What a DUNS number is — and isn't

The D-U-N-S Number is a unique 9-digit identifier that Dun & Bradstreet assigns to each business entity in its global database — more than 500 million businesses. It has become the de-facto standard key for onboarding organizations: Apple requires it for organizational developer accounts, Google Play for organization developer profiles, Amazon and Walmart for seller/1P onboarding, and the U.S. FDA for food facility registrations.

Two things it is not:

• Not a Chinese government identifier. The 18-digit Unified Social Credit Code (USCC, 统一社会信用代码) on a Chinese business license is issued by the domestic registration authority. A company has both; they are unrelated numbers from unrelated organizations.
• Not a credit rating. It's an identity key. Creditworthiness is a separate D&B product.

Why looking up a Chinese company is harder than it should be

If you've tried to check a Chinese counterparty on dnb.com, you've probably hit two walls:

• The public directory masks the street address. For mainland Chinese companies it typically shows only the company name, city and country. Signing in usually does not unlock the street address. Many buyers conclude the record simply has no detailed address — it does; it just isn't displayed publicly.
• Access from mainland China is restricted. dnb.com commonly returns "Access Denied" to mainland Chinese IP addresses, which is why so many outdated Chinese tutorials circulate with dead links.

The consequence: Western buyers can't see the address, and the Chinese company itself often can't open the directory at all. The registration record itself, however, is complete — the trick is querying it directly. Our free lookup tool does exactly that: given a 9-digit DUNS number, it returns the structured registration profile, including the full street address in both English and Chinese.

Four ways to find a Chinese company's DUNS number

1. Ask the company for their certificate

The number appears on the D&B registration certificate / record card issued when the company was registered. If the company has completed the process, this is the fastest and most reliable route — and a company that can produce its certificate has, incidentally, already passed a basic existence check.

2. D&B's official lookup by name

D&B operates a free lookup where you can search by company name and country: dnb.com/duns-number/lookup. Enter the legal name (ideally the English registered name; the pinyin/brand name often won't match) and China as the country. This tells you whether the company is registered and gives you the number — but not much else for mainland Chinese companies, because of the masking described above.

3. Apple's DUNS lookup (if this is for an Apple developer account)

Apple runs its own free lookup at developer.apple.com/support/DUNS. It not only finds existing numbers but can also initiate a new registration at no cost — the standard timeline there is quoted at up to 30 days.

4. Google Play Console

When an organization verifies its Play Console developer profile, Google offers a DUNS lookup as part of the flow and can likewise start a registration if the company doesn't have one yet. Note that since September 2026, Android developer organizations in the first batch of countries (including Brazil, Indonesia, Singapore and Thailand) must complete this verification.

How a mainland Chinese company gets a DUNS number (free)

The process itself is straightforward; the timeline is what surprises people:

What it costs: nothing, officially. D&B states on its sites that the DUNS number is free, and D&B China explicitly warns about third parties improperly charging for it. The CNY 800–2,500 (roughly USD 110–350) quotes you'll see from agencies are service fees — expedited handling, extra addresses, document translation. Whether that's worth it is a business decision; the number itself never costs money.

Companies renewing a record after moving offices or changing their legal representative should follow the same channel to amend the record. For details on the Chinese-language process, see our Chinese-language guides: the application walkthrough and the free-vs-paid breakdown.

What a complete registration profile contains

A full pull on a mainland Chinese company returns more than 50 structured fields:

• Identity: legal name in Chinese and English, DUNS number, USCC, entity type, registration status
• Registration: incorporation date, registered capital with currency, legal representative, registration authority, full street address in both Chinese and English
• Operations: SIC industry classification, employee count, business scope, main products, services and qualifications
• Extras for many companies: D&B-certified capacity profile (audit type, auditor, supply capacity scores), ESG rating (E/S/G with depths), related companies with their own DUNS numbers, key personnel, website, phone, email

That last group is where the value is for a buyer: capacity profiles and ESG ratings are things a supplier's sales deck can't give you independently.

Verifying a Chinese supplier: the five-field checklist

Platform and procurement verification is, in essence, a field-by-field comparison between the D&B record and the company's business license. Five fields cause almost all rejections:

1. Legal name (Chinese). Must match the business license character-for-character. Pinyin variants, trading names (DBA) and branch names are routinely rejected — Apple's rules explicitly say so.
2. Registered address. Must be the registered address on the license, down to street and building number — not the current office, not "district level". Cross-check the English translation: a garbled English address fails just as hard on the Western side.
3. Legal representative. Check against the current license, and remember recent changes take weeks to propagate into the record.
4. USCC. Identical on license and record — a mismatch means you're looking at the wrong entity.
5. Status. The record shows the registration status; make sure the entity is active, not deregistered.

If something doesn't match, the fix order matters: the company first amends its local business registration, then asks D&B to update the record, and only then re-submits. Doing it in the wrong order means waiting twice.

FAQ

Can I look up a Chinese company by name for free?

Existence and number: yes, via D&B's official name lookup. The full structured profile: not via the public directory — that's what our number-based lookup tool is for.

Is the DUNS number the same as the USCC?

No — different issuers, different systems. Both appear in the company's full profile, and both should match the business license / D&B record respectively.

How long does it take to get one?

Up to about 30 working days for the standard process, per Apple's own documentation; paid agency "expediting" mostly front-loads paperwork preparation, it can't skip D&B's own verification call.

Does the number expire?

The number persists, but the record can go stale (address, legal representative). Companies should re-check their own record after any registration change — two minutes with the tool beats discovering a mismatch at the customer's compliance desk.