31 questions.
Straight answers.

Black Flag Alert is a free credit intelligence platform for companies registered in England & Wales. Search any company by name or 8-character company number and get its R-Score risk rating, County Court Judgments, winding-up petitions, secured charges, filing behaviour and five years of filed financials.

Yes. Company pages, R-Scores, alerts and PDF reports are 100% free with no card and no time limit. The Open API is available for developers. The product uses a freemium pricing model.

Suppliers deciding whether to extend trade credit, accountants and bookkeepers monitoring client risk, investors and lenders running due diligence, and directors who want to see their own company the way a creditor does.

No. Credit bureaus resell data and charge per report. Black Flag Alert computes its R-Score directly from primary public records — Companies House, HMCTS, The Gazette and the charges register — and gives the result away free.

The R-Score is a 0–100 credit risk gauge built from filed accounts, filing behaviour, charges, County Court Judgments and winding-up petitions. It is paired with a 1–10 risk rating where 1 is the lowest risk. Full calculation details are on the methodology page.

Higher is better on the 0–100 gauge. The paired Risk Rating works the other way: 1 is the best (Very Low Risk) and 10 is the worst (Critical).

Filed accounts drive the financial core: profitability (42%), asset quality (38%) and funding (20%). Live signals adjust the picture: overdue filings, secured charges, CCJs from HMCTS court records, and winding-up petitions from The Gazette. An active winding-up petition forces a rating of 10.

The financial component updates when new accounts are filed at Companies House and processed. The live signals — CCJs, winding-up petitions and overdue filings — are monitored continuously, so alerts reflect the latest public record.

A company is Unscored when it has not filed enough usable accounts for the financial model to run — common with very new companies. Its court and insolvency records are still shown on the profile.

Yes — by improving the underlying signals. File accounts on time, reduce gearing, clear or satisfy CCJs, and strengthen profitability and net assets. The score reflects the public record, so improvements show up as filings and records update.

Primary public sources only: Companies House filings, HMCTS court records for County Court Judgments, The Gazette for insolvency and winding-up activity, and the charges register. It is not resold credit bureau data.

Companies House filings, court records and Gazette notices are monitored continuously, and CCJ and winding-up petition alerts are checked daily. Filed accounts can lag reality because companies have up to nine months after their year-end to file. The live signals close most of that gap.

Around 5.1 million companies registered in England & Wales are searchable and about 3.4 million carry a R-Score. Scottish, Northern Irish and overseas companies are not covered.

A County Court Judgment is a court order saying a company owes a debt that it failed to pay. A creditor takes the debt to court, wins, and the judgment is registered. A CCJ is a clear public record of payment trouble.

A winding-up petition is a creditor asking the court to force a company into liquidation because of unpaid debts. It is the most serious public insolvency signal — on Black Flag Alert it forces a Risk Rating of 10 (Critical) regardless of the filed accounts.

Charges are mortgages or security a company has granted over its own assets in exchange for borrowing — registered at Companies House. They show who the company owes and what those lenders hold against it.

Anyone can search and view company risk profiles for free. Creating a free account adds alerts when a risk profile changes, watchlists and downloadable PDF reports.

No. Searching for a company on Black Flag Alert leaves no footprint and does not affect its credit rating or score in any way.

Yes — it works exactly like any other search. Directors use it to see their own company the way a creditor does, and to catch adverse signals before trading partners do.

Yes. Every company profile can be downloaded as a PDF report with the R-Score, financials and adverse records — free with an account.

Star companies on their company page with a free account. When something material changes, we email you: an R-Score move of 5 points or more, a band change, or a change in active insolvency events such as a winding-up petition or administration.

Insolvency events such as a winding-up petition, administration, liquidation or a dissolution notice alert within about 15 minutes of entering the public record. Score changes from newly filed accounts alert the night after the nightly rescore. We do not poll private data: every alert comes from the public record.

Three things: the R-Score moves by 5 points or more, the risk band changes, or the set of active insolvency events changes (a winding-up petition, administration, liquidation, receivership, CVA or dissolution notice added or resolved). A company that stays quiet sends no email.

No. The first check after you star a company records a baseline: its current score, band and active events. Emails start from the next change, so you are never told about a state you already know.

Open the company page and tap the star again to unstar it. Alerts stop and the company leaves your watchlist. You can star it again at any time.

score_change compares a company's two most recent filed accounting periods: the size and direction of the move, the scores either side, the bands before and after, and whether the move is material (a band change or 5 points or more). It is absent when a company has filed one period or fewer. The field list is on the developers page.

Yes — the Open API v2 gives programmatic access to scores, risk narratives, contact details and batch enrichment. Get a self-serve trial key with no card: 14 days, 100 calls and 20 contact lookups per 24h. Full reference on the developers page.

Yes. There is an MCP server for Claude, Cursor, Windsurf and any MCP client, plus an llms.txt summary and an OpenAPI spec. See the developers page for setup.

Yes. The batch endpoint accepts up to 50 company numbers per call and returns status, score, overdue flags, charges, CCJs and suggested credit exposure for each.

Yes. Every input is a public record: Companies House filings, HMCTS court records, The Gazette notices and the public charges register. Black Flag Alert analyses and presents that public data; it does not collect private information about companies or individuals.

The Terms of Service, Privacy Policy and Cookies Policy set out the rules. The methodology page explains how the R-Score is calculated.