The official register is free, open to anyone abroad, and searchable in English. Here is how to read what it gives you, and the four things it will never tell you.
Written for foreign businesses dealing with a German counterparty · Free to cite with a link
Germany keeps its company data in a public commercial register (Handelsregister). Since August 2022 it costs nothing to search it or to pull documents from it, from any country. The catch is not access. It is that the entry is in German, the abbreviations are unexplained, and the one identifier you are most likely to have, a VAT number, cannot be used to look anything up.
| Where | What it gives you |
|---|---|
| handelsregister.de | The register itself. Search by company name, see the current entry, and download the official extracts. Free. The interface is German, but the search box takes a plain company name. Retrieval is capped at 60 requests per hour. |
| EU e-Justice portal | The same data, in English. All EU business registers have been interconnected since 2017, so you can search Germany from an English-language interface. Start here if the German site is the obstacle. |
| unternehmensregister.de | The filings. Annual accounts (Jahresabschlüsse) are published here. Useful when you want a size check rather than an identity check. |
If you have tried to identify a German business from its VAT ID (USt-IdNr), you already found the wall. The EU VIES system returns the registered company name and address for most member states. For German numbers it returns nothing at all, just a placeholder, even when the number is perfectly valid.
--- in both fields. Germany confirms that a number is valid and discloses nothing about whose it is.
So there is no public route from a German VAT number to a company name. To identify a German company you need its name or its register number. If all you have is a VAT ID, the honest options are to ask the company directly, or to work backwards from the name on the invoice or contract and then confirm the VAT ID separately with our VAT ID checker.
A German register reference looks like HRB 12345 B, Amtsgericht Charlottenburg. Three parts, all load-bearing.
| Form | What it means for you |
|---|---|
| GmbH | Limited company. Minimum share capital €25,000, of which at least half must be paid in. Liability stops at the company. |
| UG (haftungsbeschränkt) | The same thing with a €1 minimum. Entirely legitimate and very common, but the name itself tells you the capital buffer may be tiny. Worth noticing on a large first order. |
| AG | Stock corporation. Minimum capital €50,000. Larger, more disclosure. |
| GmbH & Co. KG | A partnership whose liable partner is itself a limited company. Common and unremarkable, but again nobody behind it is personally on the hook. |
| e.K. | A registered sole trader. One human being, personally liable. |
The register names the managing directors (Geschäftsführer) and, importantly, how they may sign. This is the field that decides whether the person emailing you can actually bind the company.
Yes. Since August 2022 the Handelsregister is free to search and free to retrieve documents from, with no account needed for a basic search. Retrieval is capped at 60 requests per hour, which is generous for checking one counterparty and restrictive for bulk work.
No. Germany publishes no mapping from VAT ID (USt-IdNr) to company name, and VIES, which returns the name and address for most member states, deliberately returns nothing for German numbers. You can confirm a German VAT ID is valid; you cannot learn whose it is. Identification needs the company name or the register number.
HRB is the register section for corporations such as the GmbH, UG and AG. HRA covers sole traders and partnerships such as the e.K., OHG and KG. The number is unique only within its local court, so a complete reference always names the court too, for example HRB 12345 Amtsgericht Charlottenburg.
Partly. For a GmbH the shareholder list (Gesellschafterliste) is filed with the register and can be retrieved, so direct shareholders are usually visible. Ultimate beneficial owners are held in the separate Transparenzregister, which under § 23 GwG has not been open to the general public since 2022: you must demonstrate a legitimate interest to gain access.
No, they are separate systems. A registered company may hold no VAT ID, and a foreign company may hold a German VAT registration without appearing in the commercial register at all. That second case is the normal one for online sellers storing goods in Germany.
Then the register is the smaller of your two German paperwork problems. We handle the German VAT registration and the monthly filings for foreign companies, in English, in house.
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