There are limits to the numbers of results (the highest number result you can actually retrieve, not just how many you can retrieve each time) returned by all the Search endpoints. I can’t find a post from Companies House to confirm this but I believe that for the Companies Search endpoint this is a maximum of 1000. For example querying:
… will return two results, but:
… will not return results and will give a 416 http response code.
See e.g.
In general the paging is simple:
- avoid setting
items_per_pageto 1 as there was a bug with that (I haven’t checked recently though) start_itemshould be a multiple ofitems_per_page(I believe start_item starts from zero)- Whatever you request in
items_per_pageCompanies House doesn’t have to abide by it of course - and indeed as you note some values may be deemed too high. I would always check how many results you actually got back, and if youritems_per_pagewas greater than that perhaps set it to that value on your next call.
What goal are you trying to achieve here? Companies House have repeatedly said that the purpose of the API is focussed and limited queries. If you need thousands of results perhaps the API is not ideal for your use-case. There are several alternatives, depending on what you’re trying to achieve e.g. they have bulk datasets plus a streaming API if you want all changes as they occur (or want to maintain your own copy of the entire data set, up to date).
For more information on those, search this forum.
Good luck.