H1: The German Business Register (2025 Update)
Germany’s company registers are not for the faint of heart.
Between the Handelsregister, the Unternehmensregister, and the Transparenzregister, compliance teams must juggle three separate systems with overlapping but inconsistent data.
Add in the quirks of Germany’s federal structure, where 150 local courts each maintain their own records, and you end up with a registry landscape that’s fragmented, slow to update, and often difficult to reconcile.
Even seasoned analysts encounter roadblocks: multiple registrations for the same entity, fees for key documents, and filings that aren’t machine-readable.
And since 2022, beneficial ownership data has been restricted to regulated “obliged entities” under the German Anti-Money Laundering Act, with no straightforward access for foreign institutions.
This guide walks through the German registers, showing the types of information available, the problems, and how to search them.
H2: A Tale of Two Registers
Germany has two business registers: the Handelsregister and the Unternehmensregister.
Handelregister: Contains information on all business entities, from partnerships and limited companies to sole traders.
Unternehmensregister: Contains additional information on companies.
Takeaway: The Handelregister provides an overview of all business types, while the Unternehmensregister provides details on company finances.
H3: The Handelsregister
The Handelsregister is a central database for 150 different local court registrars that register and dissolve companies. This is divided into two parts:
Division A (HRA): Partnerships, sole proprietorships and registered associations without share capital.
Division B (HRB): Corporations, public limited companies, limited liability companies and partnerships limited by shares.
H3: The Unternehmensregister
The Unternehmensregister is a supplementary portal that provides company information, including financial accounts and capital market data, sourced from multiple official sources.
It is publicly available through the Federal Gazette’s (Bundesanzeiger) online platform.
H2: The Handelregister
H3: Available Information
Company changes.
Legal forms.
Articles of association.
Mergers and acquisitions.
Managing directors.
Shareholders.
H3: Available Documents
The Handelsregister provides a wealth of downloadable company documents, all in German.
Current Printout (Aktueller Ausdruck) (AD): Information on legal form, startup capital, representative details, authorised signatories’ details, and legal relationships,
Chronological Printout (Chronologischer Ausdruck) (CD): Information on share capital, legal relationships, company objective, and business address.
Historical Printout (Historischer Ausdruck) (HD): Historical data valid until the digitisation of the business register.
Document (DK): Contains articles of association and statutes, management structure, capital structure, and rules for profit and loss distribution.
Remember: All PDFs are unstructured scans (some even images), meaning automated parsing is poor without OCR. This is why most vendors don’t rely on direct scraping.
Fees: Certified copies and official printouts are between €4.50 and €12.50 per document, depending on type and length. This stands in contrast to Companies House in the UK, where most filings are freely available.
H3: How to Search the Handelsregister
Searching the Handelsregister is free and doesn’t require an account.
1. Go to the Website. It’s called the Handelsregister portal.
2. Search for a Company. Search by a company’s name, number or location, for example.
3. View Company Profile. You’ll see basic information: company name, district court, register number, status, and state of registered office.
4. Scan Documents. On the right-hand side, you will see a list of available documents: information on ownership structure, authorised representatives, share capital, and changes in legal status.
5. Download Documents.
Remember: German registers often require exact or close spellings (including umlauts like ä/ö/ü and the ß), and some search engines/integrations don’t normalise these characters, so try variations (e.g. Müller / Mueller / Muller).
H2: The Unternehmensregister
H3: Available Data
Accounting records.
Financial reports.
Company law notices.
Insolvency court notices.
Capital market information.
H3: Available Documents
Entity Data (Unternehmensträgerdaten) (UT): This provides information on the company’s name, number, status and district court, as well as capital amount and address.
Financial Statements: Available from the Federal Gazette (Bundesanzeiger) for a fee. €1 for a deposited annual statement, or at least €5 for a certified copy.
Publications (VO): Contain regularly updated information about various companies, including commercial Register announcements (Handelsregisterbekanntmachungen), articles of association (Gesellschaftsverträge), and statutes (Statuten).
H3: How to Search the Unternehmensregister
1. Visit the Official Website. The official portal is the Unternehmensregister.
2. Navigate the Portal. Find ‘Schnellsuche’ (Quick Search) on the homepage.
3. Search a Company. Search by name, registration number, or other identifying details.
4. Review Results. The search results will display a list of companies that match your criteria.
5. Dig Deeper. Click on the company name to access detailed information. You’ll see company registration details and annual financial statements. You’ll see their equity, assets and liabilities. All are stored as text.
Challenges with the German Business Register
Germany’s business registry system is manual, disharmonious and fragmented across multiple sources.
Identifier Inconsistencies: The Handelsregister comprises 150 different district courts, each with its unique method of representing its court on the number. This often requires specific knowledge of the court. Moreover, Germany lacks a single, standardised company identifier across registers
Shelf Companies: Shelf companies (Vorratsgesellschaften / Mantelgesellschaften) are actively marketed in Germany, meaning a company may have been incorporated earlier but changed ownership or assets later. This complicates the use of the incorporation date alone as a reliability metric.
Multiple Entries: Multiple registrations of the same company, caused when a company relocates to a new jurisdiction, registers with a new identifier, resulting in duplicate entries, and obscuring true ownership and structure.
No Structured Data: Neither register offers structured data via API integration, unlike Companies House, meaning that all company searches are manual.
Bottom Line: Without access to structured, standardised data on German entities, financial crime teams face a manual, time-consuming due diligence process.
The Transparency Register
Germany has had a Transparency Register since August 2021, providing beneficial ownership information on German companies.
However, this changed in November 2022, when the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled that public access to beneficial ownership information infringes upon the individual right to privacy.
Who Can Access It in 2025?
Germany has limited access to national authorities and “obliged entities” regulated under the Geldwäschegesetz (GwG), in other words, the Money Laundering Act. This means:
German Authorities: FIU, BaFin, law enforcement, and tax authorities get full access.
GwG Obliged Entities: Banks, insurers, lawyers, notaries, and real estate agents can access beneficial ownership information if they need it to fulfil their CDD/KYC obligations.
Legitimate Interest: Persons with a “legitimate interest”, including foreign banks, can technically access it. However, the framework is narrow, and the application processing time is long.
Takeaway: Foreign “obliged entities” cannot access the Transparency Register.
Will This Change?
The 6th AML Directive (Directive (EU) 2024/1640) requires comprehensive access for obliged entities, including cross-border obliged entities.
Germany has not fully transposed this, which is why the European Commission brought legal action against Germany (and others) in September 2025.
Germany has two months to provide comprehensive access to overseas obliged entities that can prove a “legitimate interest”.
Takeaway: To build a picture of a German company and verify its UBO, financial crime professionals must use available shareholder data.
Verify German UBOs in Seconds with UBO Verify
The German registers contain authoritative data, but accessing and interpreting that data is complex.
Multiple sources, inconsistent identifiers, shelf companies, and filing delays all increase the risk of error in KYB workflows. Weak beneficial ownership transparency forces analysts to rely on shareholder lists, articles of association, and historic filings to build a picture of who ultimately controls a company.
That’s where technology makes the difference.
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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
What is the difference between Unternehmensgegenstand and Gesellschaftszweck?
The terms Unternehmensgegenstand and Gesellschaftszweck are closely related and often used in conjunction, but have different meanings.
Unternehmensgegenstand: The specific activities and operations of a business. For example, a manufacturing company’s objective might be to produce and sell automotive parts. This must be outlined in the Articles of Association, and the information registered with the Handelsregister, along with any changes.
Gesellschaftszweck: A company’s purpose. Essentially, the end goal of a company’s Unternehmensgegenstand. This could be an overarching vision or strategic direction. For example, the Gesellschaftszweck of a company that manufactures and sells automotive parts might be to make a profit.
What is the Handelsregisternummer?
The Company Registration Number, also known as the Handelsregisternummer, is a unique alphanumeric code assigned by the Handelsregister to every business registered in Germany.
There are two types:
HRA (Handelsregister Abteilung A): Division A
HRB (Handelsregister Abteilung B): Division B.
The number is a series of letters followed by numbers, for example, HRA 1234 or HRB 12345.