Free company credit check: what you can (and can't) learn

Updated 22 July 2026 · 6 min read · Kestrel Alert

You can credit check a UK limited company without paying for a report: Companies House shows its accounts, charges, directors and filing record for free, The Gazette shows insolvency and strike-off notices for free, and the official judgment register lets you check for CCJs for a few pounds. Paid credit reports mostly repackage these same sources into a score. What no one-off check gives you, free or paid, is warning when the picture changes, and the change is what costs suppliers money.

What can I check for free?

Companies House (free): the company's status (active, in administration, liquidation, or facing strike-off), its accounts and whether they're overdue, registered charges, current and resigned directors, and the full filing history. Our guide on checking if a company is in financial trouble walks through what to look for.
The Gazette (free): the official record of insolvency events, from winding-up petitions to administration appointments and strike-off notices.
The judgment register (a few pounds per search): county court judgments aren't on Companies House; they're on the official Register of Judgments, Orders and Fines. See our guide on checking a company for CCJs.

Between them, these cover almost everything that is publicly knowable about a UK limited company, from the official sources, at close to zero cost.

What do paid credit reports add?

Commercial credit bureaus start from the same public record, then layer on a score, a suggested credit limit, consolidated CCJ data, and (the genuinely hard-to-replicate part) trade payment data: pooled ledger information showing how late the company actually pays its suppliers. For a large exposure, a paid report and possibly credit insurance are worth the money.

But for the everyday question ("is this customer safe to keep supplying on 30-day terms?"), the raw signals a score is built from are sitting in the free record, and you can read them yourself in about ten minutes.

How do I read the free record?

Check the status line first: any strike-off or insolvency marker means stop.
Are the accounts or confirmation statement overdue?
Any recent new charges, especially to invoice financiers or short-term lenders?
Director resignations, particularly a finance director or several at once?
Search the company name and number in The Gazette's insolvency notices.

Why isn't a one-off check enough?

Because a check is a snapshot and insolvency is a process. Filed accounts can be up to 21 months out of date the day you read them, and the events that actually precede a failure (a new charge, accounts going overdue, a petition in The Gazette) appear after you ran your check, in the months when you've stopped looking. Most bad debt isn't a customer who looked risky at account opening; it's a customer who was fine at account opening and deteriorated later.

That re-checking is the part Kestrel Alert automates: we watch the same official sources continuously and email you in plain English, with a link to the filing, the day a customer's record changes. Your first company is free to watch, so the continuous version of the check costs what the one-off version did: nothing.