Companies House "Follow" vs a watchlist service

Updated 30 September 2026. This guide describes what the public register shows; it is not legal, credit or tax advice.

What Companies House "Follow" does

Follow is a free feature of the Companies House service. Sign in, open a company, choose Follow, and you receive an email each time a document is filed against that company. There is no limit to how many companies you can follow, and it is the official source, so nothing is missed or delayed by a third party.

What it does not do

• It does not say what the filing means. The email names the document ("Notice of administrator's appointment", "Registration of charge 012345670003") and links to it. Whether that is routine or a red flag is left to you.
• It is one company at a time. There is no way to import a list of company numbers, no overview of everything you follow, and no summary.
• It sends an email per filing. A company that files a confirmation statement, changes a director and files accounts sends three emails. Across fifty companies that is noise most people start ignoring.
• It only sees Companies House. A winding-up petition is advertised in The Gazette weeks before the register changes; Follow will not tell you about it.
• It does not track state. "Accounts overdue" is a condition rather than a filing, so nothing is sent when a company drifts into it.

What a watchlist service adds

A monitoring service such as Filing Radar reads the same register, plus The Gazette, for a list of companies and turns the raw filings into events with a severity: critical (petition, strike-off, insolvency), warning (overdue filings, new charge), information (officer and address changes). You get one email per company per change, a weekly summary of what is outstanding across the list, and a page per company that shows what is known now. The price for a small business list is a few pounds a month.

When free is enough

If you deal with a handful of companies and are happy to open each email and read the document, Follow is fine, and you should use it. If you have a list, if you want to know about petitions early, or if someone else relies on you to have seen it, a watchlist pays for itself the first time it catches something.

Using both

There is nothing wrong with following the companies that matter most on Companies House as well. Follow gives you the document; the watchlist tells you when to care.