Searching the Austrian company register

What the Firmenbuch Is

The Firmenbuch is Austria's commercial register, and it is maintained by the commercial courts rather than by a standalone agency. That is the first difference to absorb for anyone arriving from the Companies House model: an entry is made by a court, and a company acquires legal personality on entry rather than on the signing of its deed. The register carries every Kapitalgesellschaft — GmbH, AG, FlexKapG — along with partnerships and registered sole traders.

It has two parts, and the distinction between them runs through the rest of this page. The Hauptbuch is the register proper: the current and historical entries for each entity. The Urkundensammlung is the collection of documents filed in support of those entries — the articles of association, shareholder resolutions, and the annual accounts a company files under § 277 UGB. Section 9(1) UGB opens both to anyone: "Zur Einsicht in das Hauptbuch und in die zur Urkundensammlung eingereichten Schriftstücke ist jedermann befugt."

The Free Extract and Its Nine Fields

A free lookup is a statutory entitlement in Austria, which is worth stating plainly because most English-language pages describe the register as if it were entirely paid. Section 34(1b) FBG requires that a free short extract — kostenlose Kurzinformation — be offered for a single query, and it specifies exactly what that extract must contain:

1. Company name (Firma) and legal form
2. Registered seat, business address, and the register state
3. Firmenbuch number and the European unique identifier (EUID)
4. Website address, where one is registered
5. Insolvency entries, and any entry concerning dissolution or winding-up
6. Line of business (Geschäftszweig)
7. Name and date of birth of the sole trader or of the persons authorised to represent the company, with the start and the type of that authority
8. Name and date of birth of liquidators, where appointed, on the same terms
9. Branch establishments, where registered

Item 7 is the one worth pausing on. The free Austrian extract names the directors and gives their dates of birth and the type of their signing authority — sole or joint representation. In a jurisdiction where the register decides who may bind the company, that is the field that settles whether the person signing your contract can actually sign it.

What the free extract does not include is the shareholder list, the capital history, or anything struck through. Those live in the full extract, which is charged for.

The Filed Documents Are Public Too

The Urkundensammlung is the half of the Austrian register that English-language guides omit, and it is usually the half that answers the question actually being asked. Because § 9(1) UGB opens the filed documents to anyone, a person with no relationship to a company can read:

• its articles of association — object, capital, and the rules on transferring shares;
• its annual accounts for each year since registration, which every Kapitalgesellschaft files within nine months of its balance-sheet date under § 277 Abs 1 UGB;
• the resolutions and appointment documents behind each registered change.

For due diligence on an Austrian counterparty, the sequence is: free extract to confirm who they are and who signs, then the filed accounts to see whether the entity has been filing at all. A company that has skipped filings is not merely untidy — its directors are exposed to a court-imposed fine of EUR 700 to EUR 3,600 under § 283 Abs 1 UGB, re-imposed every further two months until the accounts arrive. The shelf company page sets out that cycle in full, because it is exactly the check a buyer should run before completion.

Where to Search, Including at a Notary

There are three routes into the register, and the third is not widely known outside Austria.

Online. The judiciary's own portal offers the single query, including the free short extract that § 34 Abs 1b requires. Full extracts and documents from the Urkundensammlung are charged and are also sold through commercial clearing agencies (Verrechnungsstellen), which is what most paid "Austrian company data" services are reselling.

At the court. Section 33 FBG requires the commercial courts to grant inspection by printout, both of the register and of the filed documents. Every court named in § 120 JN issues extracts, and district courts do so where they have the technical means.

At any notary. Section 35 FBG obliges every Austrian notary to maintain the technical means for a Firmenbuch query in their office and to grant anyone inspection — "jedermann Einsicht in das Firmenbuch zu gewähren". It is not a service reserved for clients, and it is a practical answer for someone already in Vienna who needs a certified extract the same day.

The Firmenbuch Number and the EUID

Section 30 FBG says only that each entity is kept under a sequential number in the register database. That number is the Austrian identifier, and it is quoted on extracts and on company correspondence with an FN prefix — a convention of use rather than something the statute prescribes. It is not the tax number and not the VAT identification number; a company has all three and they are issued by different authorities for different purposes.

Alongside it sits the EUID, the European unique identifier under § 37 Abs 2 FBG. This is the one to use from outside Austria. Section 37 Abs 1 requires that both the register entries and the documents in the Urkundensammlung be made accessible through the European e-Justice Portal, feeding the central European platform under Article 22 of Directive (EU) 2017/1132. A cross-border lookup therefore does not depend on knowing the Austrian numbering at all.

When You Need a Certified Extract

An electronic extract from the register database is certified under § 34 Abs 1a FBG: the judiciary's electronic signature confirms that the document matches the data held in the Firmenbuch database. That is what a bank, a notary or a foreign register means when it asks for a certified extract rather than a printout.

Three situations reliably need one: opening a corporate bank account, where the bank verifies signing authority against the register rather than against your statement of it; registering a branch or a subsidiary abroad, where the foreign register wants evidence of the parent's existence and representation; and completing a share purchase, where the notary works from the current register position rather than from the seller's account of it.

What the Register Will Not Tell You

The Firmenbuch records legal facts about an entity. It is not a credit file, and reading it as one is the common mistake.

It does not show turnover, staff numbers or whether the company is trading — a registered company that has never issued an invoice looks, in the register, much like one that trades every day. It does not show the beneficial owners; that is the separate beneficial-ownership register, with its own access rules. It does not show tax standing, VAT registration or whether returns are up to date, and it does not show pending litigation. And it does not confirm that the filed accounts are accurate: the court checks that a filing has arrived, not that it is true.

The register also lags reality by the time a filing takes. A director who resigned last week may still be shown until the change is registered — which is precisely why the register is the thing that decides who is in office, and why the resignation letter in your inbox is not.