note says a snapshot can be up to 30 days old. There is no official free daily file of new incorporations that we could find: the free Accounts Data Product is daily but covers filed accounts. Same-day discovery is possible through the Streaming API, but that means writing software.
To use the snapshot to find new companies you need to download several hundred megabytes, load it, compare it with last month's to find what was added, filter by SIC code and address, and clean out the formation-agent addresses and dormant vehicles. That is a few hours of work the first time and a recurring task after that.
NewcoSignal does the recurring part. We ingest Companies House daily and hand you the new companies that match your sector and region by email, daily or weekly, or into your CRM or tools. The free plan has unlimited company search and one saved search with a daily email of the top 5 new matches. Pro, at £39 per month + VAT or £348 a year + VAT, covers every match (up to 625 new companies a week) with 10 saved searches and CSV and Excel export. Instant alerts are hourly delivery of daily data, not real time.
We do not claim the data is ours, because it is not. It is the same free public register. What you pay for, if you pay, is the convenience: sector categories instead of raw SIC codes, a region filter, formation-agent filtering, a reachable-by-post filter and a named director (around 99%) and registered address (around 99.98%) on each new company. If you are comfortable with files and scripts, the free route works. If you would rather get the answer in an inbox, start with our free plan.
Frequently asked questions
Ready to find new clients first?
1,500 new companies registered today.
Have you reached them yet?
Set up a saved search for your target industry and location. We send you the new ones every day - free to get started.