# Spaw vs OpenCorporates: business verification API comparison

How Spaw and OpenCorporates compare on pricing, billing rules, the registers behind each answer and limits, from OpenCorporates's public pages checked on 2026-09-10. Corrections: support@spaw.co.

| | Spaw | OpenCorporates |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Pricing model | 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 | 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 tier | 10 free credits every month, no card required | 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 |
| Price per 1,000 at about 10k | $7.80 (Growth pack: 5,000 credits for $39), or $5.80 on the Growth monthly plan (5,000 credits for $29 a month) | not on the pages read |
| Price per 1,000 at about 100k | $4.99 (Volume pack: 100,000 credits for $499), or $3.99 on the Volume monthly plan (100,000 credits for $399 a month) | not on the pages read |
| Identifiers no register carried billed | No: an identifier no installed register carries answers unknown_identifier or unsupported_register and costs nothing | not on the pages read |
| Malformed identifiers billed | No: a malformed identifier and a register that has not synced are free too, as are repeats within 7 days | not on the pages read |
| 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. | Company registers, aggregated. The pricing page does not list which ones; choosing jurisdictions is an Enterprise plan feature. |
| 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. | Not published on the pricing page checked. |
| 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. | not on the pages read |
| 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. | not on the pages read |
| Bulk limit | None: there is no bulk upload for this product, because nobody types a company number into a signup form | Bulk-data delivery is listed as an Enterprise plan feature |
| Batch API | 500 identifiers per synchronous request | not on the pages read |
| Rate limit | 50 requests per second per key on the business endpoints | Daily and monthly call caps rather than a per-second limit: 200 calls a day on Essentials, 500 on Starter, 1,000 on Basic |
| Official SDKs | Python, Node.js, PHP | not on the pages read |
| Data retention | Nothing beyond the credit ledger entry that bills the lookup; a monitored list stores the identifiers you saved and each one's status from its last run, and nothing else. | not on the pages read |

## When OpenCorporates 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.

- Far more jurisdictions than a two-register lookup can reach, and the enterprise plan lets you choose them
- Free at-scale access for journalists, NGOs, universities and anti-corruption researchers
- Bulk-data delivery for buyers who would rather hold the data than call an API
- The plans are priced by access rather than by lookup, so the cost does not move with volume

## When Spaw fits better

Developers who want to know an identifier belongs to a real, live entity, and want the LEI record and the national register checked against each other rather than trusted separately.

- OpenCorporates covers many more jurisdictions; Spaw holds two registers — the GLEIF LEI golden copy, which is global, and Companies House for the United Kingdom — and answers unsupported_register, free, for anything else
- OpenCorporates sells access capped per day and per month; Spaw bills 1 credit only when a register answers, and nothing when it does not
- Where a LEI record names a Companies House number, Spaw compares the two records and quotes both sides, so a disagreement is something you can read
- Spaw returns no registered address, deliberately: a registered address is very often somebody's home

## Questions

**Does Spaw charge for identifiers it cannot find?** No. A lookup costs 1 credit only when a register answers. A malformed identifier, one no register carries, an identifier from a register this server does not hold, and a register that has not synced are all free, because none of them told you anything you could not have worked out. A repeat of the same identifier within seven days is free too. OpenCorporates does not publish how it bills them.

**Can I check a list of identifiers?** In batches, and on a schedule. There is deliberately no bulk upload for this product: POST /v1/entity/batch takes 500 identifiers a call under the single-lookup billing rules, and a monitored list keeps up to 500 identifiers under a weekly or monthly re-check that emails you when one leaves a register, is recorded as dissolved, or stops agreeing with the other register.

**Is there a free tier?** Every Spaw account receives 10 free credits at the start of each month with no card on file, and unused credits accumulate. OpenCorporates offers: 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.

## Sources (checked 2026-09-10)

- [OpenCorporates pricing](https://opencorporates.com/pricing/)

OpenCorporates is a trademark of its owner. Spaw is not affiliated with it.

Reference: https://spaw.co/compare/opencorporates