How the lists work

Each list puts UK companies in one sector in order of what public sources say they did in the last 90 days. Every item we count links to where we found it, so you can check it yourself.

Where we start

We start from companies showing growth signals. We then read what public sources say each one did in the window, and put them in order by that evidence alone.

A company has to fit the list's sector. Where one doesn't, we take it off by hand and don't list it.

The health and care list includes healthtech companies, tagged as such.

The 90-day window

Each list covers the 90 days up to its publish date, and gives its window at the top of its page.

• An event is dated by its first public report. A funding round announced in June and written up again in August was public before the window opened, so it doesn't count.
• A filing dates an event only when nothing reported it. If a round was reported, the report's date is the one we use, and the Companies House filing backs it up.
• We use the article's own date. Search tools sometimes date an old article to the day they found it. Where the search date and the date printed on the page differ, we use the earlier one.
• We check doubtful dates by hand. When many articles from one site carry the same date and the pages give none of their own, that date may be when the site was searched rather than when it published. We check any such date by hand before a top-30 company's item rests on it.

What counts

A company's place comes from four kinds of evidence, which together give it a score out of 100. Each entry shows the score, and the evidence behind it.

1. Events

Each kind of event counts once in the window, except launches and appointments. Two C-level appointments both count when they are two different people's; one person's appointment counts once, however many sites report it or whatever title each gives. A company with a round of £100m or more, a C-level hire and an acquisition all in the window gets the whole of this share.

2. Growth you can see in public

3. News and web mentions

We count the different news and web sources that named the company in the window. Each extra source adds a little less than the one before, so a company can't climb on volume of coverage alone.

4. AI assistants

We ask two AI assistants, Claude (by Anthropic) and Exa's answer engine, a fixed set of questions about each sector, several times each: ten questions for each list, and twenty for B2B software. For fintech the questions include "Which UK fintech and payments scale-ups should I watch in 2026?" and "Which UK regtech, compliance and financial crime software companies are worth knowing about?". The bigger the share of a list's answers that name a company, the more it counts. Each company's entry shows how many answers named it, question by question.

The score

Each company's score is out of 100. Events count towards a fixed top: a round of £100m or more, a C-level hire and an acquisition in the window reach it. Growth, mentions and AI answers count against the best company on the same list. The four are then weighted as in the table above.

From the next edition, each company also shows how its place and its score have changed since the last one. When we change how something is scored, we score the last edition again under the new rules before comparing, so a change shows what the company did, not what we changed.

What it does, and what it may be in the market for

Each entry starts with one or two sentences on what the company does, written by an AI model (Claude, by Anthropic) from the company's own homepage.

For the top 10 of each list, below the evidence, the same model gives up to three things the company may need in the next six months. For each, it says what the company may buy, who would choose it, and what kind of product or service could meet it. Each names the part of the business it is for, such as finance or security, so you can find every company with a need in that area across the lists.

It reads only the evidence on the page, names the items each point rests on, and says how sure it is: strong, moderate or tentative. It is our reading of the evidence, not something the company has said, and it plays no part in the order.

What doesn't count

• Anything first reported before the window, even when it's written up again inside it.
• Loans and debt facilities, including term loans. A planned or filed stock market listing isn't a funding round either.
• Shares issued as staff options, to a parent company, for less than £1m, or not for cash.
• Contracts under £100,000, or with no value given.
• Being bought by another company. It neither adds nor takes away.
• A launch reported only by the company itself, or by only one site.
• Press releases on wire services, and sites that print companies' releases as written. They aren't a news outlet reporting the story.
• The same story on several sites. It's one event, though each site counts as a mention.
• Jobs listed outside the UK, and jobs posted before the window.
• Staff numbers from accounts more than 12 months old, or from a holding company's accounts with fewer than 20 staff. A rise to more than three times the year before waits for a hand check before it counts.

Sources

• Companies House: share issues (form SH01), director appointments and annual accounts, used under the Open Government Licence.
• Contracts Finder: UK public sector contract awards.
• Company websites: newsrooms, jobs pages (including those run on hiring software such as Ashby, Greenhouse, Lever and Workable), and contact and offices pages.
• News and web pages: found by search and read on the page itself.
• AI assistants: Claude and Exa, as above.
• The Internet Archive: its saved copy, when a page won't load for us.

Every item links to its source. Where we say something was reported, we name who reported it and when.

News outlets we name for each list

A launch or a new office needs a report from one of these. Eight national titles serve every list: Financial Times, The Times, The Telegraph, The Guardian, BBC News, Reuters, Bloomberg and City AM.

How to report an error

Every company and every item on a list has a report a problem link. Tell us whether it's the wrong company, the facts are wrong, it's out of date, or something else.

• We decide every report within 5 working days.
• If two people report an item as being about the wrong company, we hide it until we've decided.
• If an item about a company's leadership names you and you object, we hide it, and we don't show further items about you.
• A company can ask for its entry to be taken off the lists. We act on that within 5 working days.
• Leave an email address if you'd like to hear the outcome. We use it for nothing else.

Every decision is also used to tighten the rules, so the same mistake doesn't come back on the next edition.