Data

Status of the UK company database: scope, fields and limits

This page shows the current figures for our UK dataset, the breakdown by nation, the contact coverage, the sources still in progress and official comparison figures; every figure is given with its source and date.

Data as at 4 November 2026 · Official figures: ONS (March 2026) · Companies House snapshot of 1 November 2026

The UK company dataset

Counted on 4 November 2026: 2,676,396 records, 2,566,320 of them with phone, email or website. The records come from the open map data of Overture Maps (release 2026-10-21.0, licence CDLA Permissive 2.0); email addresses also come from the businesses’ own websites, which we are still reading. Still in progress and not yet included in the figures: the Companies House register (matching in progress) and phone numbers from company websites (after checking). Collection is ongoing and we update the figures as it progresses.

  • 2,676,396records in total (businesses and sites)
  • 2,661,125of them active
  • 2,566,320with phone, email or website
  • 2,287,177with phone number
  • 745,988with their own email address
  • 2,185,581with website

As of 4 November 2026. Of 4,320,514 places in the UK extract of Overture Maps, we keep only those with a name and a confidence score of at least 0.77, leaving out natural features such as mountains, lakes and beaches; 1,632,537 places fell below that score and 11,581 were natural features. Active means: the source does not mark the place as permanently closed; 15,271 records are marked as closed. The contact figures refer to all records; a record can have several contact fields, so the figures overlap and must not be added up. Phone numbers so far come from Overture Maps only, and a number shared by three or more records with different names is not counted; numbers found on websites are not counted until they have been checked. An email address only counts as the record’s own address if it is not shared by three or more records with different names (at least 23,229 such addresses are excluded); data protection, newsletter and technical mailboxes such as dpo@, privacy@, newsletter@, noreply@ or webmaster@ never count as the record’s own address. With any email address there are 929,740 records, and 204,882 records have their own address only from their website. A record is a business or a site with its own location; a business with several locations can appear more than once.

Reading company websites (in progress)

We visit the websites listed in the UK map data, including those of places below our confidence threshold, and read their contact and legal pages for email addresses. On 4 November 2026 we had visited 910,010 domains; 603,041 of them were live websites, and 369,412 of these showed at least one email address of the business itself or a freemail address (addresses of web designers and role mailboxes such as dpo@ are not kept). Collection is still running, so these figures are a snapshot and will grow.

Companies House register (matching in progress)

The free Companies House snapshot of 1 November 2026 lists 5,711,779 live companies, 5,596,581 of them with the status “Active” or “Active – Proposal to Strike off” (417,325 with a proposal to strike off). It contains company numbers, registered offices, company types, status and SIC codes, but no phone numbers, email addresses or websites. So far we have matched 293,744 company numbers with places in the Overture data, either by the full name confirmed by the street address or the website domain, or by a distinctive word of the name at the same address. The matching ran over all 4,320,514 Overture places in the UK, including places below our 0.77 confidence threshold; how many of the matched places are among the 2,676,396 records counted above has not been measured yet. The matching is not finished and is not included in the figures above. The download page states no licence; Companies House said on its forum (4 November 2021) that it “imposes no rules or requirements on how the information on the public register is used”.

Target scope: an estimate (4 November 2026)

Estimate, not a stock: as a guide to the size of the market, we take the 2,786,985 businesses registered for VAT and/or PAYE according to the ONS, UK business: activity, size and location 2026 (March 2026). Many very small sole traders are not registered for either and are not in that figure; on the other hand, not every registered business has a public location or contact details. We only deliver what the dataset actually contains and the quote confirms.

By nation

The nation follows from the postcode of the record’s address (for postcode districts that cross a border, the country most of the district lies in); without a postcode, from the region code in the map data. The number of businesses according to the ONS is shown alongside for comparison.

The table can be scrolled sideways.

Records in our dataset by nation, as at 4 November 2026, compared with businesses registered for VAT and/or PAYE according to the ONS (March 2026).
Nationrecordsof them activewith contactbusinesses (ONS)
England2,253,6602,240,6642,171,4772,423,150
Scotland204,521203,227194,607176,000
Wales113,238112,682107,920106,170
Northern Ireland63,97163,58960,87181,665
no nation assigned41,00640,96331,445–
United Kingdom2,676,3962,661,1252,566,3202,786,985

With contact = with phone, website or own email address. No nation assigned = no valid UK postcode and no usable region code, for example places in the Crown Dependencies. Official figure: ONS, UK business: activity, size and location 2026, enterprises in March 2026, published 24 September 2026, retrieved on 4 November 2026. Our records have not been matched to the statistical definition of a business (one business can have several locations, some records are places without a business registered for VAT or PAYE behind them), so the two columns are not directly comparable.

Status by industry

The 21 industries with their UK SIC 2007 codes, the official number of businesses and the price for a one-off export of the whole industry (full price). None of the records in our dataset has been assigned to an industry yet, so there are no figures of our own per industry. The quote states the scope of your selection.

The table can be scrolled sideways.

UK industries: official figure (size of the market), our own figure and price, as at 4 November 2026.
IndustryUK SIC 2007Official figurein our datasetIndustry price
Professional and business servicesSIC 69, 70, 73262,090 businesses in the UK–£379
Construction and building tradesSIC 41, 42, 43392,850 businesses in the UK–£379
ManufacturingSIC 13–33116,040 businesses in the UK–£349
Real estate and property managementSIC 68130,040 businesses in the UK–£349
Energy, water and wasteSIC 35, 36–3915,720 businesses in the UK–£309
Hospitality and tourismSIC 55, 56, 79190,380 businesses in the UK–£349
Agriculture and food productionSIC 01–03, 10–11152,520 businesses in the UK–£349
Transport and logisticsSIC 49–53119,195 businesses in the UK–£309
IT and softwareSIC 62, 63132,105 businesses in the UK–£349
Architects and engineering consultanciesSIC 7181,090 businesses in the UK–£349
Health, social care and wellbeingSIC 86–88, 96.02, 96.04178,350 businesses in the UK–£269
Finance and insuranceSIC 64–6659,005 businesses in the UK–£229
Councils and public sector bodiesSIC 848,150 businesses in the UK–£309
Motor trade and garagesSIC 4584,785 businesses in the UK–£199
Retail and online retailSIC 47, −47.73, −47.74207,535 businesses in the UK–£309
Wholesale and trade agentsSIC 46100,850 businesses in the UK–£349
Pharmacies, opticians and hearing careSIC 47.73, 47.74, 47.788,395 businesses in the UK–£309
Education and trainingSIC 8551,745 businesses in the UK–£269
Associations, sport and cultureSIC 90–93, 94101,020 businesses in the UK–£229
Cleaning, facilities and landscapingSIC 8155,570 businesses in the UK–£309
Recruitment and staffing agenciesSIC 7830,260 businesses in the UK–£349

– = no industry assignment in the dataset yet. Official figure: ONS, UK business: activity, size and location 2026 (businesses registered for VAT and/or PAYE in March 2026, by UK SIC 2007 division and class; every value rounded to 5 by the ONS). What is counted per industry is given on each industry page. The industry figures cannot be added up to the total, because some industries are only parts of a division.

Contact coverage

Share of records with a stored phone number, own email address or website, across all records and across active records only. There are no figures per industry yet.

The table can be scrolled sideways.

Contact fields in our dataset, as at 4 November 2026; shares rounded to one decimal place.
Fieldall recordsshareactive recordsshare
Phone number2,287,17785.5%2,273,63785.4%
Own email address745,98827.9%743,50427.9%
Website2,185,58181.7%2,175,56681.8%
at least one of these contacts2,566,32095.9%2,551,95595.9%
All records2,676,396100%2,661,125100%

The records come from map data, which mainly list businesses with a location and contact details; the shares apply to these records, not to all businesses in the UK. The share describes for how many records a contact field is stored, not how many numbers or mailboxes can be reached. Email addresses have not been checked for deliverability.

What the contact fields are for

Phone, email address and website help you match records in your CRM, detect duplicates and contact businesses. Under PECR, marketing emails to limited companies, PLCs and LLPs need no prior consent if you identify yourself and offer an opt-out; sole traders and partnerships outside Scotland need consent or a soft opt-in (regulation 22(3)). Before sales calls, numbers must be screened against TPS and CTPS (regulation 21); the export is not screened. More in the guide PECR rules for B2B email and calls.

Four terms worth telling apart

  • Present: the field contains a value in the stored records.
  • Current: a statement about the status of the source; it does not guarantee the value is unchanged today.
  • Reachable: a letter can be delivered or a number reached. Our field counts do not prove this.
  • Lawfully usable: your specific purpose must be lawful. Buying data does not replace any consent that is required, nor TPS screening.

For a clean import, handle empty fields and possible duplicates explicitly in your import process. The export and sample file page shows the columns and checks.

For comparison: official statistics and the register

The following figures come from the ONS, Companies House and Eurostat. They describe the market, not our dataset, and count by their own rules.

  • 2,786,985businesses registered for VAT and/or PAYE (ONS, March 2026)
  • 3,232,415local units (sites) of these businesses (ONS, March 2026)
  • 5,711,779live companies on the Companies House register (1 November 2026)
  • 33,978,235businesses in the 27 EU member states (Eurostat 2024)

UK: ONS, UK business: activity, size and location 2026, published 24 September 2026, retrieved on 4 November 2026; local units: ONS workbook, Table 16. Register: Companies House BasicCompanyData, counted by reading the whole snapshot on 4 November 2026. EU: Eurostat, Structural Business Statistics (sbs_ovw_act), EU-27. More: EU and other markets and UK business statistics.

How to read the figures

  • A count is not a delivery. The figures describe the records on the reference date; the number in the quote is what you receive for your selection.
  • Official statistics are not a dataset. The figures from the ONS, Companies House and Eurostat describe the market, not the size of our exports.
  • The field you need is what counts. How many records in a selection have a complete address, a phone number or an email address is stated in the quote.
  • The page date is not the data date. Revising this page does not change how current the data are.

Published versions

  • 2,676,396 records, 2,661,125 of them active and 2,566,320 with at least one contact (2,287,177 with phone, 745,988 with own email address, 2,185,581 with website), plus the breakdown by nation. Sources: Overture Maps and company websites; Companies House matching in progress.

Need data from a particular industry?

Name the industry, region, the fields you need and the intended use. We confirm scope, the date of the data and price in the quote.

Send a request · UK industries · Export structure · Data by nation and region · Pricing