Qichacha & Tianyancha English Alternative (2026 Guide)

If you have spent more than ten minutes researching how to verify a Chinese company, you have probably seen two names repeated again and again: Qichacha (企查查) and Tianyancha (天眼查). Chinese procurement professionals, journalists, and lawyers swear by them. They are frequently described as the "Bloomberg Terminals" of Chinese corporate data. Trade forums, Reddit threads, and LinkedIn posts routinely point overseas buyers in their direction.

Then you actually try to use them.

The landing page is in Mandarin. The registration form asks for a Chinese mobile number starting with +86. The "open premium" button tries to charge your account through Alipay or WeChat Pay. And even after you stumble through with Google Translate, the corporate records come back as walls of Simplified Chinese text studded with acronyms for Chinese government agencies you have never heard of.

So you are left with a question: are Qichacha and Tianyancha really the right tools for an international buyer, importer, or due-diligence team, or do you need something built for English speakers from the ground up?

This guide answers that question honestly. We will explain what these tools actually do, why they are so dominant inside China, the three structural blockers foreign users run into, and the four best English-language alternatives for 2026, including when (and when not) to pay for Qichacha or Tianyancha premium.

What Qichacha and Tianyancha Actually Do

At their core, Qichacha (qcc.com) and Tianyancha (tianyancha.com) are commercial aggregators of Chinese public corporate data. Both were founded in 2014 and now claim to cover more than 300 million Chinese business entities, including active companies, branches, individual merchants, foundations, and deregistered firms.

They work by ingesting data from dozens of Chinese government portals and harmonizing it into a single searchable database. The primary upstream source is the National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System (gsxt.gov.cn), which is operated by China's State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR). If you want to understand what raw government data even looks like, our GSXT company search guide for English speakers walks through it step by step.

On top of GSXT, both platforms pull in:

• Supreme People's Court filings (lawsuits, enforcement, blacklists)
• Customs administration import/export data
• Tax administration red and black lists
• Intellectual property bureaus (trademarks, patents, copyrights)
• Securities regulators (CSRC announcements, IPO filings)
• Ministry of Ecology and Environment penalty records
• Local AMR offices for administrative penalties and inspections

They enrich this with news scraping, job postings, mobile app store metadata, domain WHOIS, and social media activity, then sell structured profiles to Chinese banks, law firms, procurement teams, and journalists.

In practice, when you type a Chinese company's name into either platform, you see a dashboard that answers: Is this company real? Who owns and runs it? What is its registered capital and paid-in capital? How many people work there? Has it been sued? Are its bank accounts frozen? Has it been fined? Does it own property, trademarks, or patents? Has it been flagged for operating at a non-existent address?

That is an enormous amount of information in one place, which is why they are so popular inside China.

Why They Work So Well (in China)

Three structural reasons explain the dominance of Qichacha and Tianyancha for domestic Chinese users:

1. Integration with the Chinese identity ecosystem

Both apps verify users with a Chinese mobile number and, for premium features, real-name verification (实名认证) tied to a Chinese national ID. This is not optional security theater, it is how the entire Chinese internet works. In exchange, users get APIs, bulk export, court judgment PDFs, and risk alerts that overseas platforms cannot legally redistribute.

2. Near-real-time scraping of Chinese government data

China's corporate disclosure regime produces thousands of daily updates across roughly 34 provincial SAMR portals, plus court, tax, and customs systems. Qichacha and Tianyancha each operate scraping and ingestion infrastructure that refreshes entity records within hours or days. A user inside China expects "this company's latest annual report" to mean this year's, filed within the last few weeks.

3. Data that only makes sense in Chinese context

A line item like "被列入经营异常名录" ("listed in abnormal operations registry") is instantly meaningful to a Chinese procurement manager. The platforms assume their readers know what a "有限责任公司" is versus a "股份有限公司," why a "注册资本 100 万元" (1M RMB registered capital) number might be meaningless without "实缴" (paid-in) data, and how to read a Chinese business license number.

Put differently: Qichacha and Tianyancha are not trying to serve foreign users, and they do not need to. Their unit economics inside China are fine.

The 3 Blockers for Foreign Users

If you are reading this from outside China, three concrete obstacles stand between you and a useful Qichacha or Tianyancha workflow.

Blocker 1: The Chinese phone number requirement

Both platforms require a Chinese mobile number (+86, typically starting 13, 15, 17, 18, or 19) to register an account. Some features work partially without registration, but anything meaningful, including full company profiles, risk scoring, and report downloads, requires a verified account.

Workarounds you will see recommended online include:

• Buying a Chinese SIM card on Taobao or from a reseller (~$8 to $30 USD, ships via daigou)
• Using a Chinese virtual number service (e.g., eSIM providers offering China Unicom or China Telecom)
• Asking a Chinese colleague, agent, or friend to register on your behalf

None of these are great. The Taobao SIM market has become increasingly locked down since China's 2017 real-name registration enforcement; many prepaid SIMs now require an in-person ID check. Virtual numbers are unreliable and frequently get banned from Qichacha/Tianyancha. Having someone else register for you means the account, and all your search history, is legally theirs.

Blocker 2: The language wall

Both interfaces are 100% Simplified Chinese. There are no official English toggles. Using Google Translate's page translation feature sort of works, but:

• Legal terminology translates badly (a "股东" rendered as "shareholder" loses the distinction between natural persons and corporate parents)
• Company names become inconsistent (a single Chinese name can be translated three different ways on one page)
• Court case summaries get mangled because the parser cannot handle mixed content
• Numbers in Chinese characters (for example, 壹佰万 for "one million") are sometimes dropped during translation

Worse, the platforms auto-detect translation overlays and occasionally break layout or trigger anti-bot captchas.

Blocker 3: The payment wall

The free tier on both platforms is deliberately limited. Premium features, bulk export, API access, and full court records require a paid VIP subscription, typically 498 RMB/year for individual tier or 1,998 RMB/year for business tier as of 2026.

Payment flows are restricted to:

• Alipay (requires a Chinese bank account for most users)
• WeChat Pay (same)
• Chinese-issued UnionPay cards
• A limited and awkward corporate invoice flow

International Visa and Mastercard are not accepted for the main consumer tiers. Some workarounds exist, Alipay Tour Pass, HSBC Premier cards with RMB features, or third-party payment agents, but every one of them adds friction and often a 5 to 10% markup.

Side-by-side: Qichacha vs Tianyancha

The two apps are more similar than they are different. Most Chinese users pick one based on UI preference rather than data coverage. Here is how they compare in 2026:

In our experience, Qichacha has a slightly cleaner relationship-mapping feature (useful for tracing ultimate beneficial owners through chains of holding companies), while Tianyancha has slightly better full-text court judgment search. Both will turn up the same red flags for 95% of supplier verification work.

Can You Use These Without a Chinese Phone Number?

The honest answer is: partially, and it is usually not worth the trouble.

Here is what you can and cannot do without registering:

Without any account:

• You can see a company's truncated basic information (name, unified social credit code, legal representative, rough registration date)
• You cannot see the shareholder list, annual report filings, court cases, or administrative penalties
• You cannot download or export anything

With a free account (still requires Chinese number to register):

• You unlock 3 to 5 free searches per day with full basic profile
• Court cases are shown as counts only ("17 lawsuits") with click-through teasers
• Risk alerts are locked
• No data export

With premium (requires Chinese number + Chinese payment):

• Full access to everything, including bulk export, court PDFs, and API

If you are only looking up one or two suppliers, and you have a patient Chinese-speaking colleague, the free tier can be enough for a basic sanity check. For anything recurring, including multiple suppliers, ongoing monitoring, or audit-ready reports, the friction compounds fast.

We have a longer walkthrough of the structured way to do a verification in How to Verify a Chinese Supplier: A 7-Step Framework, which explains the data points you actually need beyond raw registration info.

What Data You Get Free vs Paid

For buyers who still want to experiment with Qichacha or Tianyancha, here is the realistic data split:

Free (after registration)

• Company name (Chinese and any English registered name)
• Unified Social Credit Code (统一社会信用代码)
• Legal representative name
• Registered and paid-in capital
• Registration date and status (in business, deregistered, revoked)
• Registered address (as filed, not necessarily operational)
• Business scope
• Top-level shareholders (first layer only)
• Teaser counts for lawsuits, patents, trademarks

Paid only

• Full shareholder chains and ultimate beneficial owner (UBO) identification
• Annual report filings (critical, includes employee count, revenue bracket, and social insurance data)
• Complete court judgments and enforcement records
• Administrative penalties from SAMR, tax, customs, environment
• Abnormal operations and serious violations list
• Historical changes (address changes, capital changes, shareholder changes)
• Bank account freezing records
• Pledges and mortgages
• Intellectual property portfolio with full detail
• Export/import customs records
• Branch offices and subsidiaries graph
• Risk score and real-time monitoring alerts

That second list is where the real due diligence happens. You cannot meaningfully verify a supplier using only the free tier. For a deeper breakdown of what a proper report should contain, see What Should Be in a China Company Credit Report.

The 4 English Alternatives Compared

If the blockers above make you cautious, there are four serious English-language options for buyers who need due diligence in 2026.

1. ChineseCheck (chinesecheck.com)

Purpose-built for international buyers verifying Chinese suppliers. Pulls directly from GSXT, the same government source as Qichacha and Tianyancha, and translates everything to English automatically. Pricing is in USD via Stripe, no Chinese phone number required.

• Same-day turnaround for basic reports
• Includes business license verification, shareholder chain, court case count, and operating-status check
• Covers small suppliers (including individual merchants 个体工商户) that some competitors skip
• Fair pricing (typically $29 to $99 per report)
• Primarily focused on supplier due diligence, less focused on big-cap public company research

2. CreditSafe China

Global commercial credit bureau with China coverage. Strong on financial ratios and payment history for mid-to-large Chinese firms.

• Best for credit limit recommendations and payment risk
• Subscription model starts around $1,200/year
• Coverage is excellent for companies with audited financials, weaker for small private suppliers
• Heavy on scoring models, lighter on underlying source documents

3. Dun & Bradstreet (D&B) China

The incumbent global business information giant. D&B has the longest history of any player on this list and offers D-U-N-S numbers that are often required for enterprise procurement vendor onboarding.

• Unmatched for very large enterprises and state-owned conglomerates
• Enterprise pricing (typically $5,000+/year contracts)
• Reports can feel dated for smaller suppliers because they rely partly on self-reported data
• The D-U-N-S number itself is the main reason buyers use D&B

4. ChinaCheckup

Singapore-based verification service that produces human-reviewed reports.

• Heavy on on-the-ground verification calls
• Typical report is $99 to $500 depending on depth
• Strong for deeply manual checks (site visit photos, factory verification)
• Slower turnaround (5 to 10 business days) compared to database-driven platforms
• Less database functionality; more consulting-style

Here is how they compare head-to-head against Qichacha and Tianyancha for a foreign buyer's typical workflow:

*Subject to RMB/USD conversion and payment workaround costs.

For a deeper dive on when to choose each, see How to Check If a Chinese Company Is Legitimate.

When Qichacha or Tianyancha Premium IS Worth It

To be fair, there are cases where paying for Qichacha or Tianyancha premium is still the right call, even for a foreign user:

1. You have a fluent Mandarin reader on the team. If a Chinese-speaking staff member does due diligence weekly, the cost of 2,000 RMB/year is trivial compared to the data depth.
2. You are doing investigative work. Journalists and investigators tracing fraud networks benefit from the relationship-graph tools and full-text court search that no English platform fully replicates.
3. You are setting up a WFOE or JV in China. Once you have a Chinese entity, you likely have a Chinese bank account and phone number anyway, and you will be reading Mandarin documents regularly.
4. You need API access to Chinese corporate data for a product. Both platforms sell APIs to SaaS developers building tools for the Chinese market.

If none of those describe you, a dedicated English alternative almost always ends up cheaper once you price in VA costs, payment workarounds, and lost time.

How to Interpret Results If You Brute-Force Translate

If you insist on using Qichacha or Tianyancha with machine translation, these are the five fields where automated translation lies to foreign users most often:

1. "Registered capital" vs "paid-in capital"

Translation tools usually render both as "registered capital." In Chinese, 注册资本 (registered) is a commitment; 实缴资本 (paid-in) is what the shareholders actually contributed. A company can have 100 million RMB registered capital and 0 RMB paid in. You must check both. Read more on this distinction in our Chinese business license verification guide.

2. "Legal representative"

The 法定代表人 is not necessarily the CEO, owner, or even most senior person. They are the person legally authorized to bind the company. In many small Chinese companies, the legal rep is a relative or employee used as a nominee. Always cross-check against the shareholder list.

3. "Business scope"

经营范围 is both ambitious and aspirational. A trading company may list "manufacturing" in scope because scope is about permission, not activity. This is why understanding trading company vs manufacturer distinctions matters more than reading scope literally.

4. "Abnormal operations list"

经营异常名录 is a soft blacklist. Being on it means SAMR could not contact the company at its registered address, or the company missed an annual filing. It is not the same as 严重违法失信名单 (serious violations blacklist). Translation tools often conflate them.

5. Court judgment types

Chinese civil cases are divided by stage (一审/二审/再审) and type (民事/行政/执行). A company with 100 "lawsuits" might actually have 20 cases shown in five procedural stages each. Raw counts lie without this decomposition.

FAQ

Is Qichacha or Tianyancha free?

Both have a free tier but it is intentionally thin. You can see basic registration info after registering with a Chinese mobile number. Anything useful for due diligence, including annual reports, full court cases, and shareholder chains, is behind a paid VIP subscription of 498 RMB per year or more.

Can I register for Qichacha or Tianyancha without a Chinese phone number?

Not officially. Both platforms require a +86 mobile number for account creation. Workarounds exist (Chinese SIM card from Taobao, virtual number services, asking a Chinese contact to register for you) but each has reliability or trust issues.

Which is better, Qichacha or Tianyancha?

They are 95% equivalent for typical due diligence. Qichacha has a slightly better relationship graph UI for tracing ultimate beneficial owners. Tianyancha has slightly better full-text judgment search. Most Chinese lawyers use Tianyancha; most SMB procurement teams use Qichacha. For a foreign user, neither is dramatically better than the other.

What is the main difference between Qichacha and gsxt.gov.cn?

GSXT is the free official government source, run by SAMR. Qichacha and Tianyancha ingest GSXT data and add commercial enrichment (court cases, news, trademarks, risk scoring, relationship graphs). GSXT is authoritative but clunky and available only in Chinese. See our GSXT English guide for how to use it directly.

Are Qichacha and Tianyancha accurate?

Yes, for data sourced from government portals, both platforms are highly accurate and refresh within hours or days. However, some enriched fields (estimated revenue, employee bands, risk scores) are algorithmic inferences and should not be treated as verified facts.

Can I trust a Qichacha report in an arbitration or court case?

Generally not on its own. Qichacha and Tianyancha reports are excellent for indicative due diligence but are not primary evidence. For arbitration, you typically need certified copies of the business license from the issuing AMR, certified court judgments from 中国裁判文书网 (China Judgments Online), and notarized company searches. English platforms that produce notarized extracts are better suited for evidentiary purposes.

What is the cheapest way for a foreign buyer to verify one Chinese supplier?

For a single supplier check, an English platform with per-report pricing (typically $29 to $99) is cheaper than signing up for Qichacha premium with payment workarounds. For buyers verifying more than 15 to 20 suppliers per year, a monthly or annual subscription to an English platform tends to be even more cost-effective.

Do Qichacha and Tianyancha cover Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan?

Mainland-only for their core product. Hong Kong company searches go through the Hong Kong Companies Registry, Macau through DSAJ, and Taiwan through the Ministry of Economic Affairs business registry. Some English alternatives bundle all four jurisdictions in a single search.

Is it legal to use Qichacha or Tianyancha from outside China?

Yes. The data is public and the platforms do not block overseas IPs for viewing. What requires a Chinese phone number is account creation and payment, not read-access.

The Bottom Line

Qichacha and Tianyancha are world-class Chinese-language corporate data platforms, and they genuinely do give domestic users insight that would take weeks to assemble from government portals. For a Mandarin-speaking Chinese procurement team, paying 2,000 RMB per year for one of them is a no-brainer.

For a foreign buyer, though, the story is different. The three structural blockers (the Chinese phone requirement, the fully Mandarin interface, and the Chinese-payment-only billing) mean you are paying a hidden tax of time, translation error, and delegated trust. In most cases, an English-native platform that pulls from the same underlying government sources, translates the output, and bills you in USD will be faster and cheaper, and it will leave you with a report you can defensibly share with your legal team, your CFO, or your insurance underwriter.

Use Qichacha or Tianyancha when you have a Mandarin reader on staff and you are doing deep investigative work. Use an English alternative when you just need to verify that the factory quoting you on Alibaba is a real, operating company with no blacklist flags, and you need that answer by the end of the week.

Authority citations

1. State Administration for Market Regulation, National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System (gsxt.gov.cn), the primary public source for Chinese corporate registration, annual reports, administrative penalties, and abnormal operations data that both Qichacha and Tianyancha aggregate.
2. Harvard Business Review, "How to Do Due Diligence on a Chinese Company," which outlines why reliance on a single database, in any language, is insufficient for cross-border procurement risk.
3. Dezan Shira & Associates, China Briefing publications on corporate verification, which document the structural limitations of the Chinese payment and registration ecosystem for foreign users.

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About the author

The ChineseCheck Research Team verifies Chinese companies on behalf of international buyers every day. We pull primary records from GSXT, the Supreme People's Court judgment portal, and provincial SAMR bureaus, and translate them into English-language reports procurement teams, importers, and lawyers can actually use. Our editorial process requires every article to be reviewed by at least one bilingual team member with direct experience operating in Chinese corporate data platforms. We do not resell Qichacha or Tianyancha data; we source our reports independently from the same government systems they use. If you spot an error or have a verification scenario we have not covered, email support@chinesecheck.com.