ACRA BizFile Company Search: Free vs the S$5.50 Profile

Singapore's register is cheap, fast, and clearly split in two.

Searching is free. Knowing anything useful costs S$5.50.

That single number is what most people arrive looking for, so here is the full breakdown before anything else.

Free or paid, at a glance

For S$5.50, Singapore gives you shareholders. The UK gives the same for free. Hong Kong charges HK$22 and still withholds beneficial owners. Delaware never shows them at all.

On price and content together, Singapore is the best value of the four.

1. 1
   BizFile search, by name or UENFree. Does the entity exist, what is its status, what is its UEN and what type of entity is it?
2. 2
   S$5.50 gateFree in three cases: just after an incorporation, after an annual return or annual declaration, and after renewing a sole proprietorship, partnership or LP.
3. 3
   Business ProfileS$5.50. Directors, shareholders, paid-up capital, registered address, business activities and compliance history.

The three cases where the profile is free

Barely mentioned in the commercial guides, because the providers who write them sell the profile inside their packages.

ACRA issues a Business Profile at no charge when:

• you have just registered or incorporated a new business or company
• you have just filed your annual return, for a company or VCC, or your annual declaration, for an LLP
• you have just renewed a sole proprietorship, partnership or limited partnership

If you are the company and you have just filed something, check before you pay. The profile is generated for you.

This does not help you when you are checking someone else's company. It helps when a counterparty asks you for yours.

How to read a UEN

The Unique Entity Number is Singapore's single business identifier, used across every government agency. Most guides treat it as an opaque string. It is not.

The format encodes the year of registration and the entity type.

Two things you can read off a UEN without paying anything.

The year. A local company's UEN starts with its year of incorporation. A counterparty claiming fifteen years of trading with a UEN starting 2024 has some explaining to do.

The entity type. The letters in the middle of a T-format UEN identify what kind of entity it is: a limited partnership, a business trust, a society, a charity, a government body. That tells you what you are contracting with before you open anything.

Local company

2024Year of registration

12345Sequential number

XCheck character

Ten characters: a local company registered with ACRA in 2024.

Other entity types, the T format

TPrefix for other entities

21Year

LLEntity type code

1234Sequential number

KCheck character

Here LL is a limited liability partnership, registered in 2021.

Reading the year and the entity type straight off the number is a free verification step, and it takes no search at all.

What the free search actually confirms

Enough to confirm that a company exists, is live, and is the type it claims to be. Not enough to contract with confidence.

What the S$5.50 Business Profile adds

This is the document Singapore counterparties, banks and landlords will ask you for. It is the standard proof of corporate identity in the market.

It shows directors, shareholders, paid-up capital, the registered address, the business activities under the SSIC classification, and the compliance filing history.

Three fields deserve attention when you are the one reading it.

Shareholders. Singapore publishes them, which most jurisdictions do not. This is the single strongest reason to buy the profile rather than rely on the free search.

Paid-up capital. A company with S$1 of paid-up capital is perfectly legal and extremely common. It is also a fact worth knowing before extending credit.

Compliance filing history. Late or missing annual returns are the cheapest warning sign in the document.

The resident director requirement, and why it shows up here

Every Singapore company must have at least one director ordinarily resident in Singapore: a citizen, a permanent resident, or an eligible pass holder.

A foreign founder without a local partner buys a nominee director service to satisfy it.

When you read a Business Profile, that is what a single local director alongside foreign shareholders usually means. It is a standard structure, not a red flag. But it does tell you that the person named locally may have no operational role, which matters if you were counting on them as a point of contact.

Checking name availability before you incorporate

BizFile is also where you clear a name, and Singapore runs this differently from the other three jurisdictions in this series.

The name application costs S$15, and it is non-refundable whether or not the name is approved.

An approved name is reserved for 120 days. That is a real reservation, unlike Hong Kong, which offers none, or Delaware, where a free search result gives you nothing until the filing is accepted.

So the sequence is: free search to see whether the name is obviously taken, then S$15 to apply, then 120 days to complete the incorporation. The S$15 sits inside the S$315 total ACRA charge, alongside the S$300 registration fee.

Two things the free search will not catch. Names that are undesirable or too similar to an existing one are refused on judgement, not on an exact-match rule. And ACRA does not check trademarks, so an approved name can still infringe a registered mark.

Reading the compliance history

The filing history in the paid profile is the part most people skim, and it is where the useful signal lives. To read it you need the two deadlines it is measured against.

Whichever falls first applies.

That gives you a simple test. Take the company's financial year end, add seven months, and check whether the last annual return landed before that date. A company consistently filing in month eleven is not in immediate danger, but it is telling you something about how it is run.

Day 0Financial year end.

+6 monthsAnnual general meeting must be held.

+1 month after the AGMAnnual return must be filed.

+7 monthsAbsolute deadline for a private company's annual return, whichever of the two comes first.

BeyondLate. It shows in the compliance history on the Business Profile, where counterparties can see it.

1. Day 0Financial year end.
2. +6 monthsAnnual general meeting must be held.
3. +1 month after the AGMAnnual return must be filed.
4. +7 monthsAbsolute deadline for a private company's annual return, whichever of the two comes first.
5. BeyondLate. It shows in the compliance history on the Business Profile, where counterparties can see it.

How Singapore compares

Singapore is the only one of the four where a few dollars buys you the shareholder list outright.

The gap is accounts. Singapore private companies that qualify as small are exempt from audit and do not file publicly accessible financial statements the way UK companies do. You get the ownership picture, not the financial one.

When the company does not come up

You are searching a trading name. Singapore businesses can operate under a name different from the registered entity name. Search the UEN if you have it.

Spelling or spacing. The search is literal. Try the shortest distinctive part of the name.

It is struck off or wound up. It may still appear with a status showing that, which is itself the answer.

It is not a Singapore entity. Foreign companies with a Singapore branch register separately. A company merely doing business in Singapore may not be registered there at all.

The summary