How to register a UK limited company: the honest step-by-step

Step 1 — Decide that a limited company is the right shape

Most people who contact us are choosing between being a sole trader and forming a private company limited by shares. A limited company is a separate legal person: it owns its own money, signs its own contracts and carries its own debts. That separation is the reason clients, marketplaces and banks take it more seriously, and the reason your personal savings are not automatically exposed if the business fails.

The trade-off is paperwork. A limited company has a public record, annual filings and a corporation tax return, whether or not it traded. If your plan is to invoice a handful of clients this year with no intention of growing, sole trader status is cheaper. If you intend to raise money, hire, sell online at scale, or simply look established to UK buyers, a limited company is the right answer.

• Limited by shares — the normal choice for trading businesses, owned through shares.
• Limited by guarantee — used by clubs, associations and non-profits with no shareholders.
• Limited liability partnership — two or more people sharing profits, taxed personally.

Step 2 — Choose a name that will actually be accepted

Companies House rejects names for reasons that surprise first-time founders. A name is refused when it is the same as an existing company, when it is too similar under the 'same as' rules, or when it contains a word that needs permission. The register ignores punctuation, spacing and common suffixes when it compares, so Green Lane Coffee Ltd and Greenlanes Coffee Limited are treated as effectively identical.

• Words like 'Royal', 'British', 'Institute', 'Bank', 'Group' and 'Holdings' are sensitive or restricted and may require supporting evidence.
• A name implying a regulated activity — insurance, banking, financial advice — will be queried unless you hold the permission.
• Your name must end in Limited or Ltd, unless you register a company limited by guarantee with an exemption.
• A trade mark that belongs to somebody else can be challenged even after your company is registered.

Step 3 — Work out your directors, shareholders and PSCs

Three roles get confused constantly, and getting them wrong is the most common cause of a company being filed incorrectly.

Step 4 — Complete identity verification

Since the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act came into force, Companies House no longer accepts unverified people onto the register. Every director and every PSC must confirm their identity, either directly with Companies House or through an Authorised Corporate Service Provider. We are a registered ACSP, so we verify you ourselves and attach that confirmation to your filing.

In practice it means uploading a passport or national identity card and a short liveness check from your phone. It takes minutes, it works from any country, and it happens inside the same wizard as the rest of your application — you never have to book an appointment or post a document.

Step 5 — Provide a registered office and a service address

Your registered office is the company's official legal address. It appears on the public register forever, it must be an address where post can actually be delivered and acknowledged, and Companies House will strike off companies whose registered office turns out to be unusable. A home address works legally, but it is permanently searchable by anybody on the internet.

If you would rather not publish where you live, you can use ours: 372C Green Lanes, London, N13 5PD. Statutory letters from Companies House and HMRC are scanned the day they arrive and appear in your dashboard, so nothing waits in a pile for a week.

Step 6 — File, pay and receive your documents

The incorporation itself is one submission containing the name, registered office, directors, shareholders, PSCs, share capital and articles of association. We file it through our Companies House presenter account, which means your application is submitted by a recognised filer rather than an anonymous web form.

Companies House charges £100 for an online incorporation. Applications made on a working day are usually accepted within 24 hours, occasionally the same hour. When the company exists, four documents matter and all four land in your dashboard:

• Certificate of incorporation — your company number and birth date, required by every bank.
• Memorandum of association — the founding statement signed by the first shareholders.
• Articles of association — the rulebook governing shares, meetings and decisions.
• Share certificates and the statutory register — proof of who owns what, which you must keep.

Step 7 — The first year, which is where most people slip

Registration is the easy part. The deadlines that follow are automatic, unforgiving and start counting from your incorporation date. Your confirmation statement is due twelve months and fourteen days after incorporation. Your first annual accounts are due twenty-one months after incorporation. Your corporation tax return follows twelve months after the end of your accounting period, and the tax itself is payable earlier than the return.