How many UK companies are there, and how many can you actually research?

Companies House lists 5,576,889 active UK companies in Lockley's index, counted on 4 October 2026. Only a small share of them can be researched properly from public information: 550,929 have a website on record, and Lockley has read the websites of 194,782 of them.

Those numbers matter to any seller buying a prospect list. A count of companies is not a count of prospects. Most registered companies are small, many are dormant or hold property, and the register tells you who a company is, not what it sells or whether it is worth a call.

From the register to a researched company

What the funnel means

The first drop, from 5,576,889 to 550,929, is the gap between being registered and being visible. Many companies have no website, and many registered entities are not trading businesses in any sense a seller would recognise. Lockley counts a website only when it has been found and confirmed, not inferred, so the figure is a floor and not a guess.

The second drop, to 194,782, is the work of actually reading what a company says about itself: what it sells, who buys from it and where it operates. A name and a registered address cannot tell you that.

The third figure, 14,706 companies with named people, is the smallest. People data from public sources is thin. Directors are on the register, and companies' own websites sometimes name a team, but most small companies name nobody beyond their directors. That is one reason Lockley does not sell contact lists.

What to do with this if you sell

Do not judge a data source by the size of its headline number. Ask what each record rests on: a registry entry, a confirmed website, a read page, a dated event. A short list with a reason and a link to the evidence beats a large list with none, especially for a small team that can make perhaps a dozen good calls a morning.

Weekly activity gives a sense of how much happens. In the week to 4 October 2026, Lockley recorded 662 significant roles posted, 136 first-of-function hires and 3,630 new charges registered. Those events, not the size of the register, are what give you reasons to call.

Lockley starts from these records: each morning it gives a small B2B sales team a short list of companies to call, each with the public record that says why now.

Questions