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POST
curl
Use this endpoint first to find matching company registry candidates. Search does not create a saved Manual Check. Successful standalone searches using a paid company-data source cost $0.50 per request, regardless of the number of candidates. Empty results, failed searches, and results served only by other sources are not charged. A later profile retrieval is billed separately. For a search that can use a paid source, Didit checks and reserves the applicable search price before contacting the registry. Insufficient balance returns 403 with code: "insufficient_credits". Contract billing follows your agreed search rate; an unconfigured contract rate is rejected before the search. Sandbox searches are free. Each repeated successful search is a new billable request; callback delivery does not add another search charge. If you send webhook_url, Didit can return immediately while the provider resolves the search, then post the candidates to your callback URL when they are ready. The callback is unsigned by design, so you do not need to configure a webhook secret for this search notification. See the search callback payload example. After you pick the correct kyb_response_id, call POST /v3/kyb/select/ (Lite), POST /v3/kyb/shareholders/ or POST /v3/kyb/ubo/ to retrieve the billable registry profile at the tier you need.
Each candidate’s fetch_status is pending at search time and stays pending until you select that candidate — search only lists candidates, and select is what fetches the full profile. Do not poll search waiting for it to resolve.kyb_response_id is an opaque, ephemeral handle scoped to one search request: pass it back exactly as you received it and never parse it or derive anything from its contents, and expect repeating the same search to return new ids. Select the candidate promptly after searching, and use registration_number when you need a stable identifier for the company itself.

Search tier

tier selects the registry tier whose provider chain the search runs on: basic (the default, the Lite chain), shareholders or ubo. The candidate list comes from that tier’s chain, and that is not always the source the Lite search reads, so an empty Lite search does not prove the registry does not hold the company — search again at the tier you need. Where the country does not offer the tier you name, the search runs on the highest tier it offers up to that one. A country with no registry data at all is not offered for registry checks; continue with manual company entry. Search at the tier you intend to buy, then retrieve the candidate from the endpoint that sells it:

search_type

search_type accepts contains only, and that is the default. The registry sources behind the search match a company name on containment, so start_with and fuzzy are rejected with 400 ("start_with" is not a valid choice) instead of being silently treated as contains. Send registration_number for an exact company match. POST /v1/kyb/search/ is the search a hosted verification flow runs: it is authenticated by the verification session, answers 403 to an API key, and takes no tier — the workflow’s KYB registry configuration picks the chain. The standalone API calls POST /v2/kyb/search/ or POST /v3/kyb/search/ with your x-api-key; the tier input and the tiered select endpoints are how a standalone integration reaches the same candidates, at the tier it needs.

Handle registry outages

If the registry provider is temporarily unavailable, the endpoint returns 502 with a stable machine-readable code:
When you receive this code, let the user continue with manual company entry or ask them to retry later. Keep validation errors separate: invalid search input returns 400 and does not use this outage code.

Authorizations

x-api-key
string
header
required

Your application's API key, from Developers -> API keys in the Business Console. The primary key has full access. A named key can be scoped: none, read or write per resource, limited to some workflows or to approved sessions, to a list of IP addresses, and to an expiry date. 401 means the key is missing, wrong, revoked or expired; 403 means the key has no access to this resource or action, or the request came from an address outside its IP list; 404 on a session route means the session is outside the key's workflows or statuses. A key without media access receives image, video and PDF URLs as null, and a key without sessions write receives session links and tokens as null. See https://docs.didit.me/console/api-keys.

Body

application/json
country_code
string
required

ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code of the country whose company registry to search. For example, GB. Where company registries operate at state or province level, append the ISO 3166-2 subdivision code as XX-YY: US-CA searches the California registry. United States searches always require the subdivision — a bare US is rejected. Case-insensitive; normalized to upper case.

Maximum string length: 10
Example:

"GB"

name
string

Company name to search for. Either name or registration_number is required.

Maximum string length: 255
Example:

"Tesco"

registration_number
string

Registry registration number to search for. Either name or registration_number is required.

Maximum string length: 100
tier
enum<string>
default:basic

Registry tier whose provider chain this search runs on. basic (default) searches the country's Lite chain; shareholders and ubo search that tier's ownership chain, which can be a different source, so an empty Lite search does not prove the registry lacks the company. A country that does not offer the named tier is searched at the highest tier it offers up to that one. Retrieve the candidate from the endpoint that sells the tier you searched: POST /v3/kyb/select/ (Lite), POST /v3/kyb/shareholders/ or POST /v3/kyb/ubo/.

Available options:
basic,
shareholders,
ubo
Example:

"basic"

search_type
enum<string>
default:contains

Name-matching strategy applied by the registry search. contains is the only accepted value: no registry source behind the search offers a prefix or fuzzy mode, so start_with and fuzzy are rejected with 400 (not a valid choice).

Available options:
contains
vendor_data
string

Your identifier for this lookup; echoed back and included in the webhook callback.

metadata
object | null

Free-form JSON; echoed back and included in the webhook callback.

webhook_url
string<uri>

Switches the search to asynchronous mode: the API returns immediately and POSTs an unsigned kyb.registry_search.resolved callback to this URL when the candidate list is ready.

Maximum string length: 500

Response

Search accepted. Synchronous mode returns the resolved candidate list; webhook mode returns immediately (often search_status: "pending") and delivers the final list via the kyb.registry_search.resolved callback.

request_id
string<uuid>

With webhook_url: the persisted search-request id, echoed as request_id in the kyb.registry_search.resolved callback. Without webhook_url: a transient correlation UUID (the search is not stored).

kyb_registry
object
vendor_data
string | null

Echo of the vendor_data you sent.

metadata
object | null

Echo of the metadata you sent.

created_at
string<date-time>