One file, published once a month.
Companies House publishes a free bulk product called BasicCompanyData: a single CSV holding every company on the register on the day it was cut. Ours is the 1 November 2026 cut, 5,711,780 companies. It is licensed under the Open Government Licence, which is why every one of these counts can be free.
| In the file, and used | What it gives us |
|---|---|
| Company number and name | Identity, and the key the town recovery works from |
| Incorporation date | The month and the year a company is counted in |
| Company status | Whether it is trading, or on its way off the register |
| Registered office address and postcode | The post town, and the formation-agent test |
| Up to four SIC codes | Which of the 39 trades it lands in |
Not in the file at all: dissolved companies, turnover, employee numbers, trading address, website, telephone number or email address. Nothing on this site is estimated from anything outside the register, and no figure here is modelled: every number is a count of rows.
A snapshot, not a live feed. The file is a photograph of the register on 1 November 2026. A company incorporated the day after it was cut is not here, and neither is a company that closed the day before. Because the snapshot lands on the first of the month, the last month we can report in full is October 2026; the days of 2026 beyond it are deliberately left out of every monthly figure so a part month is never drawn against a whole one.
The nightly figure and the monthly figure.
The last-30-days figure on each page, and the "Registered since" list of the newest names, come from the Companies House daily feed and update every night. They count the companies in the 39 trades, as the trade figures do, so they compare with those and never with every company on the register (66,457 in October 2026). The feed is also narrower than the register file: private limited companies only, and one day behind. For October 2026, the first month both cover in full, the daily feed counted 42,770 trade registrations, 98% of the 43,806 trade rows in the register file, which is why a 30-day figure runs lower than a month of the same trades from the register file. The 30-day window currently runs to 12 November 2026. When the monthly register file lands it takes over: the month's companies move into the monthly counts, and the newest names start again from the new file's date.
Five ways a company drops out.
Of the 5,711,780 companies in the snapshot, 3,051,230 end up counted somewhere on this site. Here is where the rest go, in the order the build applies each test.
| Excluded | Companies | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Dissolved companies | not present | The bulk product only holds companies still on the register, so a company formed and closed before the snapshot never appears. This is the one exclusion we cannot measure, and it is the important one; see below. |
| In liquidation, administration or receivership | 115,069 | Only the statuses Active and Active - Proposal to Strike off are counted. A business on its way out is not a new business trading. A brand new company that has not filed yet routinely sits in the proposal-to-strike-off state, so that one is kept. |
| Registered at a formation agent | 804,947 | Their registered office is a mailbox, so the post town on the row is not where they trade. 264 of them were placed in a real town from their directors' other companies and counted there; the rest are left out of every figure on the site, national and trade totals included, not just the town ones. The full explanation is below. |
| No SIC code we group | 1,739,126 | Farming, manufacturing, dormant holding companies, and the several hundred other activities the register recognises. They are not missing, they are simply not one of the 39 trades this site counts. This is what is left of the 4,790,356 companies that reach the SIC test at all, after the two exclusions above have already been applied. |
| No post town on the address | 90,071 | Where one of these carries a SIC code we group it is still in the national and trade figures, but it cannot appear in any town figure, because there is no town to put it in. |
The first three measurable rows do add up: 115,069 plus 804,947 plus 1,739,126 plus the 3,051,230 counted comes to the 5,710,372 companies the build read a date for. The last row is the exception: a company with no post town has usually already been counted in a national or trade figure, so it overlaps the rows above rather than adding to them. What the table is for is to show that nothing is quietly dropped: every exclusion here is deliberate, and every one of them is counted.
89 SIC codes, 39 trades, six families.
Companies House does not publish a trade. It publishes SIC codes, the Standard Industrial Classification, and a company can carry up to four of them. The 39 groups below are ours: each is a set of SIC codes picked because a small business would recognise it as a trade. The six families are ours too, and exist only to keep the colour on every chart meaningful. Here is the whole thing, code by code.
- Building and trades
- Digital and professional
- Retail and food
- Transport and logistics
- People and care
- Property
| Trade | SIC codes it is built from |
|---|---|
| Construction | 41100 Development of building projects41201 Construction of commercial buildings41202 Construction of domestic buildings43110 Demolition43120 Site preparation43130 Test drilling and boring43210 Electrical installation43220 Plumbing, heat and air-conditioning installation43290 Other construction installation43310 Plastering43320 Joinery installation43330 Floor and wall covering43341 Painting43342 Glazing43390 Other building completion and finishing43910 Roofing activities43991 Scaffold erection43999 Other specialised construction activities n.e.c. |
| Electricians | 43210 Electrical installation |
| Plumbers & HVAC | 43220 Plumbing, heat and air-conditioning installation |
| Landscaping | 81300 Landscape service activities |
| Trade | SIC codes it is built from |
|---|---|
| Management consultancy | 70221 Financial management70229 Management consultancy activities other than financial management |
| Web & software development | 62011 Ready-made interactive leisure and entertainment software development62012 Business and domestic software development |
| IT consultancy | 62020 Information technology consultancy activities |
| Advertising & design | 73110 Advertising agencies74100 specialised design activities |
| Business support services | 82990 Other business support service activities n.e.c. |
| Architecture & engineering | 71111 Architectural activities71112 Urban planning and landscape architectural activities71121 Engineering design activities for industrial process and production71122 Engineering related scientific and technical consulting activities71129 Other engineering activities |
| Education & training | 85590 Other education n.e.c. |
| IT support | 62090 Other information technology service activities |
| Estate agents | 68310 Real estate agencies |
| Accounting | 69201 Accounting and auditing activities69202 Bookkeeping activities69203 Tax consultancy |
| Recruitment | 78101 Motion picture, television and other theatrical casting activities78109 Other activities of employment placement agencies |
| Photography | 74201 Portrait photographic activities74202 Other specialist photography74203 Film processing74209 Photographic activities not elsewhere classified |
| Legal services | 69101 Barristers at law69102 Solicitors69109 Activities of patent and copyright agents; other legal activities n.e.c. |
| Trade | SIC codes it is built from |
|---|---|
| Online retail | 47910 Retail sale via mail order houses or via Internet |
| Takeaways | 56103 Take-away food shops and mobile food stands |
| Restaurants & cafes | 56101 Licensed restaurants56102 Unlicensed restaurants and cafes Excluding 56103, which is counted as Takeaways instead. |
| Hairdressing & beauty | 96020 Hairdressing and other beauty treatment |
| Convenience stores | 47110 Retail sale in non-specialised stores with food, beverages or tobacco predominating47190 Other retail sale in non-specialised stores |
| Catering & events | 56210 Event catering activities56290 Other food services |
| Pubs & bars | 56301 Licensed clubs56302 Public houses and bars |
| Wholesale | 46900 Non-specialised wholesale trade |
| Trade | SIC codes it is built from |
|---|---|
| Freight & couriers | 49410 Freight transport by road49420 Removal services53201 Licensed carriers53202 Unlicensed carrier |
| Motor vehicle repair | 45200 Maintenance and repair of motor vehicles |
| Used car dealers | 45112 Sale of used cars and light motor vehicles |
| Taxi & private hire | 49320 Taxi operation |
| Removals | 49420 Removal services |
| Trade | SIC codes it is built from |
|---|---|
| Health practitioners | 86210 General medical practice activities86220 Specialists medical practice activities86230 Dental practice activities86900 Other human health activities |
| Cleaning services | 81210 General cleaning of buildings81221 Window cleaning services81222 Specialised cleaning services81223 Furnace and chimney cleaning services81229 Other building and industrial cleaning activities81291 Disinfecting and exterminating services81299 Other cleaning services |
| Care services | 87100 Residential nursing care facilities87200 Residential care activities for learning difficulties, mental health and substance abuse87300 Residential care activities for the elderly and disabled88100 Social work activities without accommodation for the elderly and disabled |
| Fitness | 93130 Fitness facilities |
| Security services | 80100 Private security activities |
| Childcare | 88910 Child day-care activities |
| Veterinary | 75000 Veterinary activities |
| Trade | SIC codes it is built from |
|---|---|
| Property investment & letting | 68100 Buying and selling of own real estate68209 Other letting and operating of own or leased real estate |
| Property management | 68320 Management of real estate on a fee or contract basis98000 Residents property management |
One company can appear in more than one trade. Two ways round: a company carrying four SIC codes is counted once in every group any of them falls into, and 3 codes sit in two groups at once by design, which is why the tables above hold 92 rows for 89 codes. 43210 (electrical installation) counts under Construction and Electricians. 43220 (plumbing, heat and air-conditioning installation) counts under Construction and Plumbers & HVAC. 49420 (removal services) counts under Freight & couriers and Removals. That is deliberate: an electrician is an electrician and is also a construction firm, and somebody selling to either wants to see them. It does mean that adding the 39 rows together gives a total of the rows, not a headcount of companies, which is why no page on this site calls its total "all new UK companies".
Where a company says it is, and where it is.
A company's registered office is the address it takes post at. It is very often its accountant, or a virtual office, a service that rents you a prestigious address, opens your letters and scans them to you, for a few pounds a month. Thousands of companies share one such address. None of them trade there.
Counting a company in its agent's town is wrong twice over. It puts a visibly false number in front of somebody who knows the area, and it fills a town-scoped list with companies that have no connection to the town. So rather than keep a hand-written list of agents, the build derives one: count companies against each full postcode, and treat any postcode holding 100 or more companies formed since 1 January 2025 as an agent. That catches 488 postcodes holding 805,211 companies, and 804,947 of them are dropped from every figure on the site, not only the town ones. A company whose real town cannot be established is not counted in its trade or in the national total either.
Why it is keyed on the postcode
One building, typed a dozen ways
The address line in the register is free text, and one building is written a dozen different ways. A single Herefordshire postcode appears as "61 BRIDGE STREET", "61A BRIDGE STREET", "SUITE 20210 61 BRIDGE STREET" and more besides. Keying the test on the address line caught roughly half its companies and left the rest counted as real local businesses, which is how a market town of about three thousand people came to outrank Edinburgh on the town table. Keying it on the postcode catches the building.
Getting some of them back
264 companies placed in a real town
A separate job follows the directors of companies registered at agent addresses through to their other companies. Where a director's other company sits at an ordinary address, that address is a far better guess at where this one actually trades than the agent's mailbox. Of 288 recovered rows, 275 were high enough confidence to use and 13 were not; 264 companies were placed in a real town as a result, most of them in London (57), Manchester (10), Birmingham (7), Milton Keynes (5), Slough (5) and Leicester (5). Everything else at an agent postcode is counted nowhere at all. A company either has an established location or it is not counted: nothing here invents one, and no company that was already at an ordinary address is ever moved.
Which towns get a page.
7,774 post towns clear the minimum of 3 companies, which is far more than anyone can read. The 1,076 busiest have a page of their own, each carrying all 39 trades. A trade needs at least 30 new companies in a town over twelve months before that pairing gets a page too, which is what makes 3,241 trade-and-town pages.
| Rule | Value | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Post towns clearing the minimum | 7,774 | At least 3 companies over the whole period |
| Towns with a page | 1,076 | The busiest, each with all 39 trades counted separately |
| Trade-and-town pages | 3,241 | A pairing needs 30 companies in twelve months to earn one |
A town's own figure is the total of its trade rows, not a headcount of every company registered there: a company with more than one SIC code sits in more than one trade, and a company whose codes fall outside all 39 trades is not in the town figure at all. Every town counted · every trade counted.
Why older years undercount.
This is the single most important thing on the page, and it is the reason a naive version of any history chart here would be wrong.
Older years undercount. The register only holds companies that still exist. Anything formed in an earlier year and since dissolved has dropped off it, so the further back the chart goes the more it undercounts. That alone makes every trade look like it is growing. Some of the rise here is real growth and some of it is simply that recent companies have had less time to close.
The tell is that it happens everywhere at once. On the yearly series, 39 of the 39 trades show 2025 above 2015, including trades that anyone in them will tell you have had a hard decade. Twenty-four separate industries do not all grow together. What is really happening is that a company incorporated in 2015 has had eleven more years to close and drop off the register than one incorporated in 2025.
So the only honest comparison this data supports over time is a like-for-like one: a run of months against the same run of months a year earlier, where both cohorts are equally recent and have had the same time to fail. That is the measure every growth figure on this site is built on, and the long-run charts are labelled with this warning wherever they appear. The long view of UK company formation works through it in full.
What this method produces.
504,685 company registrations counted over the twelve months to October 2026, across six families.
All 39 trades · Every town counted · The long view
Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Source: Companies House bulk company data, snapshot 1 November 2026.
298,620 new companies, registered March to November 2026. Any month from £15.
298,620 companies registered across the UK in March to November 2026 are in the file, each with its name, number, registered address, directors and trade. Every company registered, with its website, email and phone number where we can find one. Most companies this new have no website yet, so many rows will be the company, its address and its directors.
Bought per trade, or as one file for a family of trades. National, the whole UK; filter by town in the file. Any month from £15. 3p a company, £15 minimum an order. Pick one month, any mix, or everything.
- Construction 42,816 companies £1156.03
- Property investment & letting 41,417 companies £1118.26
- Online retail 33,130 companies £894.51
- Management consultancy 23,346 companies £630.34
- Web & software development 18,602 companies £502.25
- Every trade, with its count and price
Every list shows its count and price before you pay. Pay by card; within a minute an email tells you when your file will arrive.
Not ready to buy? Every one of the 39 trades has a free sample: its 25 newest companies, with each one's registered address and directors, as a CSV. Pick the trade.