Skip to main content

Start here

This guide contains public integration notes for Austria. Use it for identifier formats, search behavior, and country-specific caveats. The live source of truth for coverage, pricing, data sources, documents, legal forms, roles, and status values is the pricing page.

Austria coverage, pricing, and sources

Open the current catalog for supported datapoints, documents, sources, identifiers, and availability.
Country details below are preserved as integration notes. If a table or example conflicts with the live pricing page, use the pricing page as the source of truth and contact support.

Table of Contents

Data Sources

Austria uses three data sources, each covering a distinct entity type. Data always comes from a single source per entity - there is no cross-registry merging.

Commercial companies

  • Firmenbuch (Austrian Companies Register). Operated by the Federal Ministry of Justice via the Justiz Online platform. The Firmenbuch has been the central business register since 1991, replacing the former Handelsregister. It is the primary source for all entities registered with the commercial courts: GmbH, AG, KG, OG, cooperatives, foundations, and registered sole proprietors (e.U.). The Firmenbuch contains registration details, legal form, address, share capital, business purpose, key persons (officers, prokuristen, supervisory board), and filed documents (financial statements, articles of association, annual reports).
The Firmenbuch is accessed via official interfaces operated by the Austrian judiciary, providing company profile data, available documents, document content, and company name searches.

Sole proprietorships

  • GISA (Gewerbeinformationssystem Austria). Austria’s trade information system, operated by the Federal Ministry of Labour and Economy (BMAW). GISA is the primary source for sole proprietorships (Einzelunternehmen), covering trade rights (Gewerbe), business locations, and trade managers. Each trade licence has a unique GISA-Zahl identifier.
GISA provides sole proprietorship data including the owner, trade rights with classification codes, business locations, and appointed trade managers. It does not provide financial statements or historical documents - only a digitally signed trade licence excerpt.

Associations (non-profits)

  • Vereinsregister (ZVR - Zentrales Vereinsregister). The Central Association Register, operated by the Federal Ministry of the Interior (BMI). The Vereinsregister is the primary source for registered associations (Vereine), which are a common legal form in Austria for non-profits, clubs, and civic organizations. It provides the association name, officers with their roles, mailing address, and supervising authority.
The Vereinsregister provides association profiles and a digitally signed register extract (Vereinsregisterauszug). It does not provide financial statements or other documents.

Supplementary sources

  • VIES (VAT Information Exchange System). The EU-wide VAT validation service is used exclusively during VAT number searches to resolve a VAT number to a company name, which is then used to search the Firmenbuch. VIES is not a data source for company profile data.

Company Identifiers

Query Identifiers

Firmenbuchnummer Format: The FNR consists of 6 digits followed by a single letter (e.g., 184018s). The registry format may include a space (e.g., 184018 s) but all whitespace is automatically stripped.

Identifiers in API Response

Search Capabilities

Name searches fan out to all three sources in parallel, returning aggregated results from the Firmenbuch, GISA, and Vereinsregister.
Search Performance: Use identifier-based searches (FNR, GISA-Zahl, ZVR, VAT) for best performance and exact matching. Name searches query all three sources and may return up to 10 results per source.
VAT Search Flow: VAT searches first validate the number via VIES to retrieve the official company name, then search the Firmenbuch by that name. This two-step process means VAT search results depend on the company name registered with VIES matching the Firmenbuch entry.

Quirks & Gotchas

Mappings

Company Status

Firmenbuch

Company status is AI-inferred from the Firmenbuch registry data.

GISA

Status is determined from the trade licence data (trade right dates and dormancy flag).

Vereinsregister

Austria uses a variety of legal forms. Legal form mapping for Firmenbuch entities is AI-enriched - the legal form is AI-inferred from registry data and mapped to standardized categories and ISO 20275 codes. GISA entities are mapped deterministically based on the owner type. Vereinsregister entities are always mapped to “Verein”.
Because legal form standardization and ISO 20275 assignment are AI-enriched for Firmenbuch entities, exact mappings may evolve. The local Austrian legal form name is always preserved verbatim.

Key Business Forms

Sole Proprietorships

GISA entities are always mapped to “Einzelunternehmen” (Sole Proprietorship). The legal name is the trade holder’s personal name.

Cooperatives

Foundations & Non-Profits

Public Law & Financial Institutions

European Forms

Historical & Special Forms

The OHG (Offene Handelsgesellschaft) and OEG (Offene Erwerbsgesellschaft) are historical legal forms that were replaced by the OG (Offene Gesellschaft) under the 2007 Austrian company law reform (UGB). Existing OHG/OEG entities may still appear in the Firmenbuch. The GmbH & Co KG is not a separate legal form in the ELF code list - it is a Kommanditgesellschaft (KG) where the general partner is a GmbH.
The FlexKapG (Flexible Kapitalgesellschaft), introduced on January 1, 2024, does not yet have an assigned ISO 20275 ELF code. It may appear in the Firmenbuch as “Flexible Kapitalgesellschaft” or “FlexCo”.
Legal representatives are extracted from three sources, each with its own role vocabulary.

Firmenbuch Roles

Legal representatives are extracted from the Firmenbuch registry data. The classification of roles as legal representative vs. other key person is AI-enriched.
The classification of each role as legal representative or other key person is AI-enriched and depends on the company’s legal form context. For example, a Prokurist is typically classified as a legal representative, while a Kommanditist is classified as an other key person. The local German role name is always preserved from the Firmenbuch. Both individuals and corporate entities can hold roles.

GISA Roles

GISA only exposes one role type: the appointed trade manager (Gewerberechtlicher Geschäftsführer). The trade holder (Inhaber) is represented as the company entity itself, not as a legal representative.

Vereinsregister Roles

Both individuals and corporate entities (juridical persons) can serve as association officers in the Vereinsregister.

Other Key Persons

Shareholders

Shareholder data is not available from any of the three sources. The Firmenbuch provides information about company officers rather than ownership structures.
For GmbH companies, shareholder information may appear in filed documents (e.g., Gesellschafterliste or articles of association). However, this data is not available as a structured data point. Austria maintains a separate Economic Owners Register (Wirtschaftliche Eigentumer Register / WiEReG) that is not currently integrated.

Activity Code Mapping

Austria does not use a formal national industry classification code in the Firmenbuch. Instead, activity information is derived from the business purpose text stored in the registry.
AI Enrichment: Both NACE and ISIC codes are AI-inferred from the business purpose text in the Firmenbuch. Every activity item includes an isAIInferred flag set to true. There is no official Austrian activity code in the Firmenbuch data. GISA provides trade classification codes (Gewerbe-Schluessel) but these are used as trade descriptions, not mapped to NACE.

Data Availability

Data Availability Matrix

Legend: ✅ Available | ❌ Not Available | ⚠️ Conditionally Available | Async = Asynchronous processing

Documents by Source

Firmenbuch

GISA

Vereinsregister

Document Formats: Most Firmenbuch documents are available in PDF format. Recent financial filings (from approximately 2023 onward) are often available in both PDF and XML (XBRL) format. GISA and Vereinsregister documents are always PDF.

Example API Responses

All examples use placeholder data. Query: POST /v2/company with { "id": "<id>", "countryCode": "AT", "dataPoints": ["company", "legalRepresentatives"] }
Note: For GISA sole proprietorships, the legalName is the trade holder’s personal name. The activityDescription contains the trade right description (Wortlaut). No birth dates or capital information are provided.
Note: Vereinsregister associations have no capital, no activity description, and no birth dates. Officers are always returned with their association-specific roles (Obmann, Schriftführer, Kassier, etc.).
Note: Closed companies have active: false and a local status indicating the reason (Aufgeloest = Dissolved, Konkurs = Bankruptcy, Geloescht = Deleted from register).
Documents are returned when "dataPoints": ["availableDocuments"] is requested.