France is one of the easier places to look a company up. Since January 2023 the register has been free to search, the official gazette has been free since 2011, and the government runs a search API that answered without a key when we tested it. The catch is not access. It is that two of the things a buyer most wants, the accounts and the owners, can both be out of reach for reasons that are perfectly lawful. Here is what each system holds, and which gaps are the register's and which are French company law's.
The 2019 PACTE law ended the old split between commercial, craft, agricultural and agent registers, and on 1 January 2023 the national business register (Registre national des entreprises) took over as the single register, run by the national intellectual property office, INPI, and fed automatically by the one-stop formalities window. That was a real consolidation: one register, one place to file, and public data available free.
It did not become one system. The identifying numbers still come from elsewhere. INSEE, the national statistics institute, runs the Sirene directory and issues the SIREN, nine digits that identify the legal person, and the SIRET, fourteen digits that identify one establishment by adding five digits to the SIREN. Record both: the same company can have several SIRETs and only one SIREN, so a SIRET tells you which site you are looking at, and a SIREN tells you which company.
Underneath, the old commercial register has not disappeared either. The RCS is still kept by the clerks of the commercial courts, and it is still where the certified Kbis extract and the filed documents come out through Infogreffe. So a French company has a register record at INPI, a directory record at INSEE, and a court file at the registry, and the three do not always read identically.
One piece of shorthand is worth having before you start. The French VAT number is derived from the SIREN, so it can be cross-checked on the European VIES service, and a supplier whose number does not resolve is worth a second question. The exception is lawful and common: businesses below the VAT franchise threshold are not registered for VAT at all, and the rule for them is that they must not print a VAT number on an invoice, so an absent number proves nothing on its own.
The register data is free. The RNE is searchable at the INPI data portal, and the government business directory merges the Sirene records, the register and the gazette into one search, with no account needed. Both are open enough to be queried by machine, and the directory's own search API answered us without a key when we tested it, which is not something the German register offers.
The gazette is free too. Incorporations, changes of name, disposals and insolvency proceedings are published in the BODACC, and it has been open at no charge since July 2011. It is the cheapest way to notice that something has happened before any document is bought.
What you pay for is the certified extract. The Kbis is the document French banks and counterparties actually ask for, and as a third party you order it from the registry for a few euros, at a tariff set for the clerks and varying with how you collect it. The company's own legal representative can download the same document free, which is why a supplier will usually hand you one without difficulty, and why a supplier who will not is the more interesting case.
French accounts are public by default. Every commercial company files them at the commercial court registry, and the register keeps the most recent set, so a competitor or a customer can ordinarily read them. That is the default, not the whole rule. The commercial code lets smaller companies ask, at the moment of filing, that what they filed not be published. It is a declaration attached to the filing, made once a year, and if it is not claimed then it is not available.
The thresholds are the ones worth remembering. A micro-enterprise below two of three limits, 450,000 euros of total assets, 900,000 euros of net turnover, and ten employees, may declare that the accounts it files will not be made public at all. A small enterprise may ask that the profit and loss account alone be withheld, which still leaves the balance sheet and the notes visible. The figures are set by decree, so check them against the financial year you are reading rather than against a memory of an earlier article.
The practical consequence for a buyer is the one that trips people up. A French company whose file shows no accounts has not necessarily failed to file. It may have lawfully elected confidentiality, and a thin file is not evidence of a problem either way. What the election does not do is hide anything from the state: the courts, the administrations, the central bank and the financing and investment bodies the decree names continue to see the full accounts regardless of what was declared. One further exclusion matters if you are reading a group: a company belonging to a group cannot use the small-enterprise option.
Two smaller traps sit in the same area. Micro-enterprises are excused from the notes to the accounts, except companies whose business is holding shares and securities, so their absence is normal rather than telling. And for an SARL the management report is not among the documents filed with the register at all, though the company is still obliged to keep it and to give it to anyone who asks. Ask for it in writing; the register will not have it.
France has required companies to declare their beneficial owners since August 2017. A beneficial owner is a natural person who directly or indirectly holds more than 25% of the capital or the voting rights, or who controls the company by other means; and where no such person can be identified, the law falls back on the legal representatives and enters them as owners of last resort. Any change must be declared within thirty days, so the register is meant to track ownership as it moves.
It was public, and then it was not. The register of beneficial owners opened to general public consultation, and in November 2022 the Court of Justice of the European Union struck that down, holding that publishing the data to anyone who asked was neither necessary nor proportionate. France held the public access for a while, and then restricted it from 31 July 2024, following the European anti-money-laundering directive published in June 2024 and the national law and decree that brought it into French law in 2025 and 2026.
What replaced it is a tiered regime rather than an open register. Authorities and the professionals already under anti-money-laundering duties keep broad access. Anyone else has to show a legitimate interest connected to preventing money laundering or terrorist financing, and the categories are set out in law: a prospective counterparty arguing its own compliance duties, and journalists, researchers and civil-society actors working on financial transparency. An applicant who succeeds does not get the register, only a defined set of fields, and the request is reviewed by hand.
That set of fields is worth knowing, because it is deliberately narrow. It identifies a person rather than profiling one: the name and any usage name or pseudonym, the first names, the month and year of birth, the country of residence, the nationality, and the nature and extent of the holding. A full date of birth and any national identifier are not disclosed, and the access, once granted, carries a certificate that lasts three years. From November 2026 the register will have twelve days to rule on an application, which turns an open-ended wait into a deadline.
One more thing is absent from the French system, and it is easy to mistake for a gap in your search. France does not publish a structured shareholder list. There is no free field on the register record that names the shareholders and their holdings the way a company's own filed deeds may. For a limited company or a simplified joint-stock company, the ownership picture sits inside the acts the company filed, and it reflects the last filed change rather than the position today. The beneficial ownership register would be the shortcut past that, and it is the one you can rarely reach.
Failing to file carries real consequences, which is why an absent declaration is itself a signal. For the officer the exposure is six months and a 7,500 euro fine, and for the company a 37,500 euro fine. Since June 2025 a company that does not regularise within three months of a formal notice can be struck off the register, which is a heavier sanction than the fine because it ends the entity.
Start with the free directory to settle identity and status. Take the exact registered name, the SIREN, the legal form and the current status, confirm the company is not in a winding-up or struck-off state, and note the legal form, because a limited company, a simplified joint-stock company and a public limited company do not carry the same capital rules or the same disclosure duties. Read the activity code as a category, not as a scope: it classifies the business, it does not promise that it trades in your goods.
Then the accounts, expecting the confidentiality gap. Look for the most recent filed set and read a thin or empty filing as one of two things rather than assuming the worse one. Where accounts are there, compare the turnover against the size you have been quoted, and check whether a statutory auditor's report is attached, since its presence or absence tells you which size band the company sits in.
Then ownership, with a clear expectation of where it stops. The register will not name the shareholders; the filed acts may, and the beneficial ownership register will not, unless you can show a legitimate interest and wait for a decision. Decide in advance how much that gap matters to the order you are placing, because it is the part of a French check that cannot be closed by reading more carefully.
Finally the payment, which is the step no register covers. Compare the account name on the invoice to the registered legal name you verified, in writing, before the money moves. A register establishes that a company exists, what it is registered as, and who is on record as running it. None of them can tell you whether a bank account belongs to the entity it names, and that comparison is the check that decides whether the money reaches your supplier or somewhere else.
| System | Who runs it | What you get | What it costs |
|---|---|---|---|
| National business register (RNE) | INPI, fed by the one-stop formalities window | Identity, legal form, activity, representatives, and the acts and accounts the company filed | Free public data, plus a free API |
| Government business directory | Etalab, merging Sirene, the register and the gazette | SIREN and SIRET, activity code, headcount band, status and announcements, in one search | Free, no account, and a search API that needed no key |
| Sirene directory | INSEE, the national statistics institute | The SIREN and SIRET numbers themselves, establishments, activity code, headcount band | Free open data |
| RCS via Infogreffe | Clerks of the commercial courts | The certified Kbis extract, articles of association, filed accounts, insolvency status | Data free; the certified extract is paid at a regulated tariff |
| BODACC | The official gazette | Incorporations, changes, disposals and insolvency proceedings | Free since July 2011 |
| Register of beneficial owners (RBE) | INPI and the court clerks, centralised for European interconnection | Beneficial owners above 25% of capital or voting rights | Closed to the general public since 31 July 2024 |
The shorthand that keeps them straight: the free directory tells you the company exists and where it is, the court registry is where you buy the certified version of the same thing, and the two registers that would answer the harder questions are the ones with holes in them. One hole is made by the companies themselves, who may file their accounts confidentially. The other is made by law, which closed the ownership register to the public. Neither is a defect in your search.
Yes, for the register data. The national business register is searchable free at the INPI data portal, the government business directory merges the register, the Sirene records and the gazette into one free search with no account, the gazette has been free since 2011, and both the statistics institute and the directory expose free APIs. What is paid is the certified Kbis extract, which a third party orders from the court registry for a few euros under a regulated tariff. The company's own legal representative can download the same certificate free.
Not in a structured shareholder list, because France does not publish one. For a limited company or a simplified joint-stock company the ownership picture sits inside the acts the company filed with the court registry, and it reflects the last filed change rather than today. The register that was built to answer the ownership question, the register of beneficial owners, has been closed to the general public since 31 July 2024 and is reachable only on a justified legitimate interest, after review, and then only for a limited set of fields.
Because a smaller company may lawfully have asked them not to be published. Accounts are public by default, but at filing a micro-enterprise below two of three limits, 450,000 euros of total assets, 900,000 euros of net turnover and ten employees, may declare that its filed accounts stay out of public view entirely, and a small enterprise may ask that the profit and loss account alone be withheld. The declared figures are set by decree and reviewed, so check them against the year you are reading. Courts, administrations, the central bank and financing bodies still see the full accounts regardless.
No. A matching entry confirms the entity exists, what it is registered as, and who is on record as running it, and it settles nothing about whether the bank account on an invoice belongs to that entity. Nor is the record live: changes pass through a notary and an officer of the court before they are entered, so an entry that is correct today can lag what has happened. Compare the payment details to the registered legal name in writing, and run the sanctions and export-control check separately before the money moves.