EORI Number Validator: Bulk EU & UK Customs Check

Check thousands of EORI (Economic Operators Registration and Identification) numbers against the official sources: the European Commission's EOS validation service for EU and Northern Ireland (XI) numbers, and HMRC for UK (GB) numbers. For each number you get valid or invalid, the trader's name and address where the trader has agreed to publish them, and an optional name match against your own records.

Built for customs brokers, freight forwarders, e-commerce sellers shipping cross-border, and compliance teams onboarding importers or exporters.

What can EORI Number Validator do?

• EU and UK in one run. GB numbers are routed to HMRC automatically; EU member-state and XI numbers to the EU EOS service. Both are queried in batches of 10, the maximum each service allows.
• Forgiving input. gb 117 223 643 000, EORI No: DE1234567, EL… (converted to GR) and numbers without a prefix (with defaultCountry) all work.
• Free local format check. Numbers that can't be valid (for example a GB number that isn't 12 digits) are returned as free invalid_format rows. Non-EORI countries such as CH or US return free unsupported_country rows.
• Handles outages. Retries with backoff, then returns free service_unavailable rows instead of failing the run.
• Name match. Add | Expected name to a number, or set nameField for a dataset, to get exact, close, partial or mismatch.

What data does it return?

Field	Example
eori, status, valid	GB117223643000, valid, true
name, address	APPLE DISTRIBUTION INTERNATIONAL LIMITED, HM REVENUE AND CUSTOMS, AB10 1ZP, ABERDEEN, GB
street, postalCode, city	split address fields when published
countryCode, countryName	GB, United Kingdom
expectedName, nameMatch, namePublished	Apple Distribution International, exact, true
source, requestDate, checkedAt	HMRC (UK), …

Statuses:

• Charged: valid, and invalid (not registered, or expired).
• Free: invalid_format, unsupported_country, service_unavailable, invalid_input, error and skipped_charge_limit.

Most traders do not consent to publishing their name and address. In that case name is null, namePublished is false and nameMatch is not_available, but valid is still authoritative.

How much does it cost?

You pay only for numbers the official service actually answered (valid or invalid):

Plan	Per 1,000 numbers
Free	$3.00
Bronze	$2.50
Silver	$2.00
Gold	$1.50

Format errors, unsupported countries and outages are free. There is also a tiny Apify start fee of $0.00005 per run.

Input example

{
  "eoriNumbers": ["GB117223643000 | Apple Distribution International", "BE0403448140", "XI220430231000"]
}

Output example

{"eori": "GB117223643000", "status": "valid", "valid": true, "name": "APPLE DISTRIBUTION INTERNATIONAL LIMITED",
 "address": "HM REVENUE AND CUSTOMS, AB10 1ZP, ABERDEEN, GB", "countryCode": "GB", "expectedName": "Apple Distribution International",
 "nameMatch": "exact", "namePublished": true, "source": "HMRC (UK)"}

{"eori": "GB123", "status": "invalid_format", "valid": false, "error": "GB EORI numbers are GB + 12 digits (usually the 9-digit VAT number + 000). Not sent."}

Use cases

• Customs declarations: confirm the importer's or exporter's EORI before filing.
• Freight and logistics onboarding: validate a shipper or consignee list and flag name mismatches.
• Marketplaces and e-commerce: check B2B buyers' and sellers' EORI numbers in bulk.
• Periodic re-checks: schedule the Actor monthly to catch EORIs that have been revoked.

Use with AI agents (MCP, ChatGPT, Claude, Cursor, n8n)

AI agents can run this Actor through the Apify MCP server:

{"mcpServers":{"apify":{"url":"https://mcp.apify.com?tools=swillz/eori-validator"}}}

Or run it locally with npx -y @apify/actors-mcp-server --tools swillz/eori-validator and APIFY_TOKEN set.

Example prompts:

• "Is GB117223643000 a valid EORI number, and who is it registered to?"
• "Validate the EORI numbers in this consignee list."

Minimal input: {"eoriNumbers": ["GB117223643000"]}. To cap the cost, pass maxTotalChargeUsd. Numbers left unchecked come back as free skipped_charge_limit rows.

Integrations and API

Run it from the Apify API, the clients, Make, Zapier or n8n. To chain it, pass {"datasetId": "...", "eoriField": "eori"}. The OUTPUT record holds a run summary (byStatus, zeroResultsReason, nextSteps).

FAQ

Is this the official source? Yes. Every answer comes live from the European Commission's EOS validation service or HMRC's public EORI API. Nothing is cached.

Why is there no name for a valid number? The trader has not consented to publication. The validity result is still official.

Is an EORI the same as a VAT number? No, but in many countries it is derived from it (for example GB + VAT number + 000). To check VAT numbers, use the EU VAT Number Validator below.

Related tools

More tools from the same developer, built to work together:

• Career Site Jobs Scraper: jobs from Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby, Workable and Recruitee boards, with salary fields, as a jobs API or CSV.
• Workday Jobs Scraper: every job from any myworkdayjobs.com career site, past the 2,000-result cap.
• Company Website Enrichment: turn a list of domains into company name, emails, phones, social links and tech stack.
• AI Extract: structured JSON from any web page with a plain-English prompt or a JSON schema. AI included.
• Google Sheets Import & Export: send any Apify dataset to a Google Sheet (append, replace or dedupe) or read a sheet as JSON.
• XML Sitemap URL Extractor & Sitemap to CSV: every URL from a website's sitemap, with lastmod, HTTP status and new-page monitoring.
• AI Brand Visibility Tracker: track whether ChatGPT mentions, ranks and cites your brand vs competitors (GEO).
• Email Provider Detector: bulk check whether domains use Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Proofpoint or Mimecast, plus SPF, DMARC and DKIM.
• Hiring Signals by Company Domain: from a list of company domains, find which ATS each uses and how many open roles, by department and location.
• EU VAT Number Validator (VIES): bulk check EU VAT numbers against official VIES, with company name and address.
• LEI Lookup (GLEIF): find a company's Legal Entity Identifier, legal name, address, status and parent from official GLEIF data.
• Sanctions Screener: screen company and person names against official OFAC, UN, EU and UK sanctions lists with fuzzy matching.

Popular workflows

• B2B customer onboarding (KYB): validate the VAT number with EU VAT Number Validator (VIES) and the EORI with this Actor, confirm the legal entity with LEI Lookup (GLEIF), and screen the name with Sanctions Screener.

Source code: https://github.com/williamjin02/apify-actors/tree/main/actors/eori-validator