There are 4,506 public limited companies in the UK
That is the whole of them, counted from the Companies House register on 2026-09-01. 3,793 are not in liquidation or facing strike off. Every one is listed on this site, and the list is free to download.
Why the answer is hard to find
Ask this question and the answers range from a couple of thousand to tens of thousands, usually with nothing behind them. The spread comes from two different questions being answered as one. A public limited company is a legal form, recorded on the register. A listed company is one whose shares trade on an exchange, which is a separate step that most PLCs never take. Every listed British company is a PLC. Very few PLCs are listed.
The register settles it, and the register is free. Companies House publishes the whole thing as a monthly download of 5,689,367 companies. Filter it to the public limited companies and you get 4,506: under a tenth of one per cent, fewer than one in a thousand companies in Britain.
You do not have to take our word for it. The full list is downloadable, the method is published, and the source is the free Companies House bulk register, which anyone can download and count for themselves.
The number has fallen every year for a decade
This is the part nobody mentions. Companies House publishes its own count each year, in a spreadsheet attached to a statistical release. Between 2015-16 and 2024-25 the effective register fell from 6,225 public limited companies to 4,222, a drop of 32 per cent. Not one year went up.
The supply side explains it. New PLC incorporations fell from 406 in 2015-16 to 152 in 2024-25, down 63 per cent, while dissolutions carried on at roughly their old rate. Fewer are being formed than are leaving, and have been for years.
Our own count continues that line. Companies House last reported 4,973 public limited companies on the register in total at the end of 2024-25; seventeen months later the bulk register holds 4,506. Two sources, two methods, the same trajectory, which is why both are published here.
One in 6 is in trouble
713 of the 4,506 are in liquidation, administration, receivership or facing strike off, which is 16 per cent. A private company in that state is a private matter. A public one, by the nature of the form, may have outside shareholders.
| Status on the register | Companies |
|---|---|
| Active | 3,793 |
| Liquidation | 544 |
| Active - Proposal to Strike off | 103 |
| In Administration | 51 |
| In Administration/Administrative Receiver | 4 |
| Live but Receiver Manager on at least one charge | 4 |
| Voluntary Arrangement | 3 |
| Administration Order | 2 |
| Receiver Manager / Administrative Receiver | 1 |
| Receivership | 1 |
Most PLCs are not what you picture
The words suggest household names. The register suggests something duller: the largest single declared activity is financial intermediation, followed by head offices and holding companies. A great many public limited companies are structures rather than trading businesses, and 2,156 of them give a London registered office.