Isle of Man company search: one letter in the number tells you what you'll find

Every entity on the island's registers carries a letter that shows which law it lives under. Type the number from an invoice or letterhead, or try one of the made up examples.

Letters as described by data vendors and formation guides; the Registry doesn't publish a list. A company that moved from the 1931 Act to the 2006 Act gets a new V record, and its old C record shows as dissolved.

1. Open Find company information

   Linked from the Registry's home page on gov.im. It runs on the island government's Online Services.

   Free search
2. Search by name or number

   Previous names are on the public view too, which helps when a company has rebranded.

3. Read the free summary

   Status, registered office, incorporation date and, for a V company, its registered agent. Each filed document is listed with its price.

4. Buy what you need

   An Online Services account is needed to pay. Download straight away: purchases are withdrawn after a month.

Document prices aren't on the Registry's fees page. Data vendors and formation guides report £2 per document and £15 for a company's whole file; you'll see the exact price beside each item before you pay. At the counter in Douglas, inspecting a company file is £5 and photocopies are 50p a page.

The Registry's pages for 1931 Act companies and 2006 Act companies set out what each must file. Put side by side:

The 2025 change older guides miss

Until 2025 a V company could keep its directors off the file. Since 1 April 2025, its first directors and every change to its register of directors must reach the Registrar within a month, with names and business or residential addresses, as the Registry announced in March 2025. From 1 May 2025 the annual return stopped carrying director details, so buy the register of directors, not the latest return.

V companies get a certificate of good standing; C companies and other entities get a certificate of fact. Same price, same speeds, different contents, per the Registry's certificates page and fees page.

Other Registry fees

Apostilles come from the Isle of Man Courts of Justice in Douglas, not the Registry. Notaries describe a standard two day service and a premium one in about 90 minutes; we couldn't find the Courts' fee published online, so ask them before you rely on a figure.

Each company's nominated officer files its owners in the island's Database of Beneficial Ownership. Owners are found in three tiers, and the first that applies is the one recorded.

Who can see the database

That consultation asked whether people with a legitimate interest in fighting money laundering should get access. The government called it exploratory and promised a summary of responses by the end of 2026. By 13 November 2026 none had been posted.

Four official tools, three of them free. Say a V company you've never heard of offers to manage £60,000 of your money: here's what you'd open, in this order.

In that example the second step is the decisive one. The regulator says its online register is the statutory public record for licensed firms, so a money manager missing from it is not licensed on the island, whatever its website says.

If the company turns out to be struck off, it isn't necessarily gone for good: the fees page lists restoration applications from £1,185, which tells you the road back is real but costly.

We form 2006 Act companies, the V kind: one director who can live anywhere or be a company, no secretary, and a licensed registered agent. Your footprint depends on who takes the director's seat.