EU Company Verification — VAT (VIES) + Official Registry Data

Verify EU companies against official state data, not scraped guesses. This actor validates any intra-EU VAT number with the VIES service (27 member states) to return the registered legal name and address, and enriches French companies with INSEE Sirene official registry data (industry/NAF code, legal form, active/ceased status, creation date). The clean answer to EU company verification and KYB Europe from sources that are the legal source of truth.

Generic B2B enrichers scrape websites and guess. This one performs EU VAT validation against VIES and reads the official company registry — verified, official, multi-country.

What it does

• VIES VAT validation — checks an intra-EU VAT number across all 27 member states; returns valid / invalid / unavailable (correctly distinguishing a non-existent number from a national database being temporarily offline).
• Registered identity — official legal name + registered address from VIES when valid.
• France registry enrichment (INSEE Sirene) — NAF/industry code, legal form, active/ceased status, creation date, employee range, company category.
• Flexible input — accepts a VAT number (prefixed or with a country code), a French SIREN/SIRET, or a company name (FR name search via INSEE).

Output fields

Field	Meaning
vat_number, country_code	Normalised VAT identity
vat_status	valid / invalid / unavailable / not_checked
vat_valid	Boolean (or null when unavailable)
legal_name, registered_address	Official registered identity (VIES)
registry	INSEE Sirene block for FR: siren, naf_code, status, legal_form_code, creation_date, employee_range, company_category
input_type	vat / siren / name

Why this one

• Official, verified — not guessed. VIES is the EU's own VAT service; INSEE Sirene is the French state business registry.
• Three-state VAT logic done right. A temporarily-offline national VAT base is reported as unavailable, never as a false invalid (a compliance trap most validators get wrong).
• VAT + registry in one call — validation and a registry profile, multi-country.
• Agent- & n8n-ready. One clean JSON row per company; usable as an MCP tool.

Input

{
  "queries": ["IE6388047V", "FR22424761419"],
  "max_items": 20
}

Field	Type	Description
query	string	A VAT number (FR22424761419, IE6388047V), a French SIREN/SIRET, or a company name (FR).
queries	array	Optional list to verify in one run (overrides query).
country_code	string	2-letter EU code (use EL for Greece) when the VAT number has no country prefix.
max_items	integer	Max records returned/charged. Default 20.

Output

Real output for a valid IE number and a French company (with registry enrichment):

{
  "query": "IE6388047V",
  "input_type": "vat",
  "country_code": "IE",
  "vat_number": "IE6388047V",
  "vat_valid": true,
  "vat_status": "valid",
  "legal_name": "GOOGLE IRELAND LIMITED",
  "registered_address": "3RD FLOOR, GORDON HOUSE, BARROW STREET, DUBLIN 4",
  "registry": null,
  "source": "EU VIES REST API (ec.europa.eu)",
  "timestamp": "2026-06-29T10:36:00.000Z",
  "disclaimer": "Official data from EU VIES (and INSEE Sirene for FR). Indicative, not a compliance opinion."
}

{
  "query": "FR22424761419",
  "input_type": "vat",
  "country_code": "FR",
  "vat_number": "FR22424761419",
  "vat_valid": true,
  "vat_status": "valid",
  "legal_name": "SAS OVH",
  "registry": {
    "source": "INSEE Sirene V3.11 (api.insee.fr)",
    "siren": "424761419",
    "legal_name": "OVH",
    "status": "active",
    "legal_form_code": "5710",
    "naf_code": "63.11Z",
    "creation_date": "1999-10-15",
    "employee_range": "42",
    "company_category": "ETI"
  },
  "source": "EU VIES REST API (ec.europa.eu) + INSEE Sirene V3.11 (api.insee.fr)",
  "timestamp": "2026-06-29T10:36:00.000Z"
}

Use cases

• KYB / onboarding compliance — confirm a counterparty's VAT number resolves to the right registered entity.
• Invoice & tax validation — validate supplier/customer VAT numbers in bulk before issuing/accepting invoices.
• Lead data hygiene — verify and enrich EU company records with official identity + industry code.
• AI agents / n8n — a verification tool an agent can call before trusting a company claim.

Pricing

Pay-per-result: target $0.005 per record ($5 / 1,000), plus Apify platform usage. max_items caps spend.

Categories

Developer tools, Automation, Agents, Business.

Setup & notes

• VIES works with no key (the default run validates IE/DE/… out of the box).
• French registry enrichment needs an INSEE Sirene API key (free at api.insee.fr). Set it as a secret environment variable INSEE_SIRENE_API_KEY on the actor. Without it, FR records still return VIES validation (graceful degradation).
• VIES rate-limits some national bases (notably FR) — those are reported as unavailable, not invalid. Re-run to retry.
• Official data, not a compliance opinion.