The German VAT number (USt-IdNr)

The format

A German VAT number (Umsatzsteuer-Identifikationsnummer, USt-IdNr) is always eleven characters: the prefix DE and nine digits. The national part never contains letters, spaces or dashes.

• DEThe country prefix, identical to the ISO code.
• 81190798Eight digits identifying the taxable person.
• 0The check digit.

The check digit follows ISO/IEC 7064, MOD 11,10. It catches every single-digit error and most transpositions, and nothing more. A number that checks out arithmetically may never have been issued, or may have been withdrawn years ago.

USt-IdNr, Steuernummer, Steuer-ID, W-IdNr

Germany issues several numbers side by side, and they are routinely confused. Only the first one works for intra-community trade.

Finding the company behind a number

This is the German problem in one sentence: no directory can be searched by VAT number. Neither the Handelsregister nor the Unternehmensregister records it, and it cannot be derived from the HRB number.

Handelsregister and Unternehmensregister

handelsregister.de has been free since August 2022 and returns the company name, legal form, seat, representatives and filed documents. You search by name or registration number, never by VAT number. The same holds for the Unternehmensregister and the Bundesanzeiger.

The BZSt qualified confirmation

Under § 18e UStG the BZSt offers a confirmation request that is, in practice, indispensable for zero-rating an intra-community supply. It works the opposite way round from what you would expect: it hands out no data. You supply the name, legal form, town and postcode, and it answers, field by field, only "matches" or "does not match".

If you do not already know the name, it gets you nowhere. If you do, it gives you a record you can keep, and for tax purposes that is the point.

VIES

The European Commission's service confirms whether any German number is registered for intra-community trade. Germany does not disclose the name or the address through VIES, those fields come back as ---. Together with Spain, Germany is one of the two member states where validity is all Europe offers.

The Peppol Directory

One free source is keyed by the USt-IdNr, and it is not a register. In the Peppol e-invoicing network, participant scheme 9930 is the German VAT number, and the whole directory is exported every night. Roughly 10 000 German companies can be reached by their number that way, a small share of the country, growing as the German e-invoicing mandate phases in through 2028, and the only free path there is from a German VAT number to a company name.

Two caveats decide what it is worth. The name is declared by the participant itself, not certified by a register, and being reachable on Peppol says nothing about the VAT registration still being live. Treat it as a lead; the BZSt confirmation above is what a tax audit asks for.

Germany-specific pitfalls

• A VAT number is not automatic. It has to be applied for at the BZSt, either during tax registration or later online. A registered German company with no USt-IdNr is entirely normal.
• Small businesses under § 19 UStG can hold a USt-IdNr without charging VAT. Valid does not mean VAT-charging.
• The Steuernummer changes, the USt-IdNr does not. Moving to another tax office district issues a new Steuernummer and leaves the VAT number untouched.
• No official path leads from the number to the name. Not through VIES, not through the confirmation service, not through the registers. The Peppol directory is the practical exception, and it covers a few thousand companies out of millions.
• The Impressum is the most practical source. German law requires commercial websites to publish their VAT number, which is often the only public place where the number and the company name sit side by side.

That shows in the answer itself: a name that comes from the Peppol directory is a self-declared business card, so status stays unknown rather than claiming a registration nobody has verified. And a German number that is not in the directory comes back with an empty name and meta.source: "VIES", empty because saying so beats inventing it.

One API, one response shape

Vatlas turns a business tax number into a company record: legal name, national identifier, legal form, status and address. Germany: the same call and the same response as for every other country covered.

curl "https://api.vatlas.dev/v1/lookup/DE122624631" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $VATLAS_KEY"

Response:

200 OK

{
  "data": {
    "vatNumber": "DE122624631",
    "countryCode": "DE",
    "nationalNumber": "122624631",
    "nationalId": null,
    "name": "Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH",
    "legalForm": null,
    "status": "unknown",
    "address": {
      "line1": "Jülich",
      "line2": null,
      "postalCode": null,
      "city": null,
      "country": "DE"
    }
  },
  "meta": {
    "source": "PEPPOL",
    "sourceDate": "2026-09-14",
    "sourceSince": "2026-09-06",
    "sourceUpdatedAt": "2020-03-20T00:00:00.000Z"
  }
}

meta.source names the register that answered (SIRENE, ARES, VIES…) and meta.sourceDate the day it said so: the publication date of the file for a register we import, the day of the call for one we query live. The shape of the response never changes from one country to the next.

Get a free key Read the documentation

VAT numbers in other countries

• France
• Italy
• Spain
• Belgium
• All countries

Last updated 29 August 2026.