How to Find Newly Incorporated Companies in the UK

Every working day, approximately 2,500 new companies are incorporated in the United Kingdom. For anyone selling B2B services — accountants, insurance brokers, web agencies, banks, telecoms providers — these newly registered businesses represent the warmest possible leads. They need everything, and they need it now.

But how do you actually find them? In this guide, we'll walk through every method available in 2026, from free government resources to automated data feeds, so you can choose the approach that works best for your business.

Method 1: Companies House free search

The most obvious starting point is Companies House, the UK government's official registrar of companies. Every company incorporated in England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland appears on their register.

You can search the register for free at find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk. The search tool lets you look up companies by name, company number, or officer name.

Limitations of Companies House search

• No "browse new companies" feature — you can only search by name or number, not by date of incorporation
• No sector filtering — there's no way to see only construction companies, or only retail businesses
• No contact data — Companies House records include registered addresses but not email addresses, phone numbers, or websites
• Manual and time-consuming — you'd need to search one company at a time

Companies House search is excellent for looking up a specific company you already know about. It's not designed for discovering new companies or building prospect lists.

Method 2: Companies House API

For more technical users, Companies House offers a free REST API that provides programmatic access to the company register. You can filter searches by incorporation date, retrieve company profiles, and access officer data.

We've written a detailed comparison of the Companies House API versus manual research if you're considering building your own solution. The short version: it works, but there are significant practical limitations.

API challenges

• Rate limiting — 600 requests per five minutes, which constrains how quickly you can pull data
• No bulk download endpoint — you need to query each company individually for detailed data
• Technical knowledge required — you'll need to write code to interact with the API, handle pagination, and manage errors
• Data requires processing — raw SIC codes need mapping to human-readable sector names
• No contact enrichment — the API returns the same data as the web search: no emails, phones, or websites

If you have development resources and only need a small volume of data, the API can work. For most sales teams, the overhead doesn't justify the output.

Method 3: Companies House bulk data products

Companies House publishes free bulk data snapshots that you can download as CSV files. These include a complete snapshot of the register (updated monthly) and a daily update file of new incorporations and changes.

The daily update file is the closest thing to a "new companies list" that Companies House offers for free. However, it requires significant processing to extract just the new incorporations, and it still lacks contact data.

Method 4: Commercial data providers

Several commercial providers offer access to UK company data with various levels of enrichment and filtering. Here's how the major options compare:

The key difference is focus. Most commercial providers treat new company data as a small feature within a broader product. NewCo Data is built specifically around new incorporations — it's all we do, which means fresher data, better sector classification, and a fraction of the cost. Read our full comparison of business lead costs in the UK for more detail.

Method 5: Automated daily feeds

This is the approach we recommend for most B2B sales teams. Rather than manually searching, querying APIs, or processing bulk files, you subscribe to an automated feed that delivers new company data to your inbox every morning.

With NewCo Data, here's what that looks like in practice:

1. Choose your sectors — select from 40+ industry categories based on SIC codes
2. Receive daily emails — every working day before 9am, you receive a list of companies incorporated the previous day in your chosen sectors
3. Each record includes — company name, Companies House number, director names, registered address, company website, email address, and phone number where available
4. Download as CSV — import directly into your CRM, mail merge, or outreach tool

This is how many of the UK's fastest-growing accountancy practices, insurance brokerages, and web agencies build their new business pipelines. Read how accountants use NewCo Data, or see strategies for insurance brokers and web agencies.

Method 6: The London Gazette

The London Gazette (and its Scottish and Belfast equivalents) publishes official notices of company incorporations. It's free to search online, but the format is designed for legal notification rather than lead generation. There's no way to filter by sector, and you won't find contact details.

It's worth knowing about as a free resource, but it's not practical for building a prospecting pipeline.

Method 7: Social media monitoring

Some sales teams monitor social media for new business announcements. People often post on LinkedIn or Twitter when they've incorporated a new company. Tools like LinkedIn Sales Navigator can surface some of these, but coverage is inconsistent and you're relying on founders choosing to announce publicly.

Social monitoring works well as a supplement to data-driven approaches, not as a replacement.

Which method should you use?

It depends on your volume needs, technical capability, and budget:

• Occasional lookups → Companies House free search
• Technical teams, small volume → Companies House API
• Data teams, custom processing → Bulk data products
• Sales teams, daily prospecting → Automated daily feeds (NewCo Data)

For most B2B service providers, the calculation is straightforward. Your time has value. If you spend two hours a day manually finding and researching new companies, that's over 500 hours a year. A NewCo Data subscription starts at £99/month and delivers the data to your inbox before you've had your morning coffee.

What to do once you've found new companies

Finding new companies is only step one. To convert them into clients, you need a solid outreach strategy. We've written guides on this for specific industries:

• Best ways to find new clients as an accountant
• How insurance brokers find new business clients
• How web agencies win new business from day-one companies
• What every new company needs in its first 30 days

The common thread across all of these: speed matters. The first service provider to reach a newly incorporated company has a massive advantage. Most new company directors will go with the first credible option that contacts them, rather than shopping around.

Key takeaways

Over 2,500 companies are incorporated in the UK every working day. Companies House is the official source but isn't designed for lead generation. Commercial data providers vary hugely in cost, focus, and freshness. Automated daily feeds are the most efficient method for sales teams. And speed is critical — the businesses that reach new companies first win the most clients.

Ready to start? Try NewCo Data free for 7 days and see how many new prospects are incorporating in your sector every single day.