Counted from the register · 7 September 2026
How old is your company?
Of the 111,708 active UK companies registered as software developers, 57.5% were incorporated since the start of 2024. The sector next door, IT consultancy, is barely a third. Put a company number in and see where it sits.
Eight characters, or type part of a name. Nothing is sent anywhere: the lookup runs in your browser.
Example, so you can see what this does
2034 TECH SOLUTIONS LTD
- Company number
- 17437387
- Incorporated
- 2026
- Age band
- 2024 onwards
- 35.7% of active it consultancy companies were incorporated 2024 onwards, like this one.
The age of two adjacent sectors
Every figure below is a count of active companies on the Companies House register, taken on 2026-09-05. They are not counted from this directory, which lists only a selection.
- Before 2018 16,425
- 2018 to 2023 31,047
- 2024 onwards 64,236
- Before 2018 57,497
- 2018 to 2023 53,278
- 2024 onwards 61,627
Check it yourself
Every figure on this page is one query against the Companies House advanced search. Swap the SIC code and the dates and you get any cell of the table:
find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/advanced-search/get-results
?sicCodes=62012
&status=active
&incorporationFromDay=1&incorporationFromMonth=1&incorporationFromYear=2024One warning, because it cost us a wrong number. The advanced search accepts a parameter called incorporatedFrom and silently ignores it. Only the three separate day, month and year fields apply the filter. Use the obvious one and you get the unfiltered total, dissolved companies included, with nothing to tell you the filter was dropped. Our first pass reported 218,639 software companies. The active figure is 111,708.
We also nearly published the wrong share. Dividing the post-2024 companies by those incorporated since 2018 gives 67 per cent, which answers a question nobody asked. Against every active company regardless of age it is 57.5 per cent. We mention it because a directory that asks companies to trust its facts should show its workings when it nearly gets one wrong.
What this does and does not tell you
Active means survivors
These are companies trading today. One registered in 2019 has had six years in which to dissolve; one registered this summer has had none. So the tilt towards recent years is partly real growth and partly the fact that young companies have not yet had time to fail.
SIC codes are self-declared
A company picks its code when it incorporates, or at its last confirmation statement, and nobody checks it. Plenty of software companies sit under other codes, and plenty under this one do something else entirely.
This directory is a selection
We track five SIC codes covering roughly 298,000 active companies, and list a few thousand of them. If a company is not found here, that says nothing about whether it is on the register. It usually just means we have not listed it yet.
Where the numbers come from
Companies House advanced search, filtered to active status and by incorporation date. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. If you think a figure here is wrong, tell us and we will correct it in public.