To credit check a company, collect its exact legal name and Employer Identification Number, screen free public records for liens and bankruptcy filings, then buy a commercial credit report from Dun & Bradstreet, Experian, or Equifax and read the payment scores against the size of the credit you plan to extend. Public records cost little or nothing. A single commercial report runs roughly $60 to $190 depending on the bureau and depth. The whole process usually fits inside a day.
Start With the Right Identifiers
Get the legal name, the physical address, and if possible the Employer Identification Number. The EIN is a unique nine-digit number issued by the IRS that functions like a Social Security number for a business.1U.S. Small Business Administration. Get Federal and State Tax ID Numbers It usually appears on contracts, invoices, or W-9 forms the company has provided. Name-and-address searches still work without it, but the EIN eliminates confusion between similarly named entities.
Legal name matters more than most people expect. Many businesses operate under a trade name that has nothing to do with their registered identity. A company you know as “Greenfield Supply” might be registered as “JKR Holdings LLC.” Check the name on contracts, the website footer, or state registration records, and confirm the entity designation (Inc., LLC, LP, or other). Parent companies and subsidiaries often share a brand but hold entirely separate credit profiles.
Screen Public Records Before Paying for Anything
Public records are free or nearly free and can surface serious problems before you spend money on a commercial report. Treat this as a screening pass. A tax lien or recent bankruptcy filing may end the analysis right there.
Secretary of State Business Filings
Every state maintains a business registry, usually through the Secretary of State’s office, where you can confirm a company is legally registered and in good standing. These records show the formation date, the registered agent, and whether the company has kept up with required annual filings. A revoked registration or lost good standing is a significant red flag. Most state registries offer free online searches.
UCC Lien Filings
Uniform Commercial Code filings under Article 9 tell you whether a company has pledged its assets as collateral for existing loans.2Legal Information Institute. UCC – Article 9 – Secured Transactions When a lender takes a security interest in equipment, inventory, or receivables, it files a UCC-1 financing statement with the state to put other creditors on notice. Heavy UCC filings mean the company’s assets are already spoken for, and you would sit further back in line if it defaulted. State-level online portals handle these searches, sometimes free and sometimes for a small fee.
Federal Tax Liens
A federal tax lien means the IRS has a legal claim against a company’s property because of unpaid taxes. For corporations and partnerships, the IRS files a Notice of Federal Tax Lien based on the location of the principal executive office.3Internal Revenue Service. 5.17.2 Federal Tax Liens Depending on the state, that filing goes to the county recorder or the Secretary of State. There is no single national portal, so you check the relevant filing office in the state where the company is headquartered.
Federal Bankruptcy Filings
Bankruptcy filings sit in the federal court system. The PACER system (Public Access to Court Electronic Records) lets you search a nationwide index of federal cases, including bankruptcies, by party name.4PACER: Federal Court Records. Find a Case Registration is free. PACER charges $0.10 per page with a $3 cap per document, and fees are waived entirely if you spend $30 or less in a quarter.5PACER: Federal Court Records. PACER Pricing: How Fees Work A simple name search for bankruptcy history usually falls well under that threshold.
Buy a Commercial Credit Report
Public records show legal problems. A commercial credit report shows how a company actually pays its bills. Three major agencies dominate the space, and each pulls data from different sources, so their reports don’t always agree.
Dun & Bradstreet
D&B is the largest business credit bureau and assigns a unique nine-digit D-U-N-S Number to each company it tracks.6Dun & Bradstreet. About the D-U-N-S Number Its reports lean heavily on trade payment data submitted by suppliers through what D&B calls its Global Trade Exchange Program, which shows how consistently a business pays vendors and how much credit it uses. A single D&B Business Information Report currently costs $139.99 for a snapshot or $189.99 for the on-demand version with deeper detail.7Dun & Bradstreet. D&B Business Information Report
Experian Business
Experian pulls payment data from lenders, leasing companies, and public records. Its ProfilePlus report runs $69.95 for a single search, and the more basic CreditScore report costs $59.95.8Experian. Products and Pricing Subscription plans start at $199 per year for anyone monitoring a single company or checking multiple businesses regularly.
Equifax Business
Equifax’s commercial reports include credit history, liabilities, public records, and financial performance metrics.9Equifax. Business Credit Reports Equifax sells these reports through approved resellers rather than directly, so pricing varies. The data overlaps with D&B and Experian in some areas but pulls from different trade sources, which can fill gaps the other two miss.
For a thorough check, pulling reports from at least two agencies gives a more complete picture. On a tighter budget, one D&B or Experian report combined with the free public records searches covers most of the ground.
Read the Scores That Actually Matter
Commercial reports pack information into proprietary scoring systems. Knowing what each score measures keeps you from overweighting one number or missing a warning buried further down.
PAYDEX Score
PAYDEX is D&B’s flagship payment metric. It runs from 1 to 100 and reflects how quickly a business pays relative to agreed terms. A score of 80 or above indicates low risk, meaning the company generally pays on time or early. Scores between 50 and 79 suggest moderate risk with some late payments, and anything below 50 signals seriously late payments.10Dun & Bradstreet. Business Credit Scores and Ratings Because PAYDEX is built entirely on trade payment data, a company with few suppliers reporting to D&B may have a thin or nonexistent score. That is not the same as a bad score, but it does mean less certainty.
Intelliscore Plus
Experian’s Intelliscore Plus predicts the likelihood that a business will become seriously delinquent. The current version, Intelliscore Plus V3, uses a 300 to 850 scale similar to personal credit scores and projects risk over a 24-month window.11Experian. Intelliscore Plus V3 Product Sheet Higher scores mean lower risk. Older references citing a 1 to 100 scale with a 12-month window describe the previous version.
D&B Failure Score
The Failure Score (formerly the Financial Stress Score) predicts whether a business will seek bankruptcy protection, cease operations with unpaid debts, or enter receivership within 12 months. It uses a 1 to 5 risk class, where 1 represents the lowest probability of failure and 5 the highest.10Dun & Bradstreet. Business Credit Scores and Ratings This score matters most for long-term contracts or large credit extensions because it flags existential risk rather than slow payment habits.
Trade Payment Lines
Look past the headline scores at the individual trade experiences listed in the report. Each line shows a supplier’s payment terms, the highest credit amount extended, the current balance, any past-due amounts, and the manner of payment.12Dun & Bradstreet. Understanding Trade References These entries reveal things the scores can’t. A company might carry a decent PAYDEX overall but consistently stretch one type of vendor, or it might have recently shifted from paying on time to running late. That kind of deterioration is exactly what matters when you are about to extend credit.
Small Businesses and Sole Proprietorships
Credit checking a small business works differently than checking an established corporation. A sole proprietorship has no legal separation between the owner and the business, so the owner’s personal credit history is directly relevant. Blended scoring tools that combine personal and business credit data are increasingly common for small business evaluations.13Experian. Business Credit vs. Personal Credit
For LLCs, corporations, and other limited-liability structures, the owner’s personal credit is technically separate. In practice, lenders extending credit to small privately held entities routinely require personal guarantees from principals with a controlling interest.14NCUA. Personal Guarantees If you are extending credit, consider requesting a personal guarantee when the business is young, thinly capitalized, or has a limited commercial credit history. A strong report from an LLC with $50,000 in revenue and two years of history does not carry the same weight as one from a company with a decade-long track record.
Small businesses also tend to have thin credit files. A company that buys most supplies with a debit card or pays cash leaves almost no trail in the commercial databases. A thin file does not mean the company is risky, but it does mean you have less data to work with. In those cases, asking for bank references, financial statements, or tax returns directly from the business fills gaps the credit report can’t.
Foreign Companies
Checking a company based outside the United States adds complexity because foreign businesses do not have EINs and may not appear in D&B, Experian, or Equifax databases. The Legal Entity Identifier is a 20-character alphanumeric code that provides globally standardized identification for any legal entity involved in financial transactions, connects to verified reference data including ownership structure, and is searchable through the Global LEI Index.15Global LEI Foundation. Introducing the Legal Entity Identifier A company involved in international finance likely has one you can look up.
For the credit report itself, Experian provides international business credit data covering 225 countries and territories.16Experian. International Business Credit Reports D&B’s network also spans internationally through its D-U-N-S numbering system. For companies in regions with less robust credit infrastructure, you can request an investigative report, a freshly researched profile built on demand rather than pulled from a standing database. These take longer and cost more, but they are sometimes the only option for a company in a developing market with limited public financial records.
The FCRA Does Not Apply
Something worth knowing before you rely on a business credit report: the Fair Credit Reporting Act, which gives individuals the right to dispute errors and access their own credit reports, does not apply to business credit reports. The statute defines a “consumer” as an individual, and a “consumer report” covers information used to evaluate an individual’s creditworthiness.17Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1681a – Definitions; Rules of Construction Business credit reports sit entirely outside that framework.
Two consequences follow. First, when you are checking another company’s credit, you do not need that company’s permission, and there is no permissible-purpose requirement of the kind that governs personal credit pulls. Second, if your own business finds errors on its commercial profile, you do not have the same dispute rights you would have as a consumer. The major bureaus do allow businesses to submit corrections, but no federal law forces them to investigate within a specific timeframe or remove unverified information the way the FCRA does for consumer reports.18Dun & Bradstreet. Business Credit Report
Turn the Results Into Credit Terms
A credit check only earns its cost if it changes how you do business with the company. Strong scores and clean public records support standard terms like net-30 or net-60. Weak scores call for a larger deposit up front, shorter payment windows, or a personal guarantee from the owner.
D&B publishes a Maximum Credit Recommendation alongside its reports, suggesting a dollar amount based on the company’s industry, employee size, and risk profile.19Dun & Bradstreet. D&B Maximum Credit Recommendation The number is not a guarantee, but it gives you a benchmark rooted in how similar companies use credit. If the amount you are considering is well above the recommendation, dig deeper or tighten your terms.
A credit check is not a one-time event either. Companies that were solid when you first signed on can deteriorate, and the earliest sign is often a shift in payment behavior that shows up in updated trade data long before the company visibly struggles. Monitoring through D&B or Experian’s subscription services flags changes in scores, new liens, or legal filings so you can adjust exposure before a slow-pay problem becomes a write-off.