Zefix Switzerland Company Search Scraper

Search Zefix — the Swiss Central Business Names Index (Zentraler Firmenindex, zefix.ch) — the official federal registry of every company registered in Switzerland's 26 cantonal commercial registers. Find companies by name, UID/CHE business number, or FCRO-ID, and pull legal form, registered address, canton, status, SOGC/SHAB publication history, auditors, branches, and merger/predecessor history. No auth, no proxy, no cookies required.

What this actor does

• Three modes: search (by company name), byUid (exact lookup by Swiss UID/CHE number), byEhraid (exact lookup by Zefix's internal FCRO-ID)
• Search types: contains / starts with / exact match
• Filters: legal form (19 types), canton (all 26), registration status (active / deleted / in liquidation), municipality / legal seat (free-text, accent-insensitive)
• Full company details on demand: registered address, business purpose, SOGC/SHAB publication history, auditors, branch offices, head offices, merger history (who took over whom), and prior company names
• Empty fields are omitted — you only ever see fields Zefix actually has data for

Output per company

Always present:

• ehraid — Zefix's internal firm ID (FCRO-ID)
• name, uid (formatted CHE-123.456.789), chid (formatted CH-...)
• legalForm, legalFormId, legalFormShort
• legalSeat — registered municipality, canton, cantonName
• status (Active / Deleted / In liquidation), statusCode
• shabDate — date of last SOGC/SHAB (Swiss Official Gazette of Commerce) publication
• registryExcerptUrl / sourceUrl — official cantonal commercial-register excerpt page

Present when applicable:

• deleteDate — if the company was struck off the register
• tradeNames[] — foreign-language name translations
• purpose — registered business purpose (German/French/Italian, as filed)
• address — street, houseNumber, poBox, careOf, town, swissZipCode, country, fullAddress
• shabPublications[] (up to 30 most recent) — publicationDate, shabId, publicationUrl, message (cleaned, unescaped), mutationTypes[]
• shabPublicationCount — total publication count (may exceed the 30 shown)
• auditFirms[] / auditFirmFor[] — statutory auditors / companies this firm audits
• mainOffices[] / furtherMainOffices[] / branchOffices[] — related registrations
• hasTakenOver[] / wasTakenOverBy — merger/succession history
• oldNames[] — prior registered company names

Every record also includes recordType: "company" and scrapedAt (UTC timestamp).

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
mode	string	search	search / byUid / byEhraid
searchQuery	string	Nestle	Company name query (mode=search)
searchType	string	contains	contains / starts / exact (mode=search)
uids	array	–	Swiss UID/CHE numbers (mode=byUid), e.g. CHE-191.546.434
ehraids	array	–	Zefix FCRO-IDs (mode=byEhraid), e.g. 1009345
legalFormIds	array	–	Restrict to one or more of 19 legal forms (mode=search)
cantons	array	–	Restrict to one or more of the 26 cantons (mode=search)
statuses	array	–	Restrict to EXISTIEREND / GELOESCHT / IN_AUFLOESUNG (mode=search). Note: Zefix's name-search index only covers active/in-liquidation companies — deleted (GELOESCHT) companies never appear via name search; look them up directly with byUid/byEhraid instead.
legalSeatQuery	string	–	Restrict to companies whose registered municipality contains this text, e.g. Zurich (mode=search)
includeFullDetails	bool	false	Fetch full detail (address, purpose, auditors, branches, publications) per result — always on for byUid/byEhraid
shabPublicationLimit	int	30	Max SOGC/SHAB publications to include per company (1–200), when full details are fetched
maxItems	int	50	Hard cap on emitted records (1–1000)

Example: search by name

{
  "mode": "search",
  "searchQuery": "Nestle",
  "searchType": "contains",
  "maxItems": 50
}

Example: search restricted to Zürich AGs (corporations)

{
  "mode": "search",
  "searchQuery": "swiss",
  "searchType": "contains",
  "cantons": ["ZH"],
  "legalFormIds": [3],
  "statuses": ["EXISTIEREND"],
  "includeFullDetails": true,
  "maxItems": 25
}

Example: lookup by UID / CHE number

{
  "mode": "byUid",
  "uids": ["CHE-191.546.434", "CHE-101.329.561"]
}

Example: lookup by FCRO-ID

{
  "mode": "byEhraid",
  "ehraids": [1009345, 1184151]
}

Use cases

• KYB / KYC due diligence — verify a Swiss counterparty's legal status, registered address, and signatories before onboarding
• Company registry enrichment — bulk-enrich a list of Swiss UIDs with legal form, canton, and status
• Compliance monitoring — track SOGC/SHAB publications (director changes, capital changes, liquidations) for a watchlist of companies
• M&A / corporate research — trace merger and predecessor-company history (hasTakenOver / wasTakenOverBy / oldNames)
• Sales & lead generation — find active companies by canton and legal form for market mapping
• Auditor mapping — see which firms a given auditor (e.g. a Big Four Swiss office) audits, via auditFirmFor

FAQ

What's Zefix? The Swiss Central Business Names Index — the federal government's public, canonical index of every company registered in a Swiss commercial register (Handelsregister/Registre du commerce/Registro di commercio). Maintained by the Federal Commercial Registry Office (FCRO). See zefix.ch.

What's the difference between UID and FCRO-ID (EHRAID)? The UID (CHE-xxx.xxx.xxx) is Switzerland's official business identification number, used across all federal registers (VAT, social security, commercial register). The FCRO-ID/EHRAID is Zefix's own internal database key for a firm record — use it for exact, stable lookups within this actor.

Can two different companies share the same UID? Rare, but yes — during some historical mergers (e.g. bank restructurings), a successor entity's Zefix record can carry over a legacy UID. ehraid is always the unique key; byUid returns every firm record matching that UID.

Why do cantons / legalFormIds / statuses filters apply client-side? Zefix's public search endpoint doesn't honor server-side filter parameters for these fields, so this actor fetches a large batch of name matches and filters them locally — the filtered results are exactly as accurate, just computed after the fetch.

Why is shabPublications capped at 30 by default? Long-established companies (banks, insurers) can accumulate hundreds of SOGC/SHAB filings over decades. The 30 most recent are included per record by default to keep payloads manageable; raise shabPublicationLimit (up to 200) to fetch more, and shabPublicationCount always shows the true total regardless of the cap.

Is purpose translated to English? No — it's the company's officially filed purpose text, in whichever official Swiss language (German/French/Italian) it was registered in.

How fresh is the data? Real-time — every request reads live from Zefix's own public search/detail API, the same one the zefix.ch website itself uses.

Is authentication required? No. This actor uses Zefix's public, unauthenticated search endpoints — no API key, login, or proxy needed.

Can I search for deleted (struck-off) companies by name? No — Zefix's name-search index only covers active and in-liquidation companies. Deleted (GELOESCHT) companies are still fully retrievable, but only via a direct byUid or byEhraid lookup (e.g. from a UID you already have on file); the statuses: ["GELOESCHT"] filter in mode=search will never match, since the upstream search API itself excludes deleted firms.