Best Companies House Monitoring Tools UK (2026): Alerts for Accounts, Director, PSC and Insolvency Changes
A side-by-side look at the UK tools that actually send alerts when Companies House filings change — accounts, director appointments, PSC updates, charges, and insolvency events — and which ones cover the London Gazette.
UK company insolvencies hit 23,938 in 2025 according to the Insolvency Service, and a further 726,735 companies were dissolved voluntarily (Companies House Register Activities Report 2024–25). Every one of those events produced filings on the Companies House register or notices in the London Gazette. The question for anyone carrying credit exposure, advising clients, or tracking counterparties is which tool will send the alert before the damage is done.
TL;DR: Most "Companies House monitoring" tools fall into three categories. Free services (Companies House Follow) send raw notifications with no classification or Gazette coverage. Enterprise credit platforms (CreditSafe, Experian, Company Watch, Red Flag Alert) bundle monitoring into credit reporting on annual contracts. Mid-market monthly tools (Vigil, CoCredo) focus on the alerting layer itself with Gazette coverage and plain-English interpretation. The right choice depends on whether you need AML/credit scoring on top, or whether classified real-time alerts are the primary job.
If you're new to reading filings, How to Spot Supplier Financial Distress Before It Hits You covers the fundamentals first. This post is about the tools.
Company Checks vs Company Monitoring: What's the Difference?
The phrases get used interchangeably but they're two different workflows, and the tool you pick should match which one you're actually doing.
Company checks are point-in-time lookups. You're vetting a new supplier, running due diligence on a counterparty before signing, or pulling a credit report when an invoice goes overdue. The output is a snapshot: current status, filed accounts, director list, credit score. CreditSafe, Experian, DueDil and the free Companies House service all support this workflow.
Company monitoring is continuous. You've got a watchlist — suppliers, customers, clients, people, competitor SPVs — and the tool surveils the Companies House register and the London Gazette, firing alerts when something changes. You don't log in to check; the tool tells you when there's something worth looking at.
Most teams need both. A check goes in at onboarding; monitoring runs afterwards. The mistake is assuming a check-based workflow covers the monitoring job. A supplier who passed your January credit check can be in administration by October, and nothing in the January report would have told you.
For combined UK company checks and monitoring on one subscription, Vigil, Red Flag Alert and CoCredo all support both modes. Pure check tools like DueDil or Endole don't cover monitoring; pure monitoring tools like Companies House Follow don't give you a report format suitable for onboarding files.
What Counts as Companies House Monitoring?
Companies House monitoring is continuous, automated surveillance of the UK company register for filings affecting companies or people on a watchlist. At minimum, a monitoring tool should classify filing types (not just notify that a filing happened), track specific companies over time, and deliver alerts by email or another channel. Most serious monitoring tools also cover the London Gazette, because winding-up petitions and dissolution notices publish there before the corresponding Companies House status change.
Credit scoring and credit reporting are adjacent but separate. A credit report pulled from CreditSafe or Experian is a lookup at a point in time. Monitoring is the thing that watches continuously and tells you the score changed, the director resigned, or a winding-up petition appeared. Some products combine both; most lean one way or the other.
Which Filings You Actually Need Alerts For
Before comparing tools, it's worth being specific about which filings matter. The Companies House register receives hundreds of filing types; a small subset of these move the needle for credit, commercial and compliance decisions.
Accounts filings and overdue accounts. Full and filleted accounts show financial performance. More importantly for risk monitoring, the status of accounts matters: overdue accounts, accounts marked "pending" for an unusually long time, or a sudden shift from full to dormant are all meaningful signals. Under Companies House filing deadlines, private limited companies have nine months after year-end to file. Persistent overdues correlate with financial distress.
Director appointments, resignations and disqualifications. Forms AP01 through TM02. A single director change is ordinary; two or three resignations inside six months, particularly at finance director or company secretary level, is a different signal. Director disqualification orders (recorded in the Gazette as well as on the Companies House register) are a near-certain sign of serious problems.
PSC (People with Significant Control) changes. Forms PSC01 through PSC09. The PSC register identifies the real owners of a company — anyone holding more than 25% of shares or voting rights, or who otherwise exercises control. PSC changes can signal restructuring, acquisitions, insolvency-related reorganisation, or the cleanup of beneficial ownership before a sale. For AML and commercial due diligence, PSC alerts are essential.
Charges registered and satisfied. Forms MR01 (registration) and MR04 (satisfaction). New charges indicate secured borrowing or asset-backed finance. Multiple charges registered in rapid succession — especially outside the typical refinancing pattern for the sector — usually signal rising leverage or lender concern.
Insolvency-related filings. CVAs (company voluntary arrangements), administrations, notices of intent to appoint administrators, and liquidation filings all sit on Companies House. By the time these show up, the damage is usually done; the earlier signal is often in the Gazette.
London Gazette notices. This is the blind spot in most Companies House-only tools. First Gazette Notices of compulsory strike-off trigger a two-month creditor objection window. Winding-up petitions appear in the Gazette before the Companies House status changes to "in liquidation". If your primary concern is insolvency risk, Gazette coverage is not optional.
UK Companies House Monitoring Tools Compared
Seven tools cover the mainstream of the UK market, ranging from free Companies House Follow notifications to enterprise credit platforms. The table below summarises how each handles the filing types above.
| Tool | Accounts | Director | PSC | Charges | Insolvency | Gazette | Alert speed | From |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vigil | Yes, classified | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Real-time (SSE) | £27/mo |
| Companies House Follow | Generic email | Generic email | Generic email | Generic email | Generic email | No | Same day | Free |
| Red Flag Alert | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Daily | Quote only |
| CreditSafe | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Not confirmed | Daily | Quote (annual) |
| Experian BusinessIQ | Yes | Yes | Partial | Yes | Yes | Partial (daily) | Daily | Quote (annual) |
| Company Watch | Partial | Yes | Partial | Yes | Yes | Not primary | Daily | Enterprise quote |
| CoCredo | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Daily | Daily | PAYG + subs |
"Classified" means the alert tells you what kind of filing was made without requiring you to open it. "Generic email" means the alert fires but doesn't distinguish a director resignation from a routine confirmation statement.
Vigil
Vigil connects to the Companies House Server-Sent Events stream so most alerts fire within minutes of a filing being accepted. Every alert is classified by filing type (accounts, AP01 appointment, TM01 resignation, PSC01–09, MR01 charge, insolvency filings) and includes plain-English interpretation. The London Gazette is monitored daily, covering First Gazette dissolution notices and winding-up petitions. Pricing starts at £27/month for 20 companies, monthly contract. Phoenix company detection is included on the Pro plan. See the Vigil features page and direct comparisons with Companies House alerts and CreditSafe.
Companies House Follow (Free)
The free Companies House Follow service sends an email whenever any filing is accepted for a followed company. It's genuinely useful if you're monitoring a handful of companies with no budget and are comfortable logging in to classify each filing yourself. The limits show up at scale: no PSC-specific alerts (you'll get notified of the form, but not that it's a PSC change), no Gazette coverage, no prioritisation, no director watchlist, no phoenix pattern detection. At 50+ companies the volume of routine confirmation statement emails tends to push people to mark the sender as spam.
Red Flag Alert
Red Flag Alert is UK-owned, 25 years in market, and covers 86 monitorable event types including director changes, PSC updates, CCJs, Gazette notices, AML/PEPs and sanctions checks. It's pitched at credit departments, insolvency practitioners and commercial lenders rather than individual account managers. Pricing is quote-based with tiered plans. See the Vigil vs Red Flag Alert comparison for where each one fits.
CreditSafe
CreditSafe is the best-known UK B2B credit bureau and covers 48 countries. Monitoring is available as an add-on to the core credit report product. Classification and real-time delivery are not its primary focus — daily refresh is typical. Pricing requires a sales conversation and typically annual commitment. Best fit for teams already committed to a credit-report-first workflow.
Experian BusinessIQ
Experian's business credit product refreshes daily from Companies House, Gazette registries and Registry Trust. PSC tracking is included but not always surfaced as standalone alerts. Pricing is enterprise and requires a sales conversation. Well-suited to larger corporates with existing Experian Consumer or Risk relationships.
Company Watch
Company Watch is distinctive for the H-Score, a 0–100 distress predictor calibrated against historical insolvency data. Around 60% of companies scoring below 25 go into financial distress, per their own analysis. Monitoring is available as part of the platform; it's not a filing-by-filing alerting product in the same way as Vigil or Red Flag Alert. Pricing is enterprise and quote-based. See the Vigil vs Company Watch comparison for the differences in practice.
CoCredo
CoCredo won the 2025 CICM British Credit Awards Credit Information Provider of the Year and offers daily-updated monitoring with Gazette coverage. The product is flexible between pay-as-you-go reports and subscription monitoring. A reasonable mid-market pick, particularly for practices that also need one-off credit reports alongside monitoring.
How to Choose
The right tool depends on three questions.
Do you need credit scoring alongside monitoring? If yes — because your team is running credit limit decisions and wants a single vendor — CreditSafe, Experian, or Company Watch are the candidates. If no, dedicated monitoring (Vigil, Red Flag Alert, CoCredo) is cheaper and faster.
Do you need Gazette coverage? For any workflow where insolvency risk matters — credit control, accountancy, commercial law, property — the answer is yes. First Gazette Notices give creditors a two-month statutory window to object before a company is struck off. Without Gazette coverage, you find out when the company is already gone from the register. Companies House Follow, Experian's entry products, and some CreditSafe tiers don't cover it.
Do you need real-time alerts or is daily enough? Real-time matters when the filing itself is time-sensitive: winding-up petitions, administration appointments, PSC changes before a contract close. For routine monitoring, daily is adequate. Only Vigil and, selectively, some Red Flag Alert plans deliver near-real-time via the SSE stream; most established tools batch daily.
A secondary question worth asking: contract and pricing shape. CreditSafe, Experian, Company Watch, Red Flag Alert all default to annual contracts and quote-only pricing. For teams inside procurement-heavy organisations that's fine. For accountants, solicitors, SME credit controllers and freelancers, monthly contracts with published pricing (Vigil, CoCredo subscription, Companies House Follow at £0) are easier to justify and easier to cancel.
FAQ
What's the difference between UK company checks and company monitoring?
Company checks are point-in-time lookups — you pull a report when you need one, typically at supplier onboarding or when investigating an overdue invoice. Company monitoring is continuous — you add companies or people to a watchlist and the tool fires alerts when something changes at Companies House or in the London Gazette. Most teams need both. A check tool alone misses what happens after onboarding; a monitoring tool alone lacks the report format for due diligence files. Vigil, Red Flag Alert and CoCredo combine both modes.
What is the best tool for UK Companies House monitoring with alerts?
It depends on the workflow. For real-time classified alerts covering accounts filings, director and PSC changes, charges, insolvency filings and London Gazette dissolution notices on a monthly contract, Vigil covers all six from £27/month. For larger teams needing AML/KYC alongside monitoring, Red Flag Alert is the established pick. For credit scoring with monitoring bundled, CreditSafe or Company Watch. For basic filing notifications at no cost, the free Companies House Follow service covers company-level filings but not PSC-specific alerts, prioritisation, or the Gazette.
Does Companies House send alerts for PSC changes?
Yes, but indirectly. The free Companies House Follow service emails you whenever any filing is accepted for a company you're following. A PSC change is filed on forms PSC01 to PSC09, so the alert fires — but the email doesn't tell you it was a PSC change. You have to log in, open the filing, and read it to find out. Tools like Vigil classify the filing type in the alert itself, so a PSC change reads as a PSC change.
Can I get Companies House alerts for director changes only?
The free Companies House service doesn't let you filter by filing type — you get every filing, or nothing. Monitoring tools that classify filings can filter. Vigil, Red Flag Alert and CoCredo all let you narrow to director appointments, resignations, or PSC updates so you're not drowning in confirmation statement noise.
Do any tools alert on insolvency before it appears on Companies House?
Yes — through the London Gazette. Winding-up petitions and First Gazette dissolution notices publish in the Gazette before the company status on Companies House changes to "in liquidation" or "dissolved". A tool that monitors the Gazette (Vigil, Red Flag Alert, CoCredo, Experian) gives you that head start. A tool that only reads Companies House filings does not.
How much does Companies House monitoring cost?
The Companies House Follow service is free but doesn't classify or interpret filings. Paid tools range from £27/month (Vigil Starter) through to enterprise contracts at £100+/month (CreditSafe, Red Flag Alert, Company Watch). Most enterprise tools require a sales call and annual commitment. Monthly-contract monitoring is a relatively new category for SMEs and practices.
Most buyers pick a tool based on what a colleague mentioned or what their existing credit provider upsells. That works until a First Gazette Notice appears on a £40,000 receivable and the tool you've been paying for didn't cover it. If you want real-time Companies House monitoring across accounts, director, PSC, charges and insolvency filings, plus the Gazette layer most tools miss, on a monthly contract with no sales call, Vigil starts at £27/month. Or compare directly against Companies House free alerts, CreditSafe, Red Flag Alert or Company Watch.