4 of these 8 columns settle a match on their own
- identifier systems, one page each
- 8
- that settle a match on their own in shipped code
- 4
- that retrieve candidates and decide nothing
- 4
- model calls when one of the four decides it
- 0
LEI
One legal entity: the party that can enter a contract, not a brand, a division, a trading name or a group.
An agreeing LEI settles the pair on its own and two LEIs that disagree settle it the other way, in the first rule of the stage that compares identifier values and calls no model.
Read itCompany number
One registration in one register.
A company number settles a pair on its own once both sides name the same issuing register, in the second rule of the stage that compares identifier values.
Read itCIK
One filer.
A CIK never settles a pair here, and it is one of the surest ways to fetch the right candidate.
Read itTicker
One listing of one security on one venue.
Exact ticker-plus-venue agreement is a shortcut to a match, and a ticker that disagrees counts for nothing at all.
Read itSIREN / SIRET
SIREN identifies the legal unit — the company.
A SIREN settles a pair on its own, through the same registration-number rule a UK company number reaches in the stage that compares identifier values.
Read itD-U-N-S
One business location in its issuer's own hierarchy.
An agreeing D-U-N-S settles a pair on its own and a disagreeing one settles it against, in the third rule of the stage that compares identifier values.
Read itVAT number
A registration for tax, which is not the same unit as a company.
A VAT number never settles a pair here, and it does two other jobs well.
Read itEUID
One registration in one national register, stated in a form that is unambiguous across the Union without a separate jurisdiction column.
No rule in this engine decides on an EUID today, and none reads one.
Read itFind your column, then read the last cell
The last column answers the question you arrived with: if two of your records carry the same value, is the match settled? 4 of these say yes, and the stage that reads them calls no model — it compares identifier values and nothing else, which makes it the cheapest answer in the cascade and the easiest one to defend in a review. Issuer and format sit beside it because a value you cannot check against a register is not evidence.
| Identifier | Issued by | Format | Decides a match? |
|---|---|---|---|
| LEILegal Entity Identifier | The Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF), through accredited Local Operating Units that do the actual issuing and annual renewal. | Twenty characters, upper-case letters and digits, defined by ISO 17442. | Decides a match An agreeing value settles the pair without a model call. |
| Company numberCompany registration number | The register of incorporation — Companies House in the United Kingdom, and one of roughly 1,071 registers worldwide that GLEIF's registration-authority list enumerates across 232 jurisdictions. | Register-specific, and the UK case is the one worth stating exactly, because it is the one most often got wrong. | Decides a match An agreeing value settles the pair without a model call. |
| CIKCentral Index Key | The United States Securities and Exchange Commission, which assigns one to every filer on EDGAR. | Up to ten digits, assigned sequentially, and rendered zero-padded to ten characters in EDGAR's own URLs, file names and JSON payloads. | Does not decide Narrows the candidates. No deciding rule reads it. |
| TickerExchange ticker symbol | The listing venue. There is no central assignment and no global uniqueness. | One to five characters on most US venues, longer and differently punctuated elsewhere, with suffixes and class letters applied inconsistently between data providers. | Does not decide Narrows the candidates. No deciding rule reads it. |
| SIREN / SIRETSIREN and SIRET | INSEE, the French national statistics institute, which operates the SIRENE register. | SIREN is nine digits, the last of them computed from the other eight as a Luhn check, so a mistyped SIREN is usually detectable on its own. | Decides a match An agreeing value settles the pair without a model call. |
| D-U-N-SData Universal Numbering System number | The commercial data provider that owns the numbering system. No public authority assigns or publishes it. | Nine digits, conventionally printed as three groups. | Decides a match An agreeing value settles the pair without a model call. |
| VAT numberVAT registration number | The national tax authority — HMRC in the United Kingdom, and each member state's own administration in the European Union. Not a company register, and that is the root of everything below. | In the United Kingdom, GB followed by nine digits, extending to twelve for a branch registration, with the GD and HA prefixes reserved for government departments and health authorities. | Does not decide Narrows the candidates. No deciding rule reads it. |
| EUIDEuropean Unique Identifier | The national business register, assigning under the Business Registers Interconnection System. The EU e-Justice portal is the scheme's issuer rather than a source: it has no API and no bulk product, and the identifier reaches anybody through compliant national feeds. | A country code, a register identifier and the national registration number, dot-separated, as the assigning register emits it. | Does not decide Narrows the candidates. No deciding rule reads it. |
The format column carries the opening statement only. Several of these shapes need a paragraph — the UK company number alone has four families and a measured length histogram — so each identifier’s own page carries the whole of it, with a specimen value you can check against the issuing register.
“Decides” is narrower than it looks: four rules, in a fixed order, and nothing outside them settles a pair. The four rules, and what they read →
Internal fixtures only. The historical 2026-08-29 per-tier recording covers 317 GB companies with identifier-rich arrivals seeding the catalogue first; the context tier includes country and registered-town prose. Its legacy replay has no full-prompt-verified calls and cannot certify current calibration. The September 5 CI reports cover 1,176 labelled pairs and 705 records over 250 companies using offline stubs. These are not independent customer holdouts or live production validation; the 99% minimum-input product target remains unmet. Scope is company and organisation identity only — not people, vessels, bank-account ownership, sanctions or emissions. Results may not be used for eligibility decisions about individuals, including employment, credit and tenancy.
If your file carries two of these columns, which one is doing the work has to be measured on your rows. Create your Free workspace to inspect a CSV, or contact us for an assisted test of these four rules.
Start free“Decides a match” describes this engine, not the identifier
Comparing identifier values and nothing else is the cheapest answer the cascade can reach, and that stage runs four rules in a fixed order: LEI, registration number, D-U-N-S, ticker plus exchange. Nothing outside those four settles a pair, however strong the identifier is in the world — a CIK names one SEC filer and an EUID names its own register, and no deciding rule here reads either. A ticker shows why the verdict is one word: agreement is a shortcut, disagreement proves nothing, so the column takes the cautious side and the ticker’s own page writes the asymmetry out.
- LEI
Two LEIs that disagree settle the pair the other way, with no name check applied in either direction.
- Company number
Decisive only when both sides name the same issuing authority.
- SIREN / SIRET
Decisive for SIREN, not for SIRET.
- D-U-N-S
Decisive in the code and untested in the evidence.
- CIK
A CIK is strong enough to decide a pair and no rule in this engine decides on one.
- Ticker
Agreement is a shortcut; disagreement proves nothing.
- VAT number
Tested as a matching tier and refused on the evidence, recorded on 2026-08-29.
- EUID
Nothing decides on an EUID here, and the reason is supply rather than strength.
Your D-U-N-S decides a match here. We cannot issue you one.
The number you already hold does real work: we match on it, carry it through, and hand it back on the export, so your incumbent’s answer and ours join on the column you both speak — and where the two disagree, you get ours with the citation behind it.
It sits in the left-hand column because the third of those four rules reads it. No wired source supplies one: the number reaches this engine from your own file or from your incumbent’s response, so an agreeing D-U-N-S is your system agreeing with itself rather than independent corroboration, and the receipt records where the value came from. A D-U-N-S is a proprietary identifier: its commercial issuer assigns it, and it cannot be derived from anything in a company’s public record. We are not a route around that issuer’s licence.
A few hundred rows is enough to show which of these columns your own file can rely on, and which ones are carrying less than you think.
Start freeTeams keying a merge on an identifier column and expecting to justify it afterwards — a stewardship queue, a CRM after a migration or a merger, a supplier file before a payment run, or counterparty onboarding that has to survive an audit.
Anyone who needs an identifier issued. We issue none of these 8: a D-U-N-S comes from its commercial issuer, an LEI from a GLEIF Local Operating Unit, a company number from the register that assigned it. Entity Bind resolves companies and organisations only. It does not resolve people, vessels, bank-account ownership, sanctions exposure, emissions or geolocation, and its results may not be used for eligibility decisions about individuals, including employment, credit and tenancy.
Once you know which column decides
Three questions follow a verdict on a column, and each one has a family of pages behind it rather than a paragraph.
- Which registers publish these numbersThe registers a request can reach today, the licence instrument each publishes under, what may be stored rather than only returned, and the coverage this product does not have.Open
- The vocabulary around a columnThe field's vocabulary one term at a time: the definition first, then what Entity Bind does about it — including the techniques it does not implement.Open
- How the column gets sentThe clients and HTTP patterns already wired, the setup each one takes, its own config block, and its own limits.Open
Find out which column your matches rest on.
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One question from each identifier
The first question from each of the 8 pages: what a value proves, what it does not, and which of them we cannot supply.
How should I check an LEI against my company row?
For a fictional row named Tutorial Willow Ltd, keep the supplied LEI as text, look it up in the GLEIF API and compare the returned legal name, register authority and registration number with your row. Record the retrieved record URL and date. A different legal entity or a missing result needs review; a missing LEI is not evidence that the company does not exist. This is a manual verification recipe, not a claim of automatic completion.
How do I prepare a UK company number for matching?
Preserve the full number as text, including leading zeros and any prefix. For a fictional Tutorial Willow Ltd row, compare the supplied number and jurisdiction with the Companies House record before accepting a spelling variant. A number from another register is a different identifier space. Retain the issuing authority in your source data and verify that the number belongs to this row.
How do I verify a CIK without confusing it with incorporation?
Look up the supplied CIK in SEC EDGAR, retaining its leading-zero form for the submissions URL. Compare the filer name and former names with your company row, and keep the filing source and retrieval date. EDGAR registers filers, not every US incorporated company. An absent CIK must remain missing rather than becoming a failed company-identity check.
Why is a ticker not enough to identify a company?
Because it identifies a listing rather than a company, and the listing is neither globally unique nor permanent. The same symbol is issued independently on venues that have never coordinated, a multi-listed company carries one symbol per venue, two share classes carry two symbols, and a delisting removes the symbol while leaving the company exactly where it was. Entity Bind uses exact ticker-plus-venue agreement as a shortcut in the stage that compares identifier values, treats disagreement as no evidence at all, and returns one crosswalk entry per listing rather than pretending a company has one ticker.
How do I avoid treating two French establishments as two companies?
Preserve SIREN and SIRET as text in separate columns. Two fictional branches with different five-digit establishment suffixes can share one nine-digit SIREN. Check the legal unit and establishment records in Annuaire des Entreprises. Use the legal-unit identity when reviewing a company duplicate and retain the establishment information for site-level work. Do not convert a differing SIRET into a legal-company contradiction.
Can Entity Bind give me a D-U-N-S number?
No. A D-U-N-S is assigned by a commercial data provider, it cannot be derived from anything in a company's public record, and four sweeps of open sources found 35 records anywhere that publish one. If your stack is keyed on D-U-N-S, that key comes from the issuer. What we do instead is take the D-U-N-S you already hold, match on it, carry it through, and hand it back on the export so you can join our answer to your incumbent's — and where our answer and theirs disagree, we tell you which one we would not have made and cite why.
Can I resolve a company from its name and VAT number?
Not as a measured input shape. We tried to measure it and refused to sell it on the result. The United Kingdom publishes no lawful bulk name-to-VAT source at all, so there was nothing to measure a UK tier against. The Czech register was built as a substitute and demonstrated that a Czech legal person's VAT number is literally the country code followed by the company number — 314 of 314 rows — so a tier measured there would be the identifier tier renamed, and carrying the result to the United Kingdom would be a claim about a population nobody had measured. Send the VAT number anyway: it retrieves candidates and it corroborates. It just does not decide.
Is the EUID a replacement for national company numbers?
It is a wrapper around one rather than a replacement for it. An EUID is a country code, a register identifier and the national registration number in a single string, which solves the problem that makes a bare company number dangerous: a number that names its own register can decide a match, while a number qualified only by a country code cannot, because 220 of 232 jurisdictions run more than one register. The catch is supply. Most member states do not publish an EUID today, and the one feed we have verified emitting the field is Finland's, whose adapter is built and not switched on here.