Free Dun & Bradstreet alternative: open identifiers instead of DUNS

Every endpoint on this page was live-probed on 2026-07-28 by the Aidenix Atlas catalog.

What is a Dun & Bradstreet alternative?

A Dun & Bradstreet alternative is an identity layer that answers «is this company real, who owns it, and how is it structured» without licensing the proprietary DUNS number. The open equivalent exists and is regulator-backed: the LEI (Legal Entity Identifier), a global identifier mandated after the 2008 financial crisis and served free by GLEIF — 3,386,069 legal entities with ownership links, according to the GLEIF API on 2026-07-28. The structural difference matters more than the count. A DUNS record is proprietary: you license access, and redistribution is restricted. An LEI record is public infrastructure: bulk downloads, no key, no seat limit. In our data — the Aidenix Atlas catalog, where every endpoint is live-probed — the open identity stack covers:

• Entity verification: legal name, status, registered address from the LEI record.
• Corporate hierarchy: direct and ultimate parent links between LEIs.
• Registry cross-reference: each LEI carries the local registry ID it maps to.
• What stays paid: credit scores and payment-behavior data.

DUNS vs LEI at a glance

Which open sources replace each D&B function?

An open identity source is a regulator-run register that serves entity records as public infrastructure. In our data, 5 sources cover the 4 functions above with 18,500,000+ records. According to our catalog probes on 2026-07-28, every endpoint below returned HTTP 200. None requires a paid license:

Which layer you need decides the route in one line:

• If the question is «is this company real and who controls it» → GLEIF + the local registry answer it outright, free.
• If the question is «can they pay their bills» → no open source holds payment behavior; that is the one function still worth a D&B quote.
• If the company is US-public → skip credit products entirely; audited XBRL financials are stronger and free.

How do you verify a company without a DUNS number?

DUNS-free verification is a 2-hop join across the 3,386,069-entity LEI graph, according to the pattern our catalog probes daily — and in our data the LEI was designed to be exactly this pivot key:

• Resolve the name: api.gleif.org fuzzy-matches legal names and returns the LEI, status, and registered address in one keyless GET.
• Cross-check the local registry: the LEI record embeds the national registry identifier — company number for the UK, state entity ID for the US — which keys directly into Companies House or a state registry.
• Walk the family tree: GLEIF relationship endpoints return the direct and ultimate parent, replacing the D&B «corporate linkage» product for any entity that has an LEI.

# names collide globally — filter by country or resolve a registry ID first
curl "https://api.gleif.org/api/v1/lei-records?filter%5Bentity.legalName%5D=Stripe"

We ran that query live on 2026-07-28. The top three results — unedited:

Read the sample carefully: the first hit is a Belgian company legally named STRIPE, then Irish special-purpose vehicles — not the payments company you probably meant. This is the verification lesson itself: legal names collide globally, which is why the join must run through jurisdiction filters or a known registry ID. D&B resolves this ambiguity behind a paywall; GLEIF gives you the raw graph and lets you resolve it audibly — every step traceable to a public record.

What can't open identifiers replace?

The unreplaceable function is credit risk: none of the 3,386,069 LEI records or 10,137,727 registry records above carries payment behavior. D&B's Paydex score is built from private trade-payment tapes — suppliers reporting who pays late — and no open register mirrors that behavioral layer, according to our catalog survey of 2026-07-28. In our data, the honest split is:

• Moves to open sources at zero license cost: identity, hierarchy, registry verification, public-company financials.
• Stays commercial: private-company creditworthiness, payment behavior, the long tail of tiny firms without an LEI.
• Partial workarounds: SEC XBRL serves audited financials for every US public filer; UK accounts filings at Companies House cover private balance sheets with a lag.

If the question is «should I extend this company 60-day terms», open data informs it; if the question is «is this company real and who controls it», open data now answers it outright.

Frequently asked questions

Why does the corner bakery have a DUNS but no LEI? Because the mandates differ. DUNS grew from decades of credit reporting on every business that ever sought trade credit; the LEI mandate came from financial regulators after 2008 and binds entities that touch regulated markets. Coverage follows the mandate — LEI skews to companies that borrow, trade, or report.

Is the LEI data really free for commercial use? Yes — GLEIF publishes the full dataset under CC0, the most permissive license that exists. You can download all 3,386,069 records tonight, embed them in a product, and owe nobody a fee or an attribution.

Do US government systems still require DUNS? No — the US federal government dropped DUNS in April 2022 and switched to its own open UEI (Unique Entity ID) in SAM.gov, removing the single biggest lock-in DUNS had.

How we verify these claims

Every endpoint on this page sits in the Aidenix Atlas catalog — a map of nearly 4,000 real data sources — and was live-probed on 2026-07-28: real requests, recorded HTTP statuses, response shapes checked against schema. The Stripe sample above is unedited API output from that run. When a source dies or drifts, the probe fleet flags it and this page gets re-verified — the «last probed» date is the freshness contract.

Source facts from the Aidenix Atlas catalog, probed 2026-07-28. Found an error? The catalog re-probes on every report.