Webhooks
A webhook reverses the direction of communication. Instead of you asking periodically whether anything changed, we tell you ourselves – at the moment it happens.
Why not polling
Checking a thousand companies once a day means a thousand calls, the overwhelming majority of them pointless – most companies do not change. It is also up to a full day late. A webhook fires only when there is something to report.
Event types
There are 31 event types. They cover changes to core details, changes of officers and shareholders, Commercial Journal entries, appearances in debtor lists, the opening of insolvency proceedings, changes in VAT registration and more. You subscribe only to the ones you care about.
Signature and verification
Every request carries an X-Webhook-Signature header with an HMAC of the body in the form sha256=..., plus X-Webhook-Event with the event type and X-Webhook-Delivery-Id with the delivery identifier. Verify the signature before processing – it is the only way to be sure the request came from us.
Retries and reliability
If your endpoint does not respond or returns an error, delivery is retried with increasing intervals. The delivery identifier stays the same, so you can recognise a retry and process it idempotently. Delivery history is available in the dashboard and through the API.
Recommended approach
Your endpoint should verify the signature, write the event to your own queue and respond 2xx as fast as possible. Leave processing to the background. An endpoint that does heavy work before responding needlessly causes repeat deliveries.
Frequently asked questions
What happens if my server is temporarily unavailable?
Delivery is retried with increasing intervals. If an endpoint fails persistently we alert you – deliveries are never dropped silently.
How do I verify the signature?
Compute an HMAC SHA-256 of the raw request body with your secret and compare it against the value in X-Webhook-Signature. Use a timing-safe comparison.
Can I have more than one webhook?
Yes. Separate endpoints for separate event types are common – risk events into one system and detail changes into another, for instance.
Try it on your own data
A free account requires no payment card. Our database holds 2 160 466 entities from 48 public registers.