Is GiveRadar an OpenCorporates alternative for charity due diligence?

For charity-specific due diligence, GiveRadar is purpose-built and OpenCorporates is general-purpose. OpenCorporates will tell you whether a charity is incorporated, who its directors are at Companies House (or equivalent), and what other companies share those directors, which is invaluable for fraud and conflict-of-interest investigation. GiveRadar adds charity-regulator data (Charity Commission, IRS, ATO, etc.), automatic financial-ratio analysis, sanctions screening against Open Sanctions, news monitoring, and a normalized 0-100 Integrity Assessment. Many investigators use both: OpenCorporates for the corporate-network layer, GiveRadar for the charity-sector context.

Does OpenCorporates cover charities?

Indirectly. OpenCorporates covers any legal entity registered with an official corporate registry, which in the UK and US includes most charities that are incorporated as companies (UK Companies House, US state Secretaries of State). However, OpenCorporates does not flag charities as charities, does not ingest charity-regulator data (Charity Commission income, IRS Form 990 financials, charity-specific filings), and does not include unincorporated charitable trusts. For charity-specific work, the regulator data and charity-status flag matter, which is what GiveRadar provides.

Is OpenCorporates free?

OpenCorporates' main website is free for individual lookups and search. The API and bulk data feeds are commercial and priced for enterprise use (banks, KYB providers, journalists with grants); academic and journalistic use is often available at reduced rates. The data itself is published openly under share-alike licenses where the source registry permits. GiveRadar's REST API is free at the 100-request-per-day tier with paid Pro and Enterprise tiers, and the underlying methodology is open.

Why does OpenCorporates have 200 million entities while GiveRadar has 8.7 million?

Different populations. OpenCorporates covers all legal entities (for-profit companies, LLCs, partnerships, charities incorporated as companies, government bodies, etc.) across 145+ jurisdictions. GiveRadar covers only charities/nonprofits recognized by an official charity regulator across 65+ countries. Most legal entities are for-profit businesses, so the headline counts diverge by design. Per-country charity counts on GiveRadar are similar to or larger than what you would extract from OpenCorporates filtered to charities-only, because OpenCorporates does not ingest dedicated charity registers (only corporate registries).

Should I use OpenCorporates or GiveRadar for charity fraud investigation?

For corporate-network angles (shared directors, shell companies, related-party transactions, corporate-veil piercing), OpenCorporates is the canonical tool. For charity-specific fraud signals (financial-ratio anomalies, missing filings, sanctions matches, executive compensation outliers, news of regulatory action, low Integrity Assessment scores), GiveRadar is purpose-built. Most investigative reporters use both: OpenCorporates to map the corporate network around a suspect charity and its trustees, GiveRadar for the charity-sector signals like Form 990 anomalies, Charity Commission inquiries, and sanctions matches.

Who runs OpenCorporates?

OpenCorporates was co-founded in 2010 by Chris Taggart and Rob McKinnon as a public-benefit company headquartered in London. It is widely regarded as the canonical open data project for company registry data and has been used in major investigations including the Panama Papers and Pandora Papers. Chris Taggart has spoken extensively about open corporate data as a public good. GiveRadar was founded by Matt Timmermans in 2026 with a similar open-data ethos applied to the charity sector.

Comparison

GiveRadar vs OpenCorporates: an honest comparison

Q: What is the difference between GiveRadar and OpenCorporates?

Different domains. OpenCorporates (opencorporates.com) is the world's largest open database of companies, aggregating over 200 million legal entities from 145+ official corporate registries worldwide; it is used by banks, journalists, NGOs, regulators, and academics for know-your-business checks, anti-money-laundering, sanctions screening, and corporate-network investigation. GiveRadar is a charity-specific research database covering 7 million+ nonprofits across 65+ countries from official charity regulators, with an automatic Integrity Assessment, red flag detection, and per-charity news context. They cover overlapping but distinct populations: OpenCorporates includes everything that filed with a corporate registry (most charities incorporated as companies, plus all for-profit firms); GiveRadar covers only entities recognized as charities by their official regulator.

Adjacent open-data projects for different jobs. OpenCorporates is the world's largest open database of companies (200M+ legal entities across 145+ jurisdictions), used for know-your-business, AML, and investigative journalism. GiveRadar is a charity-specific research database covering 7 million+ nonprofits across 65+ countries with an automatic Integrity Assessment.

Skip to verdict All comparisons

GiveRadar

Free charity-specific research database. 7 million+ charities across 65+ countries from 50+ official charity regulators. Automatic Integrity Assessment 0-100, red flags, sanctions screening (Open Sanctions), per-charity news context, financial-ratio analysis. Charity-status flag and charity-regulator filings (Form 990, Charity Commission income, etc.) are first-class data.

OpenCorporates

World's largest open database of companies. 200M+ legal entities aggregated from 145+ official corporate registries. Used for know-your-business, AML, sanctions screening, investigative journalism (Panama Papers, Pandora Papers), and corporate-network analysis. Founded 2010 by Chris Taggart and Rob McKinnon. Covers any legal entity, not charity-specific.

The 30-second verdict

For corporate-network angles (shared directors, shell companies, related parties, corporate-veil piercing), OpenCorporates is the canonical open tool and we cannot replace it. For charity-specific signals (Integrity Assessment, financial-ratio anomalies, charity-regulator inquiries, sanctions matches, news context), GiveRadar adds layers OpenCorporates does not provide. The two are adjacent rather than competing: investigative reporters frequently use both, OpenCorporates for the corporate web, GiveRadar for the charity-sector context.

Dimension	GiveRadar	OpenCorporates
Domain	Charities / nonprofits	All legal entities (companies, LLCs, etc.)
Total records	7 million+ charities	200,000,000+ legal entities
Geographic coverage	65+ countries (charity regulators)	145+ jurisdictions (corporate registries)
Source registries	Charity Commission, IRS, ATO, ACNC, OSCR, CCNI, Hong Kong IRD, etc.	Companies House, US state Secretaries of State, etc.
Charity status flag	First-class	Not available (entity-type field is corporate)
Charity-regulator filings (Form 990, etc.)	Yes	No
Director / officer network	Per-charity officers from regulators	Best-in-class corporate-network graph
Per-record scoring	Integrity Assessment 0-100	No score; raw data
News / sanctions / red flags	Yes (auto + GDELT + Open Sanctions)	No (third parties layer this on)
API pricing	Free 100 req/day; Pro 99 USD/month	Free web search; commercial API for KYB providers
Founded / lead	2026, Matt Timmermans	2010, Chris Taggart and Rob McKinnon

Primary sources

All figures sourced from each platform's published documentation. GiveRadar figures are live counts; OpenCorporates figures are taken from their public site and may have grown.

Written by GiveRadar; we built it and we believe in it. OpenCorporates is foundational open-data infrastructure that we admire and recommend without reservation for corporate-network work; it is adjacent rather than a substitute for charity-specific research. Email [email protected] for corrections.