EU VAT Number Validator (VIES) – Bulk Check + Company Name

Validate hundreds of EU VAT numbers in one run against VIES, the official VAT Information Exchange System of the European Commission. You get one flat row per number with valid or invalid, the registered company name and address (where the member state shares them), the check timestamp and, if you add your own VAT number, a VIES consultation number you can keep as proof.

What is VIES?

VIES is the European Commission's public service that checks whether a VAT number is registered for intra-community trade in an EU member state, or in Northern Ireland (prefix XI). The Commission forwards each check to the tax authority of that country. All results from this actor come straight from the official EU service. The actor does not guess or cache anything.

Who it's for

• Finance and accounting teams that need to verify supplier and customer VAT IDs before zero-rated B2B invoices
• E-commerce and SaaS checkouts that apply the reverse charge
• KYB and onboarding workflows, CRM cleanup, and AI agents that need a reliable VAT lookup tool

Why this actor

• Format pre-check for all 27 EU countries plus XI. Malformed numbers are caught right away, without a VIES call, and they are free.
• Forgiving input. DE 143 454 214, fr40.303.265.045, GR... (mapped to EL) and numbers without a prefix (if you set a default country) all work.
• Resilient. Member-state outages (MS_UNAVAILABLE, TIMEOUT, SERVICE_UNAVAILABLE, concurrency limits) are retried with exponential backoff. The official SOAP service is used as a fallback for the REST API.
• Fair pricing. You pay only for numbers that VIES actually answered (valid or invalid).
• Low concurrency by default, which stays within the VIES rate limits.

Input

{
  "vatNumbers": ["DE143454214", "IE6388047V", "DE12345"],
  "requesterVatNumber": "DE123456789",
  "defaultCountryCode": "DE",
  "maxRetries": 3,
  "maxConcurrency": 2
}

Field	Description
vatNumbers	VAT numbers with or without a country prefix. Spaces, dots and dashes are allowed.
defaultCountryCode	Optional. Used for numbers without a prefix.
requesterVatNumber	Optional. Your own VAT number. VIES then returns a consultation number (requestIdentifier).
maxRetries	Retries when a member state is unavailable (default 3).
maxConcurrency	Parallel requests, 1–5 (default 2).

Output

These are real rows from a test run:

[
  {"input": "IE6388047V", "countryCode": "IE", "vatNumber": "6388047V", "fullVatNumber": "IE6388047V",
   "formatValid": true, "valid": true, "name": "GOOGLE IRELAND LIMITED",
   "address": "3RD FLOOR, GORDON HOUSE, BARROW STREET, DUBLIN 4",
   "requestDate": "2026-11-06T18:27:20.454Z", "requestIdentifier": null, "status": "valid", "error": null},
  {"input": "DE143454214", "countryCode": "DE", "vatNumber": "143454214", "fullVatNumber": "DE143454214",
   "formatValid": true, "valid": true, "name": null, "address": null,
   "requestDate": "2026-11-06T18:27:20.581Z", "requestIdentifier": null, "status": "valid", "error": null},
  {"input": "DE12345", "countryCode": "DE", "vatNumber": "12345", "fullVatNumber": "DE12345",
   "formatValid": false, "valid": null, "name": null, "address": null, "requestDate": null,
   "requestIdentifier": null, "status": "format_error", "error": "Does not match the DE VAT number format"}
]

status is one of valid, invalid, format_error or service_unavailable. Some member states, Germany among them, don't share the name and address through VIES. VIES returns --- for these, and the actor outputs that as null.

Pricing

Pay per event: $0.001 per VAT number answered by VIES ($1 per 1,000). Format errors and numbers whose member state was unavailable are free.

Usage via API, n8n and MCP

• API: POST https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/fast_data_asap~eu-vat-number-validator/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_TOKEN with the input JSON above.
• n8n / Make / Zapier: use the Apify integration and select this actor.
• MCP (Claude, Cursor and other AI agents): https://mcp.apify.com?tools=fast_data_asap/eu-vat-number-validator

Disclaimer

Results reflect the official VIES response at the time of the check. This actor is not legal or tax advice. VIES availability depends on the national tax administrations. For binding confirmation, keep the consultation number or contact the competent tax authority.