Hit OpenCorporates' 200/month limit? Here's a free passthrough to UK/EU registries

OpenCorporates' free key allows 50 calls a day. OpenRegistry's anonymous tier allows 20 calls a minute, across 16 UK/EU/EEA company registries.

If you've been rationing OC quota all month, paste this and you have data:

curl "https://openregistry.sophymarine.com/api/v1/companies?q=monzo&jurisdiction=GB"

The rest of this post is the comparison numbers, what you actually get in the response, two concrete use cases, and the three ways to call the API (HTTP REST, HTTP RPC, or MCP for AI agents).

The free-tier numbers, side by side

OpenCorporates' published pricing:

OpenRegistry's published pricing:

The headline: 20 calls/min sustained is roughly 28,800/day. OC's free tier is 50/day. Same direction, about 576× the daily headroom, no licence clause attached. When you do outgrow free, $9/mo is the next step instead of a £2,250 annual contract.

How the free tier works

There is no ingested snapshot. Each tool call is a real-time HTTP request from the worker out to the upstream government registry. Your response carries a unified envelope plus the registry's own JSON payload preserved under jurisdiction_data, so an audit reviewer can trace any field back to the statutory source.

A real response from /api/v1/companies/GB/09446231, trimmed:

{
  "queried_at": "2026-05-17T06:02:24+01:00 (Europe/London)",
  "jurisdiction": "GB",
  "company_id": "09446231",
  "company_name": "MONZO BANK LIMITED",
  "status": "active",
  "incorporation_date": "2015-02-18",
  "registered_address": "Broadwalk House, 5 Appold Street, London, EC2A 2AG, England",
  "jurisdiction_data": {
    "company_number": "09446231",
    "company_status": "active",
    "type": "ltd",
    "date_of_creation": "2015-02-18",
    "sic_codes": ["64191", "64999"],
    "has_charges": false,
    "has_insolvency_history": false,
    "accounts": { /* full Companies House accounts block */ }
  }
}

A 3-country per-minute cross-border fan-out cap applies on the anonymous tier (raised on Pro/Max). Cayman Islands is paid-tier only because the upstream CIMA register charges per query; everywhere else is free anonymous.

UK, EU and EEA coverage today

The 16 registries with first-party government APIs already wired for search and profile:

UK & Crown dependencies

• UK Companies House (GB)
• Isle of Man Companies Registry (IM)

EU member states

• France Recherche d'entreprises (Sirene + RNE + RNA, open API) (FR)
• Ireland CRO (IE)
• Belgium Crossroads Bank for Enterprises (CBE / KBO / BCE) (BE)
• Italy InfoCamere via the EU BRIS e-Justice gateway (IT)
• Spain BORME (ES)
• Poland KRS (PL)
• Czechia ARES (CZ)
• Finland PRH avoindata (FI)
• Cyprus DRCOR (CY)

EEA + EFTA + microstates

• Norway Brreg / Enhetsregisteret (NO)
• Switzerland Zefix (CH)
• Iceland Skatturinn / Fyrirtækjaskrá (IS)
• Liechtenstein Handelsregister (LI)
• Monaco RCI (MC)

Three ways to call it

Same handlers, same auth, same rate-limit pipeline behind all three. Pick by client.

Option A — HTTP REST (/api/v1/...)

For backend code that already speaks resource-oriented HTTP. Routes:

GET /api/v1/jurisdictions[/{cc}]
GET /api/v1/companies?q=&jurisdiction=
GET /api/v1/companies/{jur}/{id}
GET /api/v1/companies/{jur}/{id}/officers
GET /api/v1/companies/{jur}/{id}/shareholders
GET /api/v1/companies/{jur}/{id}/filings
GET /api/v1/officers?q=&jurisdiction=
GET /api/v1/documents/{jur}/{id}
GET /api/v1/documents/{jur}/{id}/content       (raw bytes)
GET /api/v1/documents/{jur}/{id}/navigation

Two lines of Python:

import requests

r = requests.get(
    "https://openregistry.sophymarine.com/api/v1/companies",
    params={"q": "monzo bank", "jurisdiction": "GB"},
)
print(r.json()["results"])

A profile per country, using the registry's own company ID:

# UK Companies House (Monzo Bank)
curl "https://openregistry.sophymarine.com/api/v1/companies/GB/09446231"

# France Sirene/RNE (Danone, SIREN)
curl "https://openregistry.sophymarine.com/api/v1/companies/FR/552032534"

# Poland KRS (Polskie Koleje Państwowe / PKP)
curl "https://openregistry.sophymarine.com/api/v1/companies/PL/0000019193"

# Norway Brreg (Equinor ASA, org.nr)
curl "https://openregistry.sophymarine.com/api/v1/companies/NO/923609016"

# Italy InfoCamere via BRIS (Candy Hoover Group)
curl "https://openregistry.sophymarine.com/api/v1/companies/IT/04666310158"

Officers, beneficial owners and the share register sit on separate sub-paths because in most EU registries they correspond to separate filings and collapsing them loses information.

Option B — HTTP RPC (/api/v1/rpc/{tool_name})

For code that already thinks in tool names, or for tools whose input is awkward to encode as a REST path. URL is always /api/v1/rpc/{tool_name}; args go in the query string on GET or a JSON body on POST:

# Same call as the REST search, RPC style:
curl "https://openregistry.sophymarine.com/api/v1/rpc/search_companies?q=monzo&jurisdiction=GB"

# Profile via POST + JSON body:
curl -X POST https://openregistry.sophymarine.com/api/v1/rpc/get_company_profile \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"jurisdiction":"GB","company_id":"09446231"}'

Easiest path if you already have working MCP-tool code and want to drop it onto a plain HTTPS client without rewriting argument plumbing.

Option C — MCP transport (/mcp)

For AI agents. Works in Claude Desktop, Cursor, Cline, Goose, Zed, Claude Code:

// claude_desktop_config.json
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "openregistry": {
      "url": "https://openregistry.sophymarine.com/mcp",
      "transport": "http"
    }
  }
}

For Claude Code:

claude mcp add --transport http OpenRegistry https://openregistry.sophymarine.com/mcp

Visible tools: search_companies, search_officers, get_company_profile, get_officers, get_shareholders, list_filings, get_document_metadata, get_document_navigation, fetch_document, list_jurisdictions. Each comes with an MCP input + output schema, so the agent gets static validation without you writing a wrapper.

Which to pick

Auth, redaction, rate limiting and the per-country fan-out cap are identical across all three.

Try it

Three things you can do right now:

1. Run the search: curl "https://openregistry.sophymarine.com/api/v1/companies?q=apple&jurisdiction=GB"
2. Wire the MCP endpoint into your Claude Desktop / Cursor / Cline config and ask it "look up Monzo Bank on Companies House and summarise its latest filing".
3. Read the full comparison against Sayari, BvD/Orbis, D&B and GLEIF: OpenCorporates alternatives compared.

Docs and the live capability matrix are at openregistry.sophymarine.com.

OpenRegistry is a platform by Sophymarine.