How to Get Company Registry Data in Bulk (Without an Enterprise API Contract)

Official company registries hold the ground truth on every registered business — legal name, registration number, directors, filings, financials. This guide covers how to bulk-export that data from 10 registries across Europe, Brazil, and the US, searching by company name or registration ID.

Why registry data beats aggregator databases

Aggregators like ZoomInfo, Clearbit, or D&B resell registry data with a markup and a lag. The registries themselves are the primary source: when a company changes directors, files accounts, or enters insolvency, the registry knows first. The catch is access — most registries offer a one-at-a-time web search, a paid API with enterprise onboarding, or nothing at all.

Each scraper below works like a bulk search you can run yourself: give it a list of company names or registration numbers, get structured JSON back. You pay per record retrieved, with no subscription and no API contract.

German company data: Handelsregister and Bundesanzeiger

Germany splits company data across two systems. The Handelsregister is the commercial register: search by HRB number or company name to get directors, shareholders, share capital, branches, and filing history — the fields KYC and KYB checks need.

The Bundesanzeiger is the federal gazette where companies publish annual accounts. Its export returns Jahresabschluss data — revenue, equity, headcount where disclosed — plus insolvency announcements and capital market notices. Feed it a company list and it returns the filings for each match.

Swiss company registry: Zefix, SHAB and Moneyhouse

The Swiss registry export combines three sources in one lookup: Zefix (the central company index — UID/CHE number, legal form, seat, purpose), SHAB (the official gazette's legal events: incorporations, mutations, liquidations), and Moneyhouse profile data. Search by company name or CHE number.

Italian company financials: Registro Imprese bilanci by VAT number

The Registro Imprese export takes VAT numbers or codici fiscali and returns Italian company records with the bilancio (revenue, EBITDA, profit), REA number, PEC address, directors, and ultimate beneficial owners. PEC addresses alone make this useful for B2B outreach lists — every Italian company must maintain one.

French company data by SIREN: Pappers, BODACC and INPI

France publishes company data across SIRENE (identity), BODACC (legal announcements), and INPI (beneficial owners and financial statements). The French registry export unifies all three: search by SIREN or company name, get one merged record per company.

Austrian Firmenbuch extracts by company name

The Firmenbuch export searches Austria's company register via JustizOnline and returns FN number, legal name, address, legal form, and registration status for each match.

Nordic registries: BRREG, PRH, Allabolag and Proff

The Nordic registry export covers four countries in one run: Norway (BRREG), Finland (PRH), Sweden (Allabolag), and Denmark (Proff). Search by company name, get organization number, legal name, address, and status — consistent fields across all four markets.

Brazil CNPJ lookups from Receita Federal

The CNPJ crawler queries Receita Federal data with filters aggregators don't offer: state, city, CNAE industry code, legal form, or partner CPF. Useful for licitações research and regional B2B prospecting where you need every registered company matching a profile, not a curated sample.

US financial professionals: FINRA BrokerCheck and SEC IAPD

Two US registries cover the securities industry. FINRA BrokerCheck returns broker and adviser records by name or firm: CRD number, employment history, licenses, and disclosures. The SEC investment adviser export searches the IAPD database by firm-name keyword — "family office", "wealth management", "capital" — and returns registered firms with CRD, SEC number, address, and disclosure flags. Together they cover compliance screening and RIA list building.

Registry coverage at a glance

Country	Registry sources	Search by	Key output
Germany	Handelsregister, Bundesanzeiger	HRB number, company name	Directors, capital, Jahresabschluss, insolvencies
Switzerland	Zefix, SHAB, Moneyhouse	CHE/UID, company name	Legal form, seat, SHAB events
Italy	Registro Imprese	VAT, codice fiscale	Bilancio, PEC, UBO, directors
France	SIRENE, BODACC, INPI	SIREN, company name	Identity, announcements, beneficial owners
Austria	Firmenbuch (JustizOnline)	Company name	FN number, legal form, status
Norway, Finland, Sweden, Denmark	BRREG, PRH, Allabolag, Proff	Company name	Org number, address, status
Brazil	Receita Federal (CNPJ)	State, CNAE, city, partner CPF	Company profile, partners
United States	FINRA BrokerCheck, SEC IAPD	Person, firm, keyword	CRD records, licenses, disclosures

What this costs compared to a company data API

Enterprise company-data APIs price by subscription: annual contracts, seat licenses, and volume tiers, typically starting in the thousands per year before you retrieve a single record. The registry scrapers above price per record retrieved. A 500-company KYB screen runs once and costs what those 500 lookups cost — there is no minimum, and a one-off project doesn't need a 12-month commitment.

The trade-off is honest: an aggregator gives you one schema across every country and pre-matched entities. Registry exports give you the primary-source fields each registry actually publishes, at primary-source freshness, and you match entities yourself (the registration IDs in the table above are the join keys).

Which registry export do I need?

• KYC/KYB onboarding checks — Handelsregister, Zefix, Firmenbuch, Registro Imprese: search the ID your customer gave you, verify the record.
• Financials for credit or M&A screening — Bundesanzeiger (DE), Registro Imprese bilanci (IT), INPI financials (FR).
• B2B list building — CNPJ filters (BR), PEC addresses (IT), SEC IAPD keyword search (US), Nordic registries.
• Compliance screening of financial professionals — FINRA BrokerCheck and SEC IAPD.

For the broader picture across other data types, see Which Web Scraper Do I Need?, or browse the full Finance & Compliance catalog.