How to Check if a UK Company Is Legitimate: 10 Checks That Cost Almost Nothing

Updated 5 October 2026 by Investigation Bureau

A fake company costs little to build and a great deal to believe. Someone can put together a convincing UK company in an afternoon: a low-cost online incorporation, a virtual office in a smart postcode, a template website and a purchased set of reviews. The checks that see through it are nearly free and take less than an hour. These are the ten we run first, with the signs that tell an investigator a company has been dressed up to look real.

This guide is for two kinds of reader: a business about to extend credit or pay a large deposit, and an individual about to send money to a company found online. The checks are identical. Only the stakes change.

The ten checks

Find the company on Companies House, and read the record properly. It is free. Confirm that the exact legal name and company number match the website and the invoices. A trading name with no registered company behind it, or a name one letter away from a well-known business, answers the question on its own.
Compare the incorporation date with the story. A newly registered company is not a warning in itself: experienced people start new companies, and businesses rebrand and restructure. The warning is a mismatch, such as twenty years of claimed trading on a company registered eight months ago. There may be a sound explanation, and it is for them to give it.
Read the officers' history. Open each director's record. What else do they run, and what became of it? A string of dissolved companies in the same line of business, known as phoenixing, is the strongest single red flag on this list.
Check the filings are up to date. Overdue accounts, an overdue confirmation statement or an active proposal to strike the company off are all free to see. Victims tend to notice them only afterwards.
Test the registered address. Search for it. A virtual-office provider that serves thousands of companies is normal for a young business. It does not fit with claims of showrooms, warehouses or a grand head office. Street View will show you what is actually there.
Verify the VAT number. If they charge VAT, put the number through the government's VAT checker. An invoice that charges VAT with an invalid or missing number is not careless paperwork. It is a fact you can act on.
Check for CCJs. TrustOnline, run by Registry Trust, reports county court judgments against companies and individuals for a few pounds. Money judgments against a company that wants your money upfront change the conversation.
Check the age of the website. A whois lookup shows when the domain was registered. A new domain is fine for a business that says it is new. A "long-established" firm on a domain three months old, with stock photographs and no named people, is a pattern and not a coincidence.
Check the regulator's register, if the trade has one. Financial services firms appear on the FCA register, letting agents belong to a redress scheme, and gas engineers are on Gas Safe. A company that claims a regulated trade without the registration has settled the question for you.
Ask who you are dealing with. Use whatever contact route they publish and ask for the registered name, the company number and the person accountable for your order. Plenty of sound small businesses run on a mobile or an enquiry form, so the channel proves little. A real business answers plainly and its answers match the register. One that dodges, or whose claimed premises turn out to be a letterbox, has failed a test it did not know it was sitting.

The red flags behind the checks

The pattern matters more than any single check. An investigator is really reading for three things. Pressure: discounts that expire today, deposits demanded by bank transfer. Asymmetry: they know everything about you and you can verify nothing about them. Borrowed credibility: awards that cannot be confirmed, reviews that all arrived in the same fortnight, a prestige address that is rented by the hour.

The payment method tells its own story. A card payment carries chargeback rights. A bank transfer does not. A company that steers you away from paying by card and towards a "direct transfer to secure your order" is shifting the risk from itself to you.

When the checks fail, or the stakes are too high for a checklist

If the checks come back wrong, walk away. Nobody is owed a second attempt at your money. If they come back clean but the sum at stake is significant, such as a large contract, trade credit or a supplier who will hold your deposit for months, clean public records are necessary but they are not enough. That is the point where a professional company evaluation begins. It looks at who sits behind the registered owners, what really exists at the address, the litigation record and the true history of the people in charge. It is done before the money moves, not after.

If the money has already gone, move quickly. Report it to Report Fraud (the national reporting service that replaced Action Fraud), notify your bank in writing and keep every message. Where the sums justify it, a fraud investigation traces where the money went and builds the evidence for recovery.

Frequently asked questions

Can a company be on Companies House and still be a scam?

Easily. Incorporation is registration, not vetting. Companies House checks identity documents when a company is formed. It does not check honesty. Treat an entry on the register as the start of verification. It gives you the officers, the dates and the filings, and you test the story against them.

What is the fastest single check?

The directors' history. An honest businessperson may have a failure somewhere behind them. Forming and dissolving one company after another in the same trade is the pattern worth spotting, and it takes about five minutes of clicking through officer records.

How do I verify an overseas company?

The logic is the same and the registers are different. Most jurisdictions keep a companies register, but quality and openness vary enormously. That is exactly why overseas counterparties are where professional due diligence earns its fee. See our guide to due diligence on a business partner.

When is it worth paying an investigator instead?

When the exposure is large, the counterparty is overseas, or something in your own checks will not reconcile and you need to know why before you commit. An evaluation is quoted as a fixed price in writing before any work begins, and normally costs a small fraction of the deposit, credit line or contract it protects. The first conversation is free, and if the public record already answers your question we will say so.

About to pay a company you cannot quite verify? Run the ten checks. If the stakes are high or the answers do not reconcile, tell us about it in confidence before the money moves.