German Impressum Scraper: Company, Directors, HRB & VAT

Turn a list of German, Austrian and Swiss company websites into clean company records. Every commercial website in Germany (§ 5 DDG, formerly TMG), Austria (§ 5 ECG / § 25 MedienG) and Switzerland must publish an Impressum (imprint / legal notice) with the operator's legal details. This actor finds that page on each site and reads it for you: company name, legal form, street, postal code, city, phone, fax, email, managing directors (Geschäftsführer, Vorstand, Inhaber), register court and commercial register number (HRB / HRA / PR / VR, Austrian FN, Swiss CHE number), VAT ID (USt-IdNr., ATU, CHE … MWST), tax number, share capital and the person responsible for content.

You give it websites — from a CRM export, a trade-fair exhibitor list, a directory or any other source you already have. It reads only the companies' own public websites, respects robots.txt and needs no login, browser, search engine or API key.

What you can use it for

• B2B lead enrichment in the DACH region: add the managing director's name, a verified company name and the register number to a list of domains
• Personalised outreach: address the Geschäftsführer by name instead of "Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren"
• KYC, supplier and partner checks: match a website to its legal entity, HRB number, register court and VAT ID before you sign or pay
• Data cleaning: fix company names and legal forms (GmbH, GmbH & Co. KG, UG, AG, e.K., PartG mbB …) in your CRM
• Market research: map who really operates a group of online shops or brands (c/o and operator lines are preserved)

Why this one

• $2.50 per 1,000 websites read — less than half of other Impressum scrapers, no monthly rental, no per-run fee beyond $0.001
• Sites without a readable Impressum are free: they still appear in the dataset with the reason (not reachable, blocked, no Impressum found), but you are not charged
• Finds the page for you: footer links like "Impressum", "Imprint", "Legal notice", "Anbieterkennzeichnung", "Offenlegung", links hidden in scripts, and the usual paths (/impressum, /imprint, /de/impressum …)
• Germany, Austria and Switzerland: HRB/HRA/PR/VR numbers with their Amtsgericht, Austrian Firmenbuch numbers (FN 123456a) and Landesgericht, Swiss UID numbers (CHE-123.456.789)
• Smart about layouts: labels on one line and values on the next, obfuscated emails like "info (at) firma.de", wrong character encodings, web-designer credits and insurance lines that are not the operator
• Fast and polite: 8 sites at once by default (up to 20), robots.txt respected, a few requests per site

Input

Field	What it does
Websites	Domains or URLs (e.g. thomann.de, https://www.billa.at)
Only sites with an Impressum	Leave out the free "not found" rows
Include Impressum text	Adds the page text (first 4,000 characters) for your own checks
Sites at once	Parallel websites (1–20)
Max websites	Hard cap per run

Example input:

{
  "websites": ["https://www.thomann.de", "check24.de", "https://www.billa.at"],
  "onlyFound": false,
  "maxConcurrency": 8
}

Output

One row per website:

{
  "website": "https://www.thomann.de",
  "impressumUrl": "https://www.thomann.de/de/compinfo_imprint.html",
  "found": true,
  "companyName": "Thomann GmbH",
  "legalForm": "GmbH",
  "street": "Hans-Thomann-Straße 1",
  "postalCode": "96138",
  "city": "Burgebrach",
  "country": "DE",
  "phone": "+49 (0)9546 9223-0",
  "fax": "+49 (0)9546 9223-24",
  "email": "kundenservice@thomann.de",
  "emails": ["kundenservice@thomann.de"],
  "managingDirectors": ["Johann Thomann"],
  "registerCourt": "Amtsgericht Bamberg",
  "registerNumber": "HRB 5862",
  "vatId": "DE257375233",
  "taxNumber": null,
  "shareCapital": null,
  "contentResponsible": null,
  "error": null
}

Rows for sites without a readable Impressum carry found: false and an error such as "homepage blocked (HTTP 403)" or "no Impressum page found". Download the dataset as JSON, CSV, Excel or XML, or read it through the Apify API.

How much does it cost?

You pay $0.0025 per website whose Impressum was read ($2.50 per 1,000) plus $0.001 per run. Websites that fail are free. There is no browser, so platform compute stays small (256 MB is enough).

Worked examples:

1. A trade-fair exhibitor list of 400 domains, 340 with a readable Impressum: 340 × $0.0025 + $0.001 ≈ $0.85
2. Enrich 5,000 CRM accounts (about 80% found): about $10
3. Weekly check of 200 suppliers' legal details: about $0.50 per week

FAQ

Is this legal? The Impressum is information that companies are legally required to publish so that anyone can identify and contact them. The actor reads only the websites you supply, only their public pages, respects robots.txt and does not log in or get around blocks. Names of managing directors are personal data under the GDPR: if you use them for marketing, make sure you have a lawful basis (for example legitimate interest for B2B contact), tell people where you got their data and honour objections. Cold emailing in Germany needs prior consent (§ 7 UWG); calling businesses needs at least presumed consent.

Why are some fields empty? Small sites often skip fax, share capital or tax number, sole traders (Inhaber) have no register number, and some pages put the details in an image. Turn on "Include Impressum text" to see what the page says.

Why was a site not found? The homepage may block automated visits (HTTP 403), need JavaScript to show its footer, or have no Impressum at all. These rows are free.

Does it work for websites outside Germany? It is built for German-language legal notices (DE, AT, CH), and also reads English "Imprint / Legal notice" pages of DACH companies.

Where do I get websites? From your own lists, trade-fair exhibitor pages, association member lists, or our other actors (for example the website contact finder or local business actors).

Tips

• Combine with a contact or tech-stack actor on the same domain list for full company profiles
• Use "Only sites with an Impressum" for a clean CSV
• Keep "Sites at once" at 8–12 for large lists; raise it if your list has many small sites

Integrations

Send results to Google Sheets, HubSpot, Pipedrive, Airtable, Slack, a webhook, Zapier or Make with Apify integrations, or call the actor from your own code with the Apify API and client libraries.

Changelog

• 0.1.1 (November 2026) — reads Impressum pages that are built by JavaScript frameworks (the text shipped inside the page's JSON data, e.g. flaschenpost.de); one unreadable page can no longer stop a run; pages with no readable text come back as a free row with a clear reason.
• 0.1 (October 2026) — first release: Impressum discovery, DE/AT/CH register and VAT formats, directors, content responsible, failures free.