Business verification APIs compared
A Legal Entity Identifier or a UK company number read against open registers synced onto this server: legal name, whether the entity is still live, jurisdiction and incorporation date.
Below are the 2 services Spaw is measured against for business verification, each with the figures its own public pricing and documentation pages state. Every row carries the date that vendor's pages were read, which is its own and need not match the others'; a row those pages carry no value for reads "not on the pages read" rather than a guess. Corrections are welcome at [email protected].
| service | pricing model | free tier | price per 1,000 at ~10k | registers held | checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spaw | Pay-as-you-go credit packs, or optional monthly plans that deposit the same credits every month for less; both through Stripe Checkout, credits from either never expire | 10 free credits every month, no card required | $7.80 (Growth pack: 5,000 credits for $39), or $5.80 on the Growth monthly plan (5,000 credits for $29 a month) | Two, synced as bulk files onto the server so no third party sits in the request path: the GLEIF Level 1 golden copy of Legal Entity Identifiers, refreshed daily by its publisher, and the Companies House free company data product for the United Kingdom, republished monthly. Every answer carries the date of the copy it read. | own pricing page |
| Spaw vs Companies House API | No price is published on the developer pages checked; access is through a registered application and its key. | not on the pages read | not on the pages read | One, and the authoritative one: the UK register itself, answered live rather than from a copy. | 2026-09-10 |
| Spaw vs OpenCorporates | Annual or monthly API plans capped by call count rather than sold by volume: Essentials "£ 2,250/year" or "£225 per month" ("Up to 500 API calls/mth", "Up to 200 API calls/day"), Starter "£ 6,600/year" (2,500 a month, 500 a day), Basic "£ 12,000/year" (5,000 a month, 1,000 a day), Enterprise by consultation with bulk-data delivery | Free at-scale access for investigative journalists, NGOs, universities and anti-crime-and-corruption research groups rather than a free plan, in the site's own words | not on the pages read | Company registers, aggregated. The pricing page does not list which ones; choosing jurisdictions is an Enterprise plan feature. | 2026-09-10 |
Spaw vs Companies House API
The Companies House Public Data API is the UK registrar's own service: "The Companies House API lets you retrieve information about limited companies (and other companies that fall within the Companies Act 2006). The data returned is live and real-time, and is simple to use and understand."
Where it fits better: Anyone who needs the UK register as it stands right now, and only the UK register. It is the registrar's own service and will always be more current than a copy of its monthly file.
Full comparisonCompanies House API alternativesCompanies House API's own sitechecked 2026-09-10
Spaw vs OpenCorporates
OpenCorporates is a company-data business built on open company registers, sold as annual API plans capped by monthly and daily call counts, with bulk-data delivery and a choice of jurisdictions on the enterprise plan.
Where it fits better: Investigators and data teams that need company records across many jurisdictions, and can work within a plan capped at a few thousand calls a month.
Full comparisonOpenCorporates alternativesOpenCorporates's own sitechecked 2026-09-10
What Spaw answers
- Registers held
- Two, synced as bulk files onto the server so no third party sits in the request path: the GLEIF Level 1 golden copy of Legal Entity Identifiers, refreshed daily by its publisher, and the Companies House free company data product for the United Kingdom, republished monthly. Every answer carries the date of the copy it read.
- Jurisdiction coverage
- A LEI is global by construction; company numbers are GB only today, because a company number is unique only inside its own register. Anything else answers unsupported_register, free.
- Cross-register comparison
- Yes: where a LEI record names a Companies House number and both files are installed, the legal name and the status are compared and both sides are quoted in agreements, with flags for a disagreement or for a company the national register records as dissolved.
- Registered address returned
- No, deliberately: a registered address is very often somebody's home. The response carries country and jurisdiction, which are enough to answer whether the entity is real and live.
POST /v1/entity — 1 credit when a register answers. Free: malformed identifiers, and registers not installed. Every rule is on the pricing page.
The other signals
Check the table against your own data
Every Spaw account gets free credits every month with no card, and one key answers every signal. Check up to 500 identifiers in one call, or save a list that re-checks itself and tells you when a company leaves the register. The pricing page has every billing rule in full.
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