UK company name check.

Type suffix, punctuation, spaces, a final S, a leading The and www. The comparison rule is taken from Schedule 3 of The Company, Limited Liability Partnership and Business (Names and Trading Disclosures) Regulations 2015 and has been tested against the authority's own name availability page: accented letters are simplified, endings such as Ltd and PLC are removed from the end, and equivalents such as & and AND are merged; trailing expressions such as "& Co", "UK" and ".co.uk", punctuation, a final letter S, a leading "The", "www" and spaces are ignored.

Status information is taken from Companies House; the authority assesses whether a closed record is an obstacle. The status of each record is taken from Companies House and is shown with the authority's own wording where it differs from the label. The colour of the chip shows only the type of status: blue means the record is open, amber means a liquidation or insolvency process, grey means the record has closed. Companies House assesses whether a closed record is an obstacle to your name; this tool gives no ruling on that.

A name that differs by only a few characters may meet an objection. Similar names do not count as the same. However, a name that differs by only a few characters may be treated as "too like" and be required to change within 12 months of registration; for this reason the other close records returned by the Companies House search are also listed, in the authority's own order.

It does not guarantee that the name can be registered. Restricted and sensitive words, trademark rights and Companies House's own assessment are a separate stage; the decision is made by Companies House at the time of application.

The name you enter is sent to Companies House through our server when you press the search button. Our server does not record or store the name; Companies House sees the address of our server, not yours.