Methodology
Sources
Company register: Companies Registry official open data. Licensed restaurants: Food & Environmental Hygiene Department. Liquor licences: Liquor Licensing Board (published via FEHD). Hotels & guesthouses: HAD Office of the Licensing Authority. All obtained through official DATA.GOV.HK channels.
Update cadence
Refreshed daily, automatically. New incorporations come from the Registry's weekly official lists; licence datasets sync daily with each department's latest published file.
“Data to” dates
“Data to” is the last day the Government's data actually covers, shown separately from “Last updated” (when our pipeline ran). The Registry publishes new incorporations weekly, typically one to two weeks in arrears, so the chart marks the latest month provisional until its files arrive. Licence lists refresh daily, so the current month is a running month-to-date figure.
Coverage verification
Coverage = our local company count ÷ the Companies Registry's official local count for a named month. Currently: 1,618,744 local companies ÷ the Registry's official local count of 1,621,154 for August 2026 = 99.9% (a count ratio, not row-by-row verification; the headline total also includes 3,149 registered non-Hong Kong companies). It is a count ratio, not row-by-row verification: surplus stale rows can mask missing records. The homepage total also includes registered non-Hong Kong companies.
Districts
The 18-district classification is derived automatically from each registered address: 97.9% of addresses could be classified (a match rate, measured 2026-09-29, not a verified accuracy figure). Unclassified addresses stay in the files with an empty district column.
“First seen” months
A licence's “first seen” month is the month its licence number first appears in the Government's published list, reconstructed from official archive snapshots back to January 2023.
Limitations
The register covers companies currently on the register only. Directors, shareholders, contact details and industry classification are not open data and are not offered here. Addresses appear exactly as filed.
Verification
The official record is at the Companies Registry: cr.gov.hk.