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Zevor checks whether a business in the UK, Australia or New Zealand is real and licensed for a purpose, using official registers. The REST API, the MCP server and the search on this site run the same check and return the same answer.

1. Get a key

Get a key with your email address. It is shown once. Then set it in your shell:

export KEY=<your key>

2. Run a check

curl -X POST https://www.zevor.dev/v1/check \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"query": "Barclays", "purpose": "pay_supplier", "country": "GB"}'

Fields: query (business name), purpose, and optionally country (GB, AU or NZ; inferred from the identifier or postcode if missing), postcode and identifier (company number, ACN, ABN or NZBN). Send query or identifier.

Purposes

• pay_supplier: Pay a supplier
• onboard_seller: Onboard a seller
• financial_services: Financial services
• food_business: Food business
• charity: Charity
• general: General check

Response

decision is proceed, review or stop. Every reason and every register has a source URL and a checked-at time. When the match is unclear the decision is review with candidates; retry with a candidate’s identifier. The response to the curl above (illustrative check ID and scores):

{
  "check_id": "chk_sample_barclays",
  "decision": "review",
  "confidence": 0.62,
  "entity": null,
  "candidates": [
    {
      "jurisdiction": "GB",
      "identifier": "00048839",
      "identifier_type": "company_number",
      "name": "BARCLAYS PLC",
      "status": "active",
      "incorporated_on": null,
      "postcode": "E14 5HP",
      "score": 0.62
    },
    {
      "jurisdiction": "GB",
      "identifier": "01026167",
      "identifier_type": "company_number",
      "name": "BARCLAYS BANK PLC",
      "status": "active",
      "incorporated_on": null,
      "postcode": "E14 5HP",
      "score": 0.55
    },
    {
      "jurisdiction": "GB",
      "identifier": "09740322",
      "identifier_type": "company_number",
      "name": "BARCLAYS BANK UK PLC",
      "status": "active",
      "incorporated_on": null,
      "postcode": "E14 5HP",
      "score": 0.52
    }
  ],
  "reasons": [
    {
      "code": "AMBIGUOUS_MATCH",
      "message": "More than one company on the Companies House register could be this business; the 3 closest are listed. Add a postcode or identifier, or confirm which one.",
      "source_url": null
    }
  ],
  "registers": [],
  "attribution": [
    "Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0"
  ],
  "disclaimer": "Automated assessment with sources. Not legal or financial advice."
}

Other endpoints: GET /v1/entity/{jurisdiction}/{identifier} returns the register record with no decision; GET /v1/checks/{check_id} returns a stored check made with your key.

3. Connect an agent (MCP)

The MCP server is at https://www.zevor.dev/mcp (Streamable HTTP). It works without a key at lower limits; a key raises them and puts the checks in your audit log. Each tool returns the same JSON as its REST endpoint.

Tools

review_invoices: ready_for_approval means the checks passed; a person still decides whether to pay. Never send bank account or sort code numbers; send bank_details_changed: true instead. Invoice numbers and amounts are not stored.

Claude Code

claude mcp add --transport http projectx https://www.zevor.dev/mcp \
  --header "Authorization: Bearer $KEY"

Claude (claude.ai and Claude Desktop)

Settings → Connectors → Add custom connector, and enter https://www.zevor.dev/mcp.

Other MCP clients

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "projectx": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "https://www.zevor.dev/mcp",
      "headers": {
        "Authorization": "Bearer $KEY"
      }
    }
  }
}

Setup prompt for your agent

Paste this into your agent’s instructions so it calls the check before acting:

Before you pay, onboard or recommend a business in the UK, Australia or New Zealand, verify it with Zevor.

- MCP: connect to https://www.zevor.dev/mcp (Streamable HTTP) and call check_business(query, purpose, country?, postcode?, identifier?).
- REST: POST https://www.zevor.dev/v1/check with "Authorization: Bearer $KEY" and JSON {query, purpose, country?, postcode?, identifier?}.
- purpose is one of: pay_supplier, onboard_seller, financial_services, food_business, charity, general.

Act on "decision": proceed → continue; review → ask me, showing the reasons and candidates; stop → do not continue, and tell me the reasons.
If you get review with candidates, retry with the candidate's identifier or a postcode.
On an error, follow its "fix" field; retry only if "retryable" is true.

4. Monitors (preview)

Watch a business and read what changed. Use the MCP tools list_monitors, add_monitor, remove_monitor and monitor_events, their REST endpoints, or the console’s Monitors page. Monitors belong to a key, so the tools need one; without a key they return UNAUTHORISED. Each key can have 100 active monitors, re-checked at most once a day; every re-check is an ordinary check in your audit log.

• GET /v1/monitors (list_monitors): Lists the businesses this key is monitoring, with the last status, decision and check of each, and the most it can have.
• POST /v1/monitors (add_monitor): Monitors a business by identifier and country (purpose defaults to general). Runs one check, which is the baseline the daily re-check compares against.
• DELETE /v1/monitors/{id} (remove_monitor): Stops monitoring a business by its monitor ID. Past changes stay readable.
• GET /v1/monitors/events (monitor_events): What the daily re-check saw change (register status or decision), before and after, newest first, with the check that saw it.

curl -X POST https://www.zevor.dev/v1/monitors \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"identifier": "00445790", "country": "GB"}'

Errors

Errors are RFC 9457 problem details (MCP: isError: true with the same fields): code, detail with the values that failed, fix, retryable, side_effects and request_id. A failure is never HTTP 200.

Limits

Free tier: 60 checks a minute per key. Over the limit returns 429 with Retry-After. A register that does not answer is marked unavailable and the decision becomes review; the check itself still succeeds.