🇫🇷 France Companies Search — SIRENE & RNE (free, keyless)

Search ~10 million French companies and sole traders straight from France's official open-data registry — SIREN, SIRET, NAF/APE codes, directors, addresses, and status — completely free, no API key, no subscription.

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What this actor does

France Companies Search is a structured-data actor that turns France's official national business registry into clean, ready-to-use JSON. Point it at a company name, a SIREN number, a department, or an industry code, and it returns fully normalized company records — legal identity, headquarters, industry classification, workforce band, directors, establishment counts, and registration status.

It is powered entirely by France's free, keyless government open-data API (recherche-entreprises.api.gouv.fr), which aggregates three primary sources maintained by the French state:

• INSEE SIRENE — the national directory of businesses and their establishments, the authoritative source for SIREN/SIRET identifiers, NAF/APE activity codes, workforce bands, and addresses.
• RNE (Registre National des Entreprises) — the National Business Register operated by INPI, the legal register that records company officers, directors, and corporate acts.
• BODACC — the official bulletin of civil and commercial announcements (incorporations, changes, insolvency proceedings, dissolutions).

France is the second-largest economy in the European Union, with millions of registered legal entities ranging from listed groups to artisans and micro-entrepreneurs. Every one of them carries a SIREN — a unique nine-digit legal identifier — and every establishment carries a fourteen-digit SIRET. Because the underlying data is published as open government data, you get the same registry facts that paid French business-intelligence vendors resell, without the gatekeeping. This actor handles the querying, pagination, and normalization so you receive analysis-ready records instead of raw API noise.

Whether you are building a B2B prospecting list, running KYB checks on a French counterparty, sourcing newly-incorporated startups for a fund, or simply verifying that a supplier is a real, active legal entity, this actor gives you primary-source company data on demand.

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Why use this

• Official primary source. Data flows from INSEE SIRENE, the INPI-operated RNE, and BODACC — the registries the French state itself maintains. This is not a scraped third-party copy; it is the registry of record.
• Free and keyless. The underlying government API requires no API key, no account, and no paid plan. You only pay the actor's per-result usage on Apify.
• The identifiers that matter. Every record includes SIREN (the entity), SIRET of the head office (the establishment), and NAF/APE industry codes — the keys you need to join, deduplicate, and enrich against any other French dataset.
• Directors and officers. Where the RNE publishes them, you get named directors with their roles and whether they are individuals or legal persons.
• Queryable the way you actually search. Filter by company name, exact SIREN, department code, NAF/APE industry, and incorporation date window — plus a workforce/dormancy toggle and a result cap.
• JSON-native and pipeline-ready. Normalized field names, consistent types, and an Apify dataset you can pull via API, webhook, or integration into your warehouse, CRM, or spreadsheet.

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What you get

Each company record is a flat, normalized JSON object. The fields returned per company are:

Field	Description
name	Registered legal name (dénomination) of the company.
siren	Nine-digit SIREN — the unique legal identifier for the entity.
siret_siege	Fourteen-digit SIRET of the head-office establishment (siège social).
legal_form_code	INSEE legal-form code (catégorie juridique).
legal_form	Human-readable legal form (e.g. SA, SAS, SARL, EI).
naf_code	NAF/APE activity code identifying the principal industry.
activity_section	High-level activity section the NAF code belongs to.
creation_date	Date the entity was registered (incorporation date).
company_category	INSEE size category (e.g. PME, ETI, GE).
employee_band_code	INSEE workforce-band code (tranche d'effectifs).
employee_band	Human-readable employee range for the entity.
status	active or ceased — whether the entity is still operating.
is_employer	Whether the entity is registered as an employer.
headquarters_address	Full formatted head-office address.
street	Street component of the head-office address.
postal_code	Postal code of the head office.
city	City (commune) of the head office.
department_code	Two/three-character French department code.
establishments_total	Total number of establishments registered under the SIREN.
establishments_open	Number of currently open establishments.
directors	Array of officers — each {name, role, type}.
last_financials_year	Most recent year for which financial accounts are referenced.
date_updated	Date the registry record was last updated.
data_source	Provenance string identifying the official open-data source.
source_url	Link to the public entity page on the official annuaire.

Empty or unpublished fields are returned consistently so your downstream parsing never breaks on missing keys.

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Use cases

• B2B lead generation & sales prospecting into France. Build targeted prospect lists by industry (NAF/APE) and region (department), then enrich each lead with SIREN, head-office address, workforce band, and named directors for outreach and routing.
• KYB & due diligence. Verify that a French counterparty exists, is active (not ceased), is the legal entity it claims to be, and identify its registered officers — the core checks behind onboarding and Know-Your-Business workflows.
• VC & PE deal-sourcing. Use the createdAfter / createdBefore window to surface newly-incorporated companies in a given sector and geography — an automated radar for fresh startups before they hit the headlines.
• Competitive & market research. Map every company under a NAF code in a department to size a market, count competitors, and track new entrants and exits over time.
• Supplier & vendor verification. Confirm a supplier's legal status, head-office location, and establishment count before signing or paying — catch dormant shells and ceased entities early.
• Sales territory & account enrichment. Append SIREN/SIRET, legal form, and directors to existing CRM records keyed on company name so your reps work from clean, deduplicated French accounts.
• Journalism, research & investigations. Trace ownership and officers, follow incorporations and dissolutions, and build datasets of French entities for academic or investigative work from a citable official source.
• Compliance & sanctions screening prep. Pull canonical entity identifiers and officer names as the matching layer feeding your screening pipeline.

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Sample output

{
  "name": "CARREFOUR",
  "siren": "652014051",
  "siret_siege": "65201405100454",
  "legal_form": "SA",
  "naf_code": "70.10Z",
  "creation_date": "1965-01-01",
  "status": "active",
  "headquarters_address": "93 AVENUE DE PARIS, 91300, MASSY",
  "city": "MASSY",
  "department_code": "91",
  "directors": [
    {
      "name": "Alexandre Bompard",
      "role": "Président directeur général",
      "type": "personne physique"
    }
  ],
  "data_source": "French government open data — recherche-entreprises.api.gouv.fr (INSEE SIRENE + RNE + BODACC)",
  "source_url": "https://annuaire-entreprises.data.gouv.fr/entreprise/652014051"
}

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Input parameters

Field	Type	Description	Example
searchQuery	string	Free-text company name to search for.	Carrefour
siren	string	Exact nine-digit SIREN to fetch a single entity.	652014051
department	string	Two/three-digit French department code to restrict results.	75 (Paris)
nafCode	string	NAF/APE industry code to filter by activity.	4711F (hypermarkets)
createdAfter	string (YYYY-MM-DD)	Only return entities incorporated on or after this date.	2024-01-01
createdBefore	string (YYYY-MM-DD)	Only return entities incorporated on or before this date.	2024-12-31
includeDormant	boolean	Include dormant / non-active entities in results.	false
maxResults	integer (1–1000)	Maximum number of company records to return.	100

All inputs are optional and combine as filters — supply a name to search, a SIREN to look up one entity exactly, or any combination of department, industry, and date window to slice the registry.

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How to use it

Python (apify-client)

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>")

run_input = {
    "searchQuery": "Carrefour",
    "department": "91",
    "nafCode": "70.10Z",
    "createdAfter": "1960-01-01",
    "includeDormant": False,
    "maxResults": 100,
}

run = client.actor("france-pappers-companies").call(run_input=run_input)

for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item["siren"], item["name"], item["status"], item["city"])

cURL (run-sync-get-dataset-items)

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/france-pappers-companies/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "searchQuery": "Carrefour",
    "department": "91",
    "nafCode": "70.10Z",
    "includeDormant": false,
    "maxResults": 100
  }'

The run-sync-get-dataset-items endpoint runs the actor and returns the dataset items in a single response — ideal for lightweight integrations, no-code tools, and quick lookups.

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Pricing

This actor uses a pay-per-result model: you are charged per company record returned in the dataset. There is no monthly subscription, no seat licensing, and no minimum commitment — if a run returns nothing, you pay nothing.

Worked example. Suppose you want every active company under NAF code 4711F (hypermarkets) in department 75 (Paris). You set maxResults to 200 and the run returns 180 company records. You are billed for 180 results — exactly the rows you received and can use. Run it again next month to catch new incorporations and you only pay for that run's results.

Because the underlying government data source is free and keyless, the per-result price reflects the querying, pagination, normalization, and delivery the actor performs — not a data-licensing markup. That makes one-off lookups cheap and large pulls predictable: estimate cost simply as results returned × per-result rate.

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How this compares to Pappers / Societe.com / Infogreffe / Dun & Bradstreet

	This actor	Typical paid French BI portals & D&B
Underlying data	Official INSEE SIRENE + RNE + BODACC	Same official registries, often resold
Access model	Free-sourced, keyless	API keys, accounts, gated tiers
Commercial model	Pay-per-result, no subscription	Subscriptions, credit packs, seat fees
Output	JSON-native, normalized, pipeline-ready	Mixed JSON / portal UI / report exports
Identifiers	SIREN, SIRET, NAF/APE, directors	Same registry identifiers

The honest version: the registry facts are the same, because everyone ultimately draws on INSEE SIRENE, the INPI-run RNE, and BODACC. Societe.com, Infogreffe, and similar portals layer subscriptions, dashboards, and report products on top; Dun & Bradstreet wraps French registry data into a global proprietary identifier and a paid platform. This actor's difference is in access and packaging: it pulls from the free, keyless official open-data endpoint, charges only for the records you actually use, returns clean JSON instead of a portal you have to scrape or a PDF you have to parse, and never asks you to manage a credential or commit to a plan. If you already pay for a French data subscription and need its proprietary scoring or accounts depth, keep it — if you need clean, current registry records on a usage basis, this is the leaner path.

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FAQ

Do I need an API key for the data source? No. The underlying French government open-data API is free and keyless. You only need your standard Apify token to run the actor on the platform.

How fresh is the data? Records reflect the official registries (INSEE SIRENE, RNE, BODACC), which are maintained and updated by the French state on an ongoing basis. Each record carries a date_updated field so you can see when the registry last revised it.

What is the difference between SIREN and SIRET? SIREN is the nine-digit identifier for the legal entity (the company itself). SIRET is a fourteen-digit identifier for a specific establishment of that entity — the SIREN plus a five-digit establishment suffix. This actor returns the entity's SIREN and the SIRET of its head office (siret_siege), along with total and open establishment counts.

Can I filter by department, industry, or incorporation date? Yes. Use department for a French department code, nafCode for a NAF/APE industry code, and createdAfter / createdBefore to bound the incorporation date. These combine, so you can ask for, say, all companies in a sector and region incorporated within a date window.

Are directors and officers included? Yes, where the RNE publishes them. The directors array contains each officer's name, role (e.g. Président directeur général), and type (individual or legal person).

Can I include dormant companies? By default the actor focuses on active entities. Set includeDormant to true to bring dormant and non-active entities into the results. The status field on each record (active / ceased) lets you split them downstream.

How many results can one run return? Set maxResults anywhere from 1 to 1000 per run. For larger harvests, run multiple queries sliced by department, industry, or date window.

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Compliance & legal

The data returned by this actor originates from France's official open government data — INSEE SIRENE, the INPI-operated RNE, and BODACC — published for reuse under France's open data licensing. These are public registries of legal entities, designed to be transparent and accessible.

This actor is intended for legitimate informational, commercial-research, due-diligence, and compliance-support purposes. You remain responsible for using the data in line with applicable law, including data-protection rules where personal data (such as named directors) is involved, and for any onward processing or storage. Registry data describes legal entities and the public officers attached to them; it is provided as-is from the official source and should be corroborated for high-stakes decisions.

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Related actors

• Gleif Lei Entity Resolution
• Delaware Corporations Search Scraper
• UK Companies House Officers
• Business Registration Lookup
• Hk Companies Registry

Building company-registry coverage across markets? Pair this actor with other NexGenData entity-data actors:

• GLEIF LEI Entity Resolution — resolve and validate Legal Entity Identifiers (LEIs) globally; the cross-border key for joining French SIRENs to international counterparties.
• UK Companies House Company Search — official UK registry data: company numbers, officers, filing status, and addresses.
• India MCA Companies — Ministry of Corporate Affairs company data for Indian entities — CIN, directors, and registration details.
• Australia ASIC Company Search — Australian Securities & Investments Commission company records, ABN/ACN identifiers, and status.

Use them together to build a unified, multi-jurisdiction company-intelligence pipeline keyed on official registry identifiers.