Ecuador SRI RUC Scraper — Company Registry & Fraud Flags

Scrape the official Ecuador SRI RUC registry (Consulta RUC, Servicio de Rentas Internas) by RUC or cédula and get back a clean, English-keyed record: legal name, registration status, economic activity, legal representatives, fraud risk flags, and every registered establishment with its full address.

One RUC in, one structured company profile out. No account, no API key, no captcha solving — this Actor reads the same public registry a Ecuadorian accountant uses, and normalizes it for machines.

What you get

For RUC 1790016919001:

{
  "ruc": "1790016919001",
  "country": "EC",
  "legalName": "CORPORACION FAVORITA C.A.",
  "taxpayerType": "company",
  "status": "active",
  "mainEconomicActivity": "VENTA AL POR MAYOR DE OTROS PRODUCTOS DIVERSOS PARA EL CONSUMIDOR.",
  "taxRegime": "GENERAL",
  "activityStartDate": "1957-11-30",
  "registryUpdatedAt": "2026-08-18",
  "mustKeepAccounting": true,
  "isWithholdingAgent": true,
  "isSpecialTaxpayer": true,
  "isGhostTaxpayer": false,
  "hasNonExistentTransactions": false,
  "legalRepresentatives": [
    { "identification": "1701529958", "name": "WRIGHT DURAN BALLEN RONALD OWEN" }
  ],
  "headOfficeAddress": "PICHINCHA / RUMIÑAHUI / COTOGCHOA / AV. GENERAL ENRIQUEZ S/N",
  "establishmentCount": 327,
  "openEstablishmentCount": 312,
  "establishments": [
    {
      "number": "001",
      "commercialName": "CORPORACION FAVORITA C.A.",
      "type": "MAT",
      "isHeadOffice": true,
      "status": "open",
      "province": "PICHINCHA",
      "canton": "RUMIÑAHUI",
      "parish": "COTOGCHOA",
      "street": "AV. GENERAL ENRIQUEZ S/N"
    }
  ]
}

Why this data matters

The two risk flags are the point. Ecuador's tax authority publicly marks taxpayers as contribuyente fantasma (ghost company) and transacciones inexistentes (non-existent transactions). Those are official fraud designations, exposed here as isGhostTaxpayer and hasNonExistentTransactions. If you onboard Ecuadorian merchants, suppliers or borrowers, this is the single most valuable field pair in the country's public data.

Legal representatives come with their national ID, which lets you chain into PEP and sanctions screening without a name-only match.

Establishments are a branch map. A retailer returns hundreds of open locations with province, canton, parish and street — a ready-made territory list for field sales, distribution planning or store-level analytics.

Use cases

You are	You use it for
KYB / AML platform	Merchant and supplier verification with official status plus fraud flags
Fintech / lender	Borrower checks: is the entity active, since when, who signs
B2B sales team	Qualify accounts by economic activity, regime and branch footprint
Procurement / compliance	Vendor due diligence, periodic re-screening of an existing book
Data team	Enrich an Ecuadorian company list with authoritative registry fields

Input

Field	Type	Default	Notes
rucs	array	—	13-digit RUC numbers. Also accepts a newline- or comma-separated string, objects passed from another Actor, or a 10-digit cédula — the 001 head-office suffix is added for you.
includeEstablishments	boolean	true	Adds every registered branch with address.
includeRaw	boolean	false	Attaches the untouched Spanish payload under raw for auditing.
skipInvalidChecksum	boolean	false	Off by default — the registry holds historical records that predate today's check-digit rules.
verifyNotFound	boolean	true	On a miss, confirms against the registry's existence endpoint so a service hiccup is never reported as an unknown company.
maxConcurrency	integer	5	Parallel lookups, capped at 10. It is a public service; stay polite.
requestTimeoutSecs	integer	30
maxRetries	integer	3	Exponential backoff on 429 and 5xx.
proxyConfiguration	object	off	Only needed if the registry rate-limits the datacenter IP.

Simplest possible run:

{ "rucs": ["1790016919001", "0990004196001"] }

Three ways to read the results

The dataset ships with prepared views, so you do not have to flatten anything yourself:

• Companies — one row per RUC with the fields a reviewer reads first.
• Legal representatives — one row per person, ready for sanctions or PEP screening.
• Establishments — one row per branch, a territory list for field sales.

Export any of them as CSV, Excel, JSON or XML, or pull them from the API.

Output notes

• Every input RUC produces exactly one dataset item, so a batch of 500 gives you 500 rows you can join back on ruc.
• Failures are data, not silence: unmatched or malformed inputs come back with found: false and an error of not_found, invalid_ruc or lookup_failed.
• Dates are ISO (YYYY-MM-DD). registryUpdatedAt tells you how fresh the authority's own record is.
• SI/NO registry values become real booleans; Spanish status values are mapped to active / suspended / inactive, with the original kept in statusOriginal.

Pricing

Pay per event, and you only pay for what the registry actually returned:

Event	Price	When
Company record	$0.014	Once per RUC found, including status, activity, legal representatives, ghost-taxpayer flags and the head office address
Additional branch	$0.0005	Per registered establishment beyond the head office, and only when you ask for establishments
Actor start	$0.0001	Container startup. Not an access fee.

Not-found and invalid RUCs are free, so a dirty input list costs you nothing extra. There is no minimum spend and no subscription.

A worked example: 500 Ecuadorian companies with establishments switched off — 500 × $0.014 = $7.00. One large retailer with 327 branches costs $0.014 for the record plus 326 × $0.0005 = $0.18.

For comparison, the manual alternative is opening the SRI portal and transcribing fields, one company at a time — two to four minutes each. At 500 companies that is roughly a full working day.

Notes on the source

Data comes from the SRI's public RUC consultation service. This Actor does not bypass any access control, does not authenticate, and does not solve captchas — it reads endpoints the registry serves openly and passes the values through unchanged. Sole traders are natural persons, so treat their records as personal data under your own GDPR/LOPDP obligations.

Tax debt (deudas) is deliberately not included: that endpoint sits behind a web application firewall, and working around it would not be appropriate.

Not an official SRI product. This Actor is an independent tool built by Echocall LLC. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or operated by the Servicio de Rentas Internas or any Ecuadorian government body. "SRI" and "RUC" are used descriptively to name the public data source.

Roadmap

Same schema, more countries — Costa Rica, Panama, Guatemala, Paraguay, Uruguay — plus a single cross-border lookup Actor so one call covers a whole region.

FAQ

How do I look up a RUC number in Ecuador?

The SRI publishes its taxpayer registry (Consulta RUC) as an open service. This Actor queries it for you and hands back structured JSON, CSV or Excel instead of a web page you have to read by hand — one row per RUC, in bulk.

What is a RUC number?

The Registro Único de Contribuyentes is Ecuador's 13-digit tax ID. The first two digits encode the province, and the last three are the establishment number — 001 is always the head office.

Can I search by cédula instead of RUC?

Yes. A 10-digit cédula is completed to a RUC by appending 001, so a sole trader's national ID works as input without any preparation on your side.

What is a contribuyente fantasma?

A taxpayer the SRI has officially designated a ghost company — one issuing invoices without real economic activity behind them. The Actor exposes that designation as isGhostTaxpayer, alongside hasNonExistentTransactions. These two fields are why most buyers use this Actor rather than a generic company-data source.

Can I check whether an Ecuadorian company is active?

Yes — status maps the registry's Spanish value to active, suspended or inactive, and activityStartDate tells you how long the entity has been trading.

Is scraping the SRI registry legal?

This Actor reads a public government service. It does not authenticate, does not bypass access controls and does not solve captchas. Sole traders are natural persons, so treat their records as personal data under your own GDPR/LOPDP obligations.

What does it cost to try?

Every new Apify account includes free monthly usage credit, which covers a few hundred lookups before you pay anything.

Related Actors

• Costa Rica Cedula Scraper — the same idea for Costa Rica's Hacienda registry, including the moroso and omiso flags.
• LATAM Company Registry Scraper — one call for a mixed list of Ecuadorian RUCs and Costa Rican cédulas, returning a single shared schema.