EU VAT Number Checker

What does EU VAT Number Checker do?

EU VAT Number Checker validates lists of EU VAT numbers through VIES, the European Commission's official VAT Information Exchange System. Paste a list of numbers from any member state (Northern Ireland included) and for each one you get back whether it is valid for intra-EU trade, the name and address the member state has on file, the exact date of the check, and, if you supply your own VAT number, the consultation number that tax authorities accept as proof that you verified your customer.

Why the consultation number matters

Zero-rating an intra-EU supply requires a valid customer VAT number, and when the number later turns out to be invalid, the burden of proof is on you. A screenshot of the VIES website is weak evidence. A consultation number is the official one: VIES stores the check under that identifier, with the date, your VAT number and the customer's, and any tax office in the EU can look it up. This actor requests one for every row when requesterVatNumber is set.

Honest about outages

VIES is a gateway to 28 national databases, and on a given day one or two of them are down. Other tools return valid: false in that case and let you draw the wrong conclusion. This actor asks VIES for the member-state status before it starts, reports rows from an unavailable state as member_state_unavailable, and does not charge for them. The same applies to numbers that fail their country's format: they are reported as typos, never sent to VIES, and never charged.

Status	Meaning	Charged
valid	The member state confirms the number	yes
invalid	The member state does not know the number, or it is not active	yes
format_error	The number does not match the country format; nothing was sent	no
member_state_unavailable	The national database was down; run again later	no
error	VIES returned an unexpected answer; details in note	no

Input

{
  "vatNumbers": [
    "DE811907980",
    "CZ 452 746 49",
    { "vatNumber": "FR89380129866", "reference": "customer-1187" }
  ],
  "requesterVatNumber": "CZ19456361",
  "defaultCountry": "",
  "watchKey": "customers"
}

Strings and objects can be mixed freely. Spaces, dots and dashes are ignored. Greece can be written as GR or EL.

Output

{
  "input": "DE811907980",
  "vatNumber": "DE811907980",
  "countryCode": "DE",
  "checked": true,
  "valid": true,
  "name": null,
  "address": null,
  "requestDate": "2026-09-02+02:00",
  "consultationNumber": "WAPIAAAAZbMPDlCP",
  "status": "valid",
  "note": null
}

Germany, like a few other member states, confirms validity without returning the name and address. That is the member state's rule, and the row says exactly what VIES said, no more.

Watch a list for changes

Customer VAT numbers get cancelled quietly, and the invoice you issue after that is the one the auditor picks. Give the run a watch name (or save it as a task and schedule it) and every later run compares its results with the previous one: a number that turned invalid, a changed registered name. The differences are stored in the CHANGES record of the run. The comparison itself is free.

Pricing

Event	Price
VAT number checked (valid or invalid answer from VIES)	$0.003
Format error, member state unavailable, or VIES error	free

No start fee. A run that verifies nothing costs nothing.

Frequently asked questions

Is the consultation number really proof? Yes. It is issued by VIES itself when the check is made with the requester's VAT number, and it is the mechanism the European Commission provides for exactly this purpose. Keep it with the invoice.

Why does VIES say my customer is invalid when they are clearly trading? VIES only confirms numbers registered for intra-EU transactions. Some member states, Spain and Italy among them, require a separate registration for that. The customer may need to register before you can zero-rate a supply to them.

How fast is it? VIES limits concurrent requests per member state, so numbers are checked one after another with a short gap. A thousand numbers take roughly ten minutes.

Where does the data come from? The European Commission VIES REST service, nothing else. Every row carries the URL, the timestamp and the exact answer.

This checker shares its engine with our country company checkers for the Czech Republic and Slovakia, Poland, France, Romania, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia and Bulgaria, which combine VIES with the national business, tax and insolvency registers.