Who are my new competitors?
How can I find out about new businesses starting up in my trade near me? New companies are public the day they're formed, but nobody tells you.
Measured on 20,000 real companies that our model had never seen, followed for three years, including the ones that closed. How we know
Salenovo watches every incorporation (15,020 in the UK last week) and can tell you when a new company in your trade appears in your area, what it says it does, and whether it has a website or premises yet.
What you get
Your trade, your patch
A café owner wants new cafés within a few miles; a plumber wants new plumbing firms in the council area; an agency wants new agencies in the region. Pick the area, and what each company says it does tells you which are in your trade.
What they are actually doing
The company's own website, where it has one, says what it is and where; the council's food register says whether it has a kitchen.
Early
Weeks before the sign goes up or the van appears.
For groups and franchisors
A national version by trade for multi-site operators, franchisors and commercial agents.
What knowing early is worth
Knowing a competitor is opening a month before the sign goes up is time to lock in your regulars, adjust prices, or hire first. The weekly alert for your council is free.
Why a ranked lead is worth more than a raw one
Half of new companies don't last, and most never trade. Of the 1,178,421 companies formed in the UK at their own address between January 2022 and September 2023, 49% were no longer on the register three years later and only 35% had ever filed trading accounts. That's the Business Survival Index, council by council. A list of every new company is mostly companies that will never trade, and half of it will be gone within three years.
We tested it. We took 20,000 companies formed in 2022 and 2023, ranked them with a model that had never seen them, and followed every one for three years, including the ones that closed. 89% of the new companies we ranked highest were still registered three years later. For all new companies it was 49%, and for the ones we ranked lowest 27%. Over those three years a company we ranked highest spent 27 months trading. The average new company spent 12. That's 2.3 times the value per lead. See the full comparison, and what it's worth to you.
Why 49% here and 51% in the Business Survival Index: this test is a random sample of every company formed in 2022 and 2023, including those registered at formation agents' addresses, which close more often. The index counts companies at their own address only. Both are measured the same way, three years after each company was formed.
Salenovo's score is built on outcomes like these: companies followed from the day they were formed to whether they went on to trade. Tested on companies it had never seen, the top band (A) went on to trade 67% of the time and the bottom band (E) 15% (method and held-out results). So the top of each week's list is the companies most likely to be trading next year and the year after: clients who need their accounts done every year, not a name that's gone by the time you call.
A worked example: Chelmsford
Chelmsford last week: 35 companies formed, 1,106 in hospitality nationally, 2 with registered food premises locally over the last 8 weeks. See the Chelmsford page, see a real week's list, or compare any area.
Against what you do today
| Raw register dump | Companies House by hand | Salenovo | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What arrives | Everything, nationally | Noticing | New companies in your area, with what they do |
| When | Daily dump | When they open | Weekly alert |
| Cost | £99+ a month | Free, late | Free for one council, region or the UK |
Business-to-business email to a limited company or LLP is permitted under PECR without prior consent, provided you say who you are and offer an opt-out. Every row says where the address came from. No director names, no home addresses.
Your first week
- Sign up with your council; the alert arrives each Monday.
- See how many new companies were formed nearby last week, and what five of them say they do.
- Look at the ones with a website or registered premises. Those are the ones that are actually opening.
- Check the council's food register or the company's site for where and when.
- Use the head start: a loyalty offer to regulars, a price check, a job advert before theirs.
Two short messages that work (an email and a letter) and the one line that matters for your trade are on the templates page.
Questions
How would I know a new competitor has started?
Every company is on the public register the day it's formed, with its SIC code and registered address. Salenovo maps that to your council or postcode area, reads the company's website where it has one, and tells you what it says it does.
Is this the same as the paid lead lists?
It's the same data turned round: instead of a supplier looking for new customers, a business owner looking at new competitors. The alert is free.
Does the list contain personal data, and what am I allowed to do with it?
No director names, no dates of birth, no nationalities, no home addresses and no personal email addresses: the list is about companies, not people. That matters for you as well as for them. When an organisation gets personal data from somewhere other than the person, UK GDPR says it has to tell them who has it, why, on what basis and where it came from, within a month or at first contact. A bought list of named directors starts that clock for the buyer. A list of companies never starts it. What you get instead is the registered office laid out for a letter, the company's own website once we have checked it is theirs, and the generic mailbox shown on it (info@, hello@), never a named person's.
So can I email these companies?
Yes, if they are limited companies or LLPs. The ICO treats those as corporate subscribers under PECR, so you may email them without prior consent as long as you do not conceal who you are and you give a valid address to opt out. Sole traders and ordinary partnerships are different, and need consent or the soft opt-in; everything on our list is a limited company or an LLP. Two things are yours to do whatever the list says: stop the moment somebody asks, because the right to object to direct marketing is absolute, and screen numbers against the TPS and CTPS registers before you ring. The ICO fined one company £160,000 in May 2026 for calling registered numbers.
Where does the data come from, and can a company be removed?
The Companies House public register, the Office for National Statistics, the Food Standards Agency, the Environment Agency and police.uk, all under the Open Government Licence, plus each company's own public website, fetched by a crawler that identifies itself and obeys robots.txt. Every row carries its source and the date. Any company can ask to have its contact details, or its whole record, taken out: salenovo.com/remove, honoured within five working days. Our own privacy notice is at salenovo.com/privacy.
Method and accuracy: how the numbers are made. Incorporations from the Companies House public register, mapped to councils with the ONS Postcode Directory; "expected to trade" from the historical outcomes of 2.5 million companies formed in 2022, 2023 and 2024, by formation address and sector; websites verified by fetching the company's name-matching domain and checking it against the company; food premises from the Food Standards Agency's register. All Open Government Licence. Every row in the paid list carries its source and date.
Other uses: Accountants & bookkeepers · Insurance brokers · Web, design & marketing agencies · Hospitality & food-service suppliers · Lenders, brokers & fintech · Commercial property & serviced offices · B2B suppliers: telecoms, payroll, EPOS, merchant services · Councils, LEPs & business improvement districts