Free prospecting tools: UK options and limitations

What to take away

Companies House gives you free, official company records, including directors and filing history, with no per-seat cost.
Free tiers of UK prospecting tools usually stop at export caps, hidden contact data or single-seat access.
Public registers confirm that a company exists; they rarely tell you who buys or when.
Free options suit narrow, well-defined lists far better than volume outreach.

Where free UK prospecting data actually comes from

The cheapest starting point is the public register. Companies House publishes incorporation dates, registered office addresses, filing history and director names, and searching it costs nothing.

Free UK data sources

Companies House

Incorporation dates: Yes
Registered addresses: Yes
Filing history: Yes
Director names: Yes
Market sizing: No
Work emails: No

ONS

Incorporation dates: No
Registered addresses: No
Filing history: No
Director names: No
Market sizing: Yes
Work emails: No

Charity registers

Incorporation dates: No
Registered addresses: Varies
Filing history: Varies
Director names: Trustees
Market sizing: No
Work emails: No

Official statistics add context. The Office for National Statistics publishes business, industry and trade data that helps you size a market or check how a sector is structured before you build a list.

Charity and sector registers add coverage. The Charity Commission for England and Wales, OSCR in Scotland and the Charity Commission for Northern Ireland each publish free searchable records, though the fields differ.

Neither source carries work email addresses or mobile numbers. That gap is why free sales prospecting software exists, and it is also the gap that free plans monetise.

Our guide to prospecting software data sources maps each register and platform to the fields it returns, which is the quickest way to see what you are missing.

What free tiers of UK prospecting tools cover

Read any free plan for three limits: how many contacts you can export, whether business emails and direct dials are included, and whether exports sync to your CRM.

Free tier checks

How many contacts you can export
Whether business emails are included
Whether direct dials are included
Whether exports sync to your CRM
Whether the seat cap is the real limit
Whether it is a trial, not a tier

Named free tiers available to UK users include Hunter.io (25 searches and 50 verifications per month), Lusha (5 credits per month), RocketReach (5 lookups per month) and Apollo.io (10,000 email credits per month, with mobile and export caps).

Across these plans, lookup allowances typically range from 5 to 25 records, while verification credits can reach 50 and email credits can run to 10,000.

Check whether the seat cap is the real limit. Vendors meter the data underneath, because seats cost little to give away while verified contact records do not.

Watch the definition of free as well. A fourteen-day trial is not a free tier, and a free tier that ends when the vendor changes pricing is not a plan you can build a process on.

The practical test is a single export. Note how many records the free plan withholds, then compare that sample against Companies House by hand.

Free sources compared

The table sets out what each free layer returns and where it stops.

What you get

Companies House: Company records, directors, filings, registered addresses
ONS business data: Industry and business population context for sizing
Free tool tiers: Limited exports, basic filters, one seat
Manual research: Named contacts from company sites and news coverage

What is missing

Companies House: Contact names, emails, buying intent
ONS business data: Named companies to contact
Free tool tiers: Verified emails, dials, CRM sync
Manual research: Speed and scale

How to test a free option before you pay

Run this sequence on one narrow segment before you commit budget or time.

Pick a defined segment, such as estate agents in Greater Manchester, and write down the filters before opening any tool.
Build the company list from Companies House first, then verify ten records by hand against company websites.
Export once and record how many records the free plan removed or withheld from the total.
Check the lawful basis for contacting each person before anything is sent.
Score the tool on accuracy and export quality rather than interface polish.

The gaps that matter for British users

Companies House covers registered entities only. Sole traders, most partnerships and many charities are absent, so a free list built from the register is structurally incomplete.

Regulated sectors need fields that free tiers seldom carry. If you sell to law firms or financial advisers, registration numbers and permissions matter as much as email addresses.

Stale data is the hidden cost

Free data decays. Directors resign, addresses change and companies dissolve, so a list exported in January can be badly wrong twelve months later.

Bounced messages hurt your sending reputation, so hygiene matters more than volume. Our comparison of cold email prospecting software UK platforms covers verification and warm-up features.

Compliance applies whatever you pay

PECR and UK GDPR apply to a free tool exactly as they do to a paid one. The ICO guidance on direct marketing and electronic communications sets out the consent rules and how to handle objections.

Sole traders and partnerships are treated as individual subscribers, so emailing them needs the same care as consumer marketing. Corporate subscribers sit outside that rule, but UK GDPR still governs the data you hold.

Common questions

Are free prospecting tools enough for a UK sales team?

Enough for a pilot or a single segment, not for sustained outreach. Free tiers break down on export volume, data freshness and phone numbers.

Can I use Companies House data for prospecting?

Yes, it is public register data, and searching it is free. UK GDPR still applies to how you store, combine and contact those records.

What do free lead generation tools in the UK miss most?

Work email addresses, direct dials, intent signals and CRM sync. Those are the fields that push teams onto a paid plan.

Do free plans include phone numbers?

Rarely. Where they do, expect a small monthly allowance and heavy overlap with the same number across several contacts.