--- title: "D-U-N-S: matched on, and never supplied" summary: "One business location in its issuer's own hierarchy. That unit is the issuer's editorial judgement rather than a legal fact, so it does not always line up one-to-one with a registered legal entity, and reconciling the two is work rather than a join." canonical_url: https://entitybind.com/identifiers/duns last_updated: 2026-10-12 copy: full --- # D-U-N-S: matched on, and never supplied > One business location in its issuer's own hierarchy. That unit is the issuer's editorial judgement rather than a legal fact, so it does not always line up one-to-one with a registered legal entity, and reconciling the two is work rather than a join. Canonical page: https://entitybind.com/identifiers/duns Last updated: 2026-10-12 ## Data Universal Numbering System number (D-U-N-S) An agreeing value settles the pair on its own, in the stage that compares identifiers and calls no model. One business location in its issuer's own hierarchy. That unit is the issuer's editorial judgement rather than a legal fact, so it does not always line up one-to-one with a registered legal entity, and reconciling the two is work rather than a join. - Decides a match on its own: Yes - Issued or derived by us: Never - Failure modes below: 5 - Identifier systems compared: 8 in total - When identifiers are compared: Decides a pair Test it on your own column: A first file carries this column and whatever else your export has. Back comes the rows it settled, the rows it could not, and for those, the column that would have. [Start free →](https://app.entitybind.com/app?signup=1) Unique within: Global in principle, and proprietary everywhere. By [James Rooney](https://entitybind.com/about), founder of Entity Bind · Last revised 12 October 2026 ## What your D-U-N-S column does in Entity Bind 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. Send it as `duns`. It comes back on the CSV export, so a buyer reconciling against their incumbent has a column to join on. It is never supplied, never enriched and never pooled between tenants. Your own column will carry gaps and typos the specimen does not, and a few hundred rows will show how much of your file it still settles. [Start free →](https://app.entitybind.com/app?signup=1) ## Issuer, shape and a specimen Every row below is checkable in another tab: the body that assigns the identifier, the exact shape including any check digits, and a specimen value. Where we hold a value we have verified against the issuing body, the specimen is that value; where we do not, it is a shape, labelled as one. - Issued by: The commercial data provider that owns the numbering system. No public authority assigns or publishes it. - Unique within: Global in principle, and proprietary everywhere. - Format: Nine digits, conventionally printed as three groups. It is an assignment rather than a derivation: there is nothing in a company's public record from which a D-U-N-S can be computed, inferred or looked up, which is a different situation from every other identifier on this page. - What one value identifies: One business location in its issuer's own hierarchy. That unit is the issuer's editorial judgement rather than a legal fact, so it does not always line up one-to-one with a registered legal entity, and reconciling the two is work rather than a join. - Specimen: Not published. We hold no D-U-N-S we could check against the party that issued it, and an unverified nine-digit number would be a specimen of nothing. ## What goes wrong with D-U-N-S The failure modes that decide whether this column is worth sending, and what each one costs you once it turns up in a live file. Worth reading before you plan an integration around the column. 01. Decisive in the code and untested in the evidence. The third rule of the stage that compares identifier values treats an agreeing D-U-N-S as a match and a disagreeing one as a non-match. The scorer's corresponding conflict feature has zero labelled observations in the gold set — the pairs a human has judged — and is held at −25.0000 rather than fitted: the largest magnitude in the model, chosen so a pair with every positively weighted feature firing still lands below the accept threshold. Zero support means no labelled pair has ever exercised the rule, so that magnitude is a safety floor rather than a measurement. 02. It is decisive on data you supplied. The number reaches the engine from your file or your incumbent's response, so an agreeing D-U-N-S is your own system agreeing with itself. That is genuinely useful when reconciling two exports; it is not independent corroboration, and the receipt records where the value came from. 03. No wired source supplies one. The crosswalk records D-U-N-S with an empty source list, and the API distinguishes an identifier we asked about and found nothing for from one nobody was asked about — for D-U-N-S it is the second. Four sweeps of the open web found 35 records anywhere that publish a D-U-N-S, all of them on a sanctions list. 04. A customer-supplied D-U-N-S is never pooled across tenants, and that is a prohibition rather than a default. Building a cross-tenant D-U-N-S-to-entity index out of values customers submitted would construct a competing database inside the issuer's own identifier space, and the storage layer is written so that no cross-tenant index can be keyed on it. 05. If a D-U-N-S is the key the rest of your stack speaks, that key has to come from the party that issues it. Entity Bind is not a route around the issuer's licence. What it does with the number you already hold is 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. 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 one of those is already in your file, a sample turns it into a number of rows instead of a suspicion. [Start free →](https://app.entitybind.com/app?signup=1) ## The other identifiers on a company record 4 of the 8 settle a pair on their own; the other 4 narrow the field and hand the decision on. If your file carries more than one of them, the question worth settling is which one is doing the work. - [LEI](https://entitybind.com/identifiers/lei) (Decides a match): Legal Entity Identifier - [Company number](https://entitybind.com/identifiers/company-number) (Decides a match): Company registration number - [CIK](https://entitybind.com/identifiers/cik) (Does not decide): Central Index Key - [Ticker](https://entitybind.com/identifiers/ticker) (Does not decide): Exchange ticker symbol - [SIREN / SIRET](https://entitybind.com/identifiers/siren-siret) (Decides a match): SIREN and SIRET - [VAT number](https://entitybind.com/identifiers/vat-number) (Does not decide): VAT registration number - [EUID](https://entitybind.com/identifiers/euid) (Does not decide): European Unique Identifier Or try your own rows: create your Free workspace and upload a company CSV to inspect the decisions and receipts. Where a further column would settle an unresolved row, it names that column; contact us for an assisted review. [Start free →](https://app.entitybind.com/app?signup=1) ## Where D-U-N-S shows up elsewhere The rest of the answer, on the shelves that hold it. Each card names its own — a register, a definition, a guide or a comparison — and opens on the page that carries it at length. - [D-U-N-S number](https://entitybind.com/glossary/duns) (Definition): The D-U-N-S number is a nine-digit identifier assigned by a commercial data provider to business establishments worldwide, and it is proprietary: it can be matched on and cannot be derived from open data. - [Crosswalk](https://entitybind.com/glossary/crosswalk) (Definition): A crosswalk is a mapping between the identifier schemes that name the same company in different systems — LEI to company number to CIK to ticker — so that data joined on one key can be joined to data keyed on another. - [Pass-through data](https://entitybind.com/glossary/pass-through-data) (Definition): Pass-through data is material a system may return to the caller who asked for it but may never retain — the tier where the difference between showing and storing is contractual rather than stylistic. - [Company identifiers explained](https://entitybind.com/guides/company-identifiers-explained) (Guide): Company number, LEI, CIK, ticker, SIREN and SIRET, DUNS, VAT, EUID and ISIN. What each identifies, who issues it, what it does not guarantee, and which ones actually decide a match. ## Start with the column you are least sure of. Create your workspace, verify your email and run your first company file. The Free plan needs no card. Create API keys in your workspace when you need an integration. [Start free](https://app.entitybind.com/app?signup=1) · [See which registers we read](https://entitybind.com/coverage) 300 credits. No card. For a guided review of your file, explore [the Merge Safety Sprint](https://entitybind.com/audit-pack). ## Questions about D-U-N-S ### 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. ### Is a D-U-N-S number a reliable key for deduplication? It is reliable in the direction of agreement and imperfect as a unit of identity. Two rows carrying the same D-U-N-S are treated as a match here without a model call; two rows carrying different ones are treated as a non-match. The complication is what the number counts: a D-U-N-S identifies a business location in its issuer's own hierarchy, which is an editorial judgement rather than a legal fact, so it does not always correspond one-to-one with a registered legal entity. Where your file carries both a D-U-N-S and a company number, the company number is the one tied to a register you can open. --- 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. This is the Markdown copy of https://entitybind.com/identifiers/duns, assembled from the same data the page renders and carrying every sentence, table row, figure and question the page's main content carries. The HTML page is canonical; it adds the layout, the navigation and the interactive parts (the ask panel, the forms), which a copy can name but not run. Every page on the site, with a line on each: https://entitybind.com/llms.txt.