Free company and jobs data APIs: Companies House, SEC EDGAR and USAJOBS
Published 30 October 2026
If you need company or jobs data in a spreadsheet or a script, start with the official sources. Three of the most useful are free: UK company data from Companies House, US company filings from the SEC's EDGAR system, and US federal jobs from USAJOBS. Each works differently, so here's what each one gives you, its limits, and what trips people up.
The three sources at a glance
| Source | What it covers | Key needed? | How fresh | |---|---|---|---| | Companies House Free Company Data Product | Basic data on every live UK company | No, it's a free download | Monthly, within 5 working days of month end | | SEC EDGAR | Filings, Form D private offerings and key financials for companies and others that file with the SEC | No, but declare who you are | A company's filings update as they're accepted; daily indexes are built each business-day evening, US Eastern time | | USAJOBS Search API | Open US federal job announcements | Yes, free from USAJOBS | Searches cover jobs posted up to 60 days ago |
Companies House: every live UK company
The Free Company Data Product is a monthly snapshot of basic data on live companies, provided free as zipped CSV files. The 1 October 2026 snapshot had 5,704,711 companies. It's compiled to the end of the previous month and published within 5 working days of month end.
Each company comes with its status, type, incorporation date, SIC codes, accounts and confirmation statement dates, charges, previous names and registered office. That's enough to search the register by industry and place.
Watch for:
- Live companies only. A company that drops out of the next file has usually been dissolved, and companies registered since the last month end appear in the next snapshot.
- Change volume. If you compare one month with the next, expect a lot of changes: October 2026 had 1,307,278 against September, across all change types. Filter by change type, SIC code, postcode or status.
- Licence. Companies House says it imposes no rules on how register information is used, but it isn't released under the Open Government Licence. Don't reproduce the Crown insignia.
- Home addresses. Some very small companies use a home address as their registered office, so think before you publish full addresses.
Our Companies House data guide goes into more detail.
SEC EDGAR: US company filings
The SEC publishes everything filed on EDGAR for free, and you don't need an API key. But there isn't one single API. A company's filings, filings by form type, Form D offerings and financial figures each come from a different source:
- One company's filings: the submissions JSON on data.sec.gov.
- Every filing of a form type: the daily form indexes.
- Form D private offerings: each filing's primary_doc.xml, found through the daily index.
- Key financials: the XBRL company facts JSON on data.sec.gov.
Full-text search covers filing text from 2001 onwards.
Watch for:
- Say who you are. Every request should send a User-Agent with your company name and a contact email. Scripts that don't are often refused.
- Stay under 10 requests a second. That's the SEC's current fair-access limit.
- Ten-digit CIKs. Pad company numbers with zeros in the API.
- Form D amounts aren't money raised. They're the total offering amount and the amount sold so far when the form was filed.
Our SEC EDGAR API guide has a working Python example.
USAJOBS: US federal jobs
USAJOBS, the US federal government's jobs site, publishes its open job announcements through a free Search API. You need a key, which you request on the USAJOBS developer site. Each request then sends three headers: Host, User-Agent (the email address you used to request the key) and Authorization-Key.
Watch for:
- Size limits. Up to 500 results a page and 10,000 a query, so split big searches by location, agency, series or posting date.
- Public jobs by default. Announcements for current federal employees and other status candidates need extra authorisation.
- Salary buckets. The minimum salary filter matches $25,000-wide buckets, not the exact figure, and pay isn't always yearly.
- Link, don't copy. Link to the official job page rather than copying the announcement.
Our USAJOBS API guide shows how to page through results in Python.
If you'd rather not build it
Disclosure: Your Evenings Ltd built and sells the three tools below on the Apify Store. They're independent and aren't affiliated with or endorsed by Companies House, the SEC, OPM, USAJOBS or any federal agency. Prices are Apify's base prices, charged per result; higher Apify plans pay less, and Apify adds a small start event to each run.
- UK Companies House Company Search & SIC Codes: search and look up live UK companies, get a typed monthly change feed, or monitor a list of companies. $0.003 per company row and $0.005 per change row. Status rows, filtered-out companies, unmatched names and duplicates are free, and a monitor's first run saves your list as a free baseline.
- SEC EDGAR Filings API: Form D, 8-K & XBRL (Unofficial): five modes covering filings, latest filings by form type, Form D offerings, full-text search and key financials, paced to at most 5 requests a second. $0.002 per filing, $0.003 per Form D or company financials row, and $0.01 per monitor run that finds something new.
- USAJOBS API (Unofficial): Federal Government Jobs: searches the official USAJOBS API with its own key, so you don't need one. $0.002 per job and $0.01 per monitor run that finds new jobs. Jobs your filters drop are free.
Search UK companies by industry and place
Start with UK company data: search every live company by SIC code, status or postcode, or track what changed in your list each month. See the Companies House data tool
Sources
- Companies House: Free Company Data Product
- SEC: EDGAR application programming interfaces and accessing EDGAR data
- USAJOBS developer site
- Our guides: Companies House data, SEC EDGAR API and USAJOBS API
- Our tools on the Apify Store, prices read on 30 October 2026.
This page summarises the sources above. It isn't legal advice.
Written with AI assistance by Your Evenings Ltd. Last updated: 30 October 2026.