How to get a list of UK companies by SIC code
If you need every UK company in a particular industry — all the software firms in the North West, say, or the ecommerce businesses incorporated in the last two years — the data is public and free at source. The hard part is never finding it; it's turning the raw register into a clean, de-duplicated list of companies that actually trade and have a website. Here are the honest routes, what each one gives you, and where each one stops.
The three DIY routes, and where they stop
| Route | Cost | What you get | Where it stops |
|---|---|---|---|
| Companies House Advanced Search | Free | Filter live companies by SIC code, incorporation date and location; download a CSV of register fields | No websites, no trading signal, no contact route; the export is capped and register-only |
| Free Company Data Product (bulk download) | Free | Every live company on the register in one file, fully unrestricted | Multi-gigabyte CSV — an engineering job to filter, and still no websites or trading signals |
| Fiverr / Apify scrapers | ~£5–50 per job | Someone else runs the filter and hands you a CSV | Unenriched and unverified; quality varies job to job; you still add websites yourself |
All three routes draw on the same underlying source: Companies House open data, the official UK register. The differences are how much work is left for you and what enrichment, if any, is added.
Picking the right SIC codes is most of the work
The register uses the UK SIC 2007 condensed list, and every company can register up to four codes. Two things follow from that. First, an industry almost never maps to a single code — “ marketing agencies”, for instance, spreads across advertising, media representation and PR codes — so a good list means choosing a group of related codes and merging the results. Second, companies self-select their codes at incorporation and rarely update them, so any list carries some mis-coding you have to expect and clean for. Getting the grouping and the de-duplication right is where a raw export becomes a usable list.
What none of the free routes give you
The register has no website field. It cannot tell you whether a company still trades or is a dormant shell. And it has no signal of commercial activity — whether a business is running ads, hiring, or taking payments online. For a mailing list of company names and registered addresses, that doesn't matter. For a list you intend to prospect into, those three gaps are the difference between a spreadsheet and a pipeline — which is its own comparison.
Need a specific cut of UK companies by SIC code? Give us the codes (or just the industry and we'll map them), plus region, company age and size band. You get one clean, de-duplicated CSV with each company's website verified against its register entry and live buying signals — delivered within 48 hours, fixed price from £149, quoted before you pay.
When the free route is the right answer
Honestly: if you want a raw list of company names and registered addresses for one sector, and you don't need websites or trading signals, the Companies House Advanced Search is free and does the job — start there and only pay when it genuinely can't. Firmfeed is the right choice when you need the enrichment the register doesn't carry: verified websites at scale, a way to tell trading companies from dormant ones, and a clean file you feed straight into your stack rather than a pipeline you have to build first.
Prefer an off-the-shelf example? UK Digital & Marketing Agencies — Verified + Buying Signals. 1,596 established UK agencies, every row with a website verified against the Companies House record and at least one live buying signal. £99 one-off, with a free 50-row sample so you can check the quality before you buy.
Frequently asked questions
What is a SIC code and where do I find the right ones?
A SIC code (Standard Industrial Classification) is the five-digit code every UK company picks to describe what it does — the current list is the UK SIC 2007 condensed set. Companies House lets each company register up to four SIC codes, so a single business can appear under several. The practical catch: companies self-select these codes at incorporation and rarely update them, so a clean industry list usually means picking a group of related codes, not one, and accepting that some firms are mis-coded. Getting that grouping right is most of the work in building a usable list.
Can I export a list by SIC code from Companies House for free?
Partly. The Companies House Advanced Search lets you filter live companies by SIC code, incorporation date and location and download the results as a CSV — free, and the right starting point. What it does not give you: any website, any signal of whether the company still trades, or contact routes. The export is register fields only. For a raw name-and-address list of one sector, it is genuinely all you need. For anything you intend to actually prospect into, it is the first 20% of the job.
Why is the free Companies House bulk file hard to use?
The Free Company Data Product is a single multi-gigabyte CSV covering every live company on the register. To pull one industry out of it you need to load and filter several million rows, which is an engineering job, not a spreadsheet one — and you still end up with no websites and no way to tell dormant shells from trading businesses. It is free and unrestricted, which is exactly right if you have the tooling; most people asking how to get a sector list do not want to stand up a data pipeline to do it.
How does Firmfeed build a SIC-code list differently?
We start from the same official register, then do the two things the free routes leave out: we verify each company's website against its register entry (no guessed domains) and we detect public buying signals — analytics tags, ad pixels, ecommerce checkouts, live careers pages — so you can sort by which companies are actually active. You tell us the SIC codes (or the industry, and we map the codes for you), the region, age and size band, and get one clean, de-duplicated CSV. Company-level data only — no scraped personal contacts, by design.
What does a custom SIC-code cut cost and how fast is it?
Fixed prices from £149, quoted before you pay, delivered as clean CSV within 48 hours of payment. No sales call and no quote-only wall — you see the price, accept it, and get the file. If your brief falls outside what we can build from public sources we say so at the scoping step rather than after you have paid.
Weighing up the paid options too? See the full UK company data providers guide for how the market compares, or the Endole alternative comparison if you're looking at a research subscription.