OpenCorporates

OpenCorporates is a website that aggregates and shares data on corporations, presenting standardized records sourced directly from official business registries across more than 140 jurisdictions^[1][2]. It describes itself as the world's largest open legal-entity database and publishes its data under the copyleft Open Database License^[1][2][3].

The company, OpenCorporates Ltd, was incorporated on 18 December 2010 by Chris Taggart and Rob McKinnon, and the website launched on 20 December 2010^[2]. Its data underpins entity verification, anti-money-laundering investigations, procurement research, and academic work on corporate networks and tax havens^[1][2].

What It Does

OpenCorporates unifies company records dispersed across hundreds of hard-to-navigate business registers into a single searchable database, providing fresh, standardized, auditable information direct from primary sources^[1]. The collected data includes the entity's name, date of incorporation, registered addresses, and the names of directors, with some data such as ownership structure contributed by users^[2].

Data And Methodology

Data are sourced from national business registries and other official sources in over 140 jurisdictions and presented in standardized form^[1][2]. The company publishes Legal-Entity Data Principles that it positions as the industry standard for legal-entity data, emphasizing provenance from primary sources, open identifiers, and curated decision-making^[1].

Products

Offerings include a free web search over companies and officers, an advanced search interface, an API for programmatic access, and bulk data delivery, documented in the company's knowledge base alongside data dictionaries and coverage notes^[1].

Delivery And Pricing

Access models range from the public website—where registration is optional but required for certain information such as some directors and incorporation details^[2]—to paid API and bulk-data subscriptions listed on its pricing page^[1]. The site reports over 5 million searches made every month and states that 80% of North America and Europe's largest banks use OpenCorporates' data^[1].

Buyers And Use Cases

The company targets entity verification for customer onboarding and KYC, third-party risk management, financial-crime investigations, master-data management, and business discovery, with customers across financial services, professional services, government, and real estate, plus public-benefit use by NGOs, journalists, and academics^[1]. Documented third-party usage includes research on public procurement, analyses of tax havens and illicit corporate activity, and company-network visualization^[2]. In alternative data stacks it functions as a foundational corporate-registry layer comparable to SEC EDGAR filings for U.S.-listed companies.

History

Founded in 2010 out of frustration with fragmented registry access, OpenCorporates has worked since with government agencies, NGOs, and public-benefit groups to improve the quality and accessibility of legal-entity data^[1]. In 2011 it placed third in the Open Data Challenge and was praised by European Commission Vice President Neelie Kroes; in early 2012 it was appointed to the Financial Stability Board's advisory panel on legal entity identification for financial contracts; and in 2015 it won the Open Data Institute's Open Data Business Award^[2]. The operating company was known as Chrinon Ltd until 2018^[2].

Licensing And Governance

The database content is licensed under the Open Database License, a copyleft open-data licence^[2]. The company states it is certified as a B Corporation and maintains published policies on user privacy and public-records privacy^[1].