The problem with paying for nothing
If you've ever ordered a manual legal or data lookup in South Africa, you know the drill: you pay upfront, someone runs the search, and you get an answer — even if that answer is "we found nothing." Manual per-search legal and data lookups can run R500 or more, and the invoice arrives whether the search produced a usable record or an empty page.
For a once-off search, that stings. For anyone screening at volume — a debt collector checking a debtor book, an attorney verifying whether an estate has been reported, a compliance team refreshing customer records — it's a structural problem. Screening searches are, by design, mostly negative. You are checking whether something has happened: a death reported to the Master, a sequestration under the Insolvency Act 24 of 1936, a liquidation, a business rescue notice. Most of the time, nothing has. Under a charge-per-attempt model, you end up paying the most for the searches that tell you the least.
Pay-for-successful-search flips that: if the search returns no result, you aren't charged. You only pay when there's something to pay for.
How pay-per-result pricing works at Gazette Search
Gazette Search runs on prepaid credit packs. The mechanics are deliberately simple:
- One credit per search — a single search costs one credit, no matter how many results it returns. If a name search surfaces three matching notices, that's still one credit.
- A miss costs nothing — on the free tier and on the Single through Pro packs, a search that returns no result is not charged. The credit stays in your balance.
- Credits are valid for 12 months, so a pack bought for a quarterly screening cycle doesn't evaporate between cycles.
- Auto-refill earns 10% off, for teams that search continuously and don't want to watch a balance.
The free tier: five searches, misses don't count
Every account starts with 5 free searches — and because a miss doesn't use one up, those are five free successful searches. You can test the service against records you actually care about before spending a rand.
Bulk tiers work differently — and that's deliberate
The Business, Bulk and Volume tiers are billed per record, hit or miss. When you upload up to 100,000 ID numbers in one batch, every record is processed and billed regardless of outcome. Why the different treatment? Because the pricing already reflects it: bulk rates run down to R0.55 per search — a fraction of the single-search price — precisely because the volume is guaranteed. At that price point, a full debtor-book screen costs less than a handful of traditional manual lookups.
If you're comparing options, this is the distinction to check: on which tiers do misses cost money? At Gazette Search the answer is clear-cut — hit-only billing on free through Pro, per-record billing on bulk, with bulk priced accordingly.
What the numbers look like
Here's the current pricing ladder:
- Free tier — 5 free searches (a no-result search doesn't use one up)
- Single — R35 per search
- Starter — 100 credits for R1,000 (R10 per search)
- Pro — 2,500 credits for R15,000 (R6 per search)
- Volume (bulk) — down to R0.55 per search, billed per record
Set that against a manual lookup at R500+ per search. One Starter pack — 100 successful searches for R1,000 — costs roughly the same as two manual lookups. And because failed searches on the Starter and Pro packs aren't billed, every rand of the pack converts into an actual finding.
A worked example (illustrative)
Suppose you screen 200 accounts one by one, and only a small fraction turn up a gazette notice — say 10 hits, purely for illustration. On a charge-per-attempt model at R500 a search, you'd pay R100,000, of which R95,000 bought confirmations of nothing. On a Pro pack, the 190 misses cost R0 and the 10 hits cost R60 in total. The point isn't the exact hit rate — yours will differ — it's that under pay-per-result, your spend tracks your findings, not your attempts.
Why this matters more than it used to
The searches behind these numbers aren't optional nice-to-haves. Several regimes push professionals toward regular gazette screening:
- Deceased estates: the Administration of Estates Act 66 of 1965 drives the notices that matter to creditors — the section 29 notice to creditors and the section 35 liquidation and distribution account. Miss the window and a claim can become academic.
- Insolvency: sequestration notices under the Insolvency Act 24 of 1936 determine whether you're still allowed to collect from a debtor at all — continuing to pursue a sequestrated debtor creates risk under the National Credit Act and the Debt Collectors Act.
- FICA: ongoing customer due diligence means accountable institutions must keep client records current — including whether a client has died or been sequestrated. South Africa exited the FATF grey list in October 2025, but enforcement remains elevated, and regulators expect screening to be systematic, not ad hoc.
When screening is something you must do repeatedly and mostly expect to find nothing, a billing model that charges for the nothing is a tax on compliance. Pay-per-result removes it.
What you're actually searching
Behind the pricing sits the index itself: 900,000+ gazette notices covering deceased estates, insolvencies and sequestrations, company liquidations, business rescue, sales in execution, curator appointments and name changes, with coverage back to 2004. The Government Gazette publishes weekly — on Fridays — and new notices flow into the index accordingly.
You can search by ID number, name, estate number, or company (CK) number, or run a deep search. Beyond one-off searches, the platform includes a watchlist with email alerts (so a debtor book keeps monitoring itself), case management, executor contact details, a Find-a-Professional directory of executors, trustees, liquidators and sheriffs, and CSV export and API access for teams that want gazette data inside their own systems.
Choosing the right pack
A practical rule of thumb:
- Testing or once-off checks — start on the free tier; five successful searches cost nothing.
- Occasional professional use — Single searches at R35, or a Starter pack at R10 per search if you run a few each week.
- Regular screening — the Pro pack brings it down to R6 per search, with misses still free.
- Book-level screening — bulk upload up to 100,000 IDs on the Volume tiers at rates down to R0.55, billed per record.
Whichever tier fits, the underlying principle holds: the cost of finding out should be proportional to what you find out.
Frequently asked questions
What does a gazette search cost in South Africa?
A manual per-search legal or data lookup can run R500 or more, charged whether or not anything is found. On Gazette Search, a single search costs R35, prepaid packs bring that down to R10 (Starter) or R6 (Pro) per search, and bulk tiers run as low as R0.55 per record. Every account also starts with 5 free searches.
Do I pay if the search finds nothing?
On the free tier and on the Single, Starter and Pro packs — no. A search that returns no result is not charged, and the credit stays in your balance. On the bulk tiers (Business, Bulk, Volume) every record is billed, hit or miss, which is why bulk pricing is a fraction of the single-search rate.
How many credits does a search with multiple results use?
One. A search costs one credit regardless of how many notices it returns. If a common surname surfaces several matching notices, you still spend a single credit for the whole result set.
Do credits expire?
Credits are valid for 12 months from purchase, so a pack bought for one screening cycle carries over to the next. Teams that search continuously can enable auto-refill, which carries a 10% discount.
What kinds of notices can I find?
The index covers 900,000+ notices since 2004: deceased estates, insolvencies and sequestrations, company liquidations, business rescue proceedings, sales in execution, curator appointments and name changes. You can search by ID number, name, estate number or company (CK) number, and set watchlist alerts for new matches as each Friday's gazette is indexed.