Company registers in Europe
Where to check that a supplier or customer really
exists, what it costs per country, and what the extract does and does not
prove. Most of Europe is free; the Netherlands is one of the few that
charges.
There is already one search across every European
register, and it is free: BRIS, on the European
e-Justice Portal. This page tells you what it gives you, where to go for
more, and what none of them can tell you.
The questions
Is there one register for the whole of Europe? yes, and it is free
Yes. BRIS connects the business registers of every EU member state, plus Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway, and you search them from one place on the European e-Justice Portal. The data comes from the national registers in real time and there is no fee.
This surprises people, including people who have paid an aggregator for it. BRIS is the official route and it is the same data the national register holds, because it is fetched from there when you ask.
What BRIS gives you is the record: legal name, registration number, legal form, registered office, status, and the EUID. What it does not give you is a certified extract — for that you go to the national register, and whether that costs anything depends entirely on the country, as the table above shows.
Source: European e-Justice Portal, Find a company (BRIS); Directive (EU) 2017/1132, Articles 22 and following (interconnection of registers). Checked: 4 September 2026.
What does an extract actually prove? less than you think
That the company exists, under that name and number, with that legal form and registered office, and who is registered as authorised to represent it. That is a lot. What it does not prove is that the company is solvent, that the person emailing you is that director, or that the bank account you were given belongs to them.
Three things an extract is regularly asked to do and cannot:
- Creditworthiness. A register records facts, not financial health. Filed annual accounts help, and in Germany and France they are free.
- Identity of the person you are dealing with. The extract names the director. It does not tell you that the email came from them. Invoice fraud lives in exactly that gap.
- Sanctions status. A company can be perfectly registered and still be listed, or be more than 50% owned by someone who is. Screen the name separately — that is free on this site.
Source: Directive (EU) 2017/1132, Article 16 (disclosure); Regulation (EU) 269/2014, Article 2 (ownership and control). Checked: 4 September 2026.
Free extract or certified — which do I need? depends who asks
For your own check, the free view is enough almost everywhere. A certified extract is what a bank, a notary, a court or a tender asks for, because it carries a seal and a date. Paying for one to satisfy your own curiosity is money thrown away.
Rule of thumb: if the extract is going into your own file, take the free or cheapest version and note the date you retrieved it. If it is going to a third party who will rely on it, take the certified one and expect them to want it recent — often no older than three months.
Keep the date either way. Two years later the question is not what the register says now but what it said when you decided to ship.
Source: National register terms; KVK tariff sheet of 1 January 2026 for the Dutch amounts. Checked: 4 September 2026.
Why not just copy all the registers into one database? because you may not
Because the terms of nearly every register forbid it, and because it would duplicate something that already exists and is free. Germany caps access at 60 queries an hour and its own FAQ warns that mass automated querying reaches the level of criminal-law provisions. The Dutch register prohibits redistribution of extracts outright.
There is a legitimate route and it is opening up: since 9 June 2024 company registers are a high-value dataset under the Open Data Directive, which means member states must publish them free of charge, machine-readable, through APIs and bulk download. Several already do — Denmark, Norway and the United Kingdom have genuinely open interfaces. Others, including Germany, do not yet.
So the answer is not to scrape. It is to use the open interfaces where they exist, link to the official route where they do not, and be honest about which is which.
Source: Directive (EU) 2019/1024 and Implementing Regulation (EU) 2023/138 (high-value datasets, applicable from 9 June 2024); handelsregister.de terms of use; KVK gebruikersvoorwaarden Handelsregistergegevens. Checked: 4 September 2026.
In what order should I check a new counterparty? four steps
Register, VAT number, sanctions, bank details — in that order, because each one narrows what the next has to establish. The first three are free and take minutes. The fourth is the one that actually loses people money.
- Register. Does the company exist, under that name and number, and who may sign? Use the table above.
- VAT number. Check it in VIES on the day you invoice, and keep the response — see verification.
- Sanctions. Screen the name and the parent against the lists before you pay, not after — free here.
- Bank details. Confirm the account by a channel you already had, never by replying to the email that carried it. A changed IBAN in a familiar thread is the most common fraud in trade.
Source: Council Implementing Regulation on VIES; Regulation (EU) 269/2014, Article 2; Directive (EU) 2024/1226 (criminal penalties for sanctions breaches). Checked: 4 September 2026.