The Spanish VAT number (NIF-IVA)

The format

A Spanish VAT number is always eleven characters including the prefix. The first and last characters of the national block may be a letter or a digit; the seven in between are always digits.

• ESThe country code, identical to the ISO code.
• AThe letter identifying the legal nature of the entity.
• 7837472Seven digits: province of registration and a sequence.
• 5The check character — a digit or a letter, depending on the entity type.

The check character is computed over the preceding seven digits. For some entities it is always numeric (A, B, E, H), for others always a letter (N, P, Q, R, S, W), and for the rest it can be either. When it is a letter it follows the mapping J=0, A=1, B=2, C=3, D=4, E=5, F=6, G=7, H=8, I=9.

What the leading letter tells you

Unlike almost every other country, the Spanish number reveals the legal form at a glance. It is the only structural information it carries, and it is genuinely useful.

Individuals carry no leading letter: their NIF is the DNI, eight digits followed by a check letter, or the NIE for foreign nationals, which starts with X, Y or Z.

Holding a NIF is not enough: the ROI

This is the Spanish quirk that causes the most rejected invoices. A Spanish company with a perfectly valid NIF does not appear in VIES until it registers in the Register of Intra-Community Operators (ROI).

Registration is requested on form 036, ticking box 582. The tax agency may verify the business activity before granting it, and the process takes anywhere from a few days to three months. Until it clears, any European customer validating the number gets "invalid" and will charge VAT.

The practical consequence: a Spanish VAT number rejected by VIES does not mean the company does not exist. Nearly always it means the company is not in the ROI, or has been removed from it for inactivity.

Identifying the company behind the number

VIES and the AEAT lookup

The AEAT offers an intra-community operator lookup built on VIES. It confirms the number is valid, and little else: Spain discloses neither the name nor the address through VIES — those fields come back as ---. With Germany, Spain is one of the two member states where validity is all Europe offers.

The Registro Mercantil

The commercial register, at registradores.org, holds the full record: company name, registered office, objects, directors and annual accounts. It can be searched by name or NIF, but the extracts are paid and there is no free bulk download. That is exactly why Spain has no open source usable at volume.

The BORME

The Official Gazette of the Commercial Register publishes registered acts — incorporations, appointments, resignations, dissolutions — for free, in a structured, downloadable format. It is a way to track changes, not to look a company up by NIF: it is not a directory.

Spain-specific pitfalls

• Registered with the tax agency ≠ registered in the ROI. The number one reason a Spanish VAT number fails European validation.
• The Canary Islands, Ceuta and Melilla are outside the EU VAT territory. A Canarian company has a Spanish NIF and pays IGIC instead; its supplies are not intra-community for VAT purposes.
• Removal from the ROI is silent. The tax agency can strike off an operator that stops filing recapitulative statements; the number simply stops validating, with no notice.
• Spain publishes no name or address in VIES, so there is no official, free route from a number to a company.
• The NIF never changes — not when the registered office moves, not when the company is renamed. The leading letter can change if the company converts to another legal form.

One API for 27 member states

Vatlas resolves a European VAT number to a company record: legal name, national identifier, legal form, status and address. Spain is bound by the same limit as everyone else — what a member state does not publish, nobody can return:

curl "https://api.vatlas.dev/v1/vat/ESA78374725" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $VATLAS_KEY"

Response:

200 OK

{
  "data": {
    "vatNumber": "ESA78374725",
    "countryCode": "ES",
    "nationalNumber": "A78374725",
    "nationalId": null,
    "name": "",
    "legalForm": null,
    "status": "active",
    "address": {
      "line1": null,
      "line2": null,
      "postalCode": null,
      "city": null,
      "country": "ES"
    }
  },
  "meta": {
    "origin": "vies",
    "source": "VIES",
    "sourceUpdatedAt": "2026-08-28T09:43:47.529Z",
    "checked": ["database", "VIES"]
  }
}

The number is valid, meta.origin is vies, and name and address stay empty because Spain does not publish them. We would rather say so than invent something. For a member state with an open register, the same response is complete:

200 OK

{
  "data": {
    "vatNumber": "IT00743110157",
    "countryCode": "IT",
    "nationalNumber": "00743110157",
    "nationalId": null,
    "name": "MOTOROLA SOLUTIONS ITALIA SRL",
    "legalForm": null,
    "status": "active",
    "address": {
      "line1": "LARGO FRANCESCO RICHINI 6",
      "line2": null,
      "postalCode": "20122",
      "city": "MILANO MI",
      "country": "IT"
    }
  },
  "meta": {
    "origin": "vies",
    "source": "VIES",
    "sourceUpdatedAt": "2026-08-28T09:43:39.522Z",
    "checked": ["database", "VIES"]
  }
}

That is the point: one endpoint, one response shape, 27 countries. Whether the answer came from an imported register, a national API or VIES is recorded in meta, not branched on in your code.

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VAT numbers in other countries

• France
• Germany
• Italy
• Belgium
• All countries

Last updated 28 August 2026.