How many UK companies have a website on record, and what does that mean?

As counted on 19 October 2026, Lockley's index holds 5,578,656 active UK companies, and 675,043 of them have a website found and confirmed. That is about 12.1% of active companies. For a seller, the consequence is plain: most UK companies cannot be researched from a website, so the public registers are often the sole source of a reason to call.

How to read these numbers

The counts come from Lockley's own index, from the Companies House register and from websites confirmed company by company. They are counts, and nothing is inferred. The percentages below are simple arithmetic on those counts.

Active companies with a confirmed website: 675,043 of 5,578,656, or about 12.1%. Companies whose website has been read and written up as a card: 295,331, about 43.8% of those with a website and about 5.3% of all active companies. Companies with named people on record: 171,916, about 3.1% of active companies.

The register includes many dormant-style, single-director, holding and property companies that have no public website at all, and a confirmed website means one was found and checked, not guessed. A company without a website on record may still have one that has not been matched.

What this means for UK sellers

First, website-based research tools cover a minority of UK companies. If your tool depends on reading company sites, it will not see the large majority of the register. That is true of many scraped-contact products as well.

Second, the public registers reach further. Every active company has an entry at Companies House with officers, filings and charges. Contracts Finder and Find a Tender cover public contracts. Job postings cover employers that are hiring. A signal from a register does not need a website.

Third, the best prospects are not always the ones with websites. A newly incorporated company with a new director may have no site yet and still be a strong reason to call, as long as you can state the record and the date.

How Lockley uses both

Lockley reads public registers and postings every night: Companies House, Contracts Finder and Find a Tender, job postings, planning registers, and each company's own website where there is one. Each finding links to the record it came from, so a seller can check it before calling. The index is described further in how many UK companies you can research.

Limits

The counts are a snapshot taken on one day and will change as companies are formed, struck off and matched to websites. They describe Lockley's index, not every website in the UK. Use them as a guide to the shape of the market, not as a census.

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