Looking up and verifying a Norwegian company
Every registered Norwegian entity has a unique 9-digit organisasjonsnummer, and its official registration record is public via Brønnøysundregistrene (the Brønnøysund Register Centre) at brreg.no. A full verification check covers registration status, bankruptcy or dissolution flags, filed annual accounts, and VAT registration.
Jurisdiction: Norway · Verified against Brønnøysundregistrene as of 2026-06-28
Brønnøysundregistrene in one minute
Brønnøysundregistrene is the Norwegian government agency (under the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Fisheries) running the country's central registers — the closest equivalent to the UK's Companies House. Enhetsregisteret holds the core entity record; Foretaksregisteret is the Register of Business Enterprises commercial businesses must register in for legal corporate status and name protection; Regnskapsregisteret holds filed annual accounts; Merverdiavgiftsregisteret is the VAT register. A VAT-registered company appends MVA to its organisasjonsnummer.
The manual verification loop
Done by hand, verifying one company means: search brreg.no by name or org number; open the entry and confirm it is registered and active; scan for bankruptcy (konkurs) or dissolution (oppløsning) flags; check Regnskapsregisteret for filed annual accounts; check VAT registration; and repeat periodically, because the registry sends no change alerts.
How the check resolves to a verdict
The verdict answers two questions: is the company actively registered, and is a signing authority visible? A bankrupt or dissolving company already reports a non-active status, so distress folds into the first question and fails the check. If the register does not show a signing authority the verdict is unknown, never a silent no — absence from the register is not evidence of absence. Filed accounts, VAT registration, and the individual distress flags are surfaced alongside the verdict as transparency signals; they never change it.
Registering a company
New entities register by submitting a Samordnet registermelding (coordinated register notification) via Altinn. Registering an AS in the Register of Business Enterprises costs NOK 6,825 filed digitally (NOK 7,912 on paper); an ENK registered only in the Central Coordinating Register for Legal Entities costs NOK 2,181 digitally (NOK 2,746 on paper).
Use cases
- KYB / onboarding checks: confirm a counterparty is registered and active before contracting
- Resolve a company name to its 9-digit organisasjonsnummer before a paid data read
- Detect bankruptcy, dissolution, or deregistration on a portfolio by re-checking on a schedule
- Check whether a counterparty is VAT-registered and has filed annual accounts
Requirements
- The company's 9-digit organisasjonsnummer, or its name for a search-first flow
- An Apier API key for the company-data endpoints (company search itself is the free discovery tier)
Authentication
Method: api_key · Scopes: read:brreg
Company-data endpoints are Category B: an API key is required even on the Free tier because the records carry personal-adjacent data (board members, signaturrett, prokura).
Common errors
COMPANY_NOT_FOUND
The organisasjonsnummer was not found in Brønnøysund.
Fix: Check the 9-digit number for typos (it must pass the MOD-11 checksum) or resolve the company by name first via company search.
VALIDATION_FAILED
The request failed validation at the boundary — most often an org number that is not exactly 9 digits.
Fix: Send the organisasjonsnummer as exactly 9 digits, without spaces or the MVA suffix.
Related topics
Related APIs
Capability ids — resolve each against the machine-readable manifest at /api/v1/capabilities for the endpoint, auth mode, and tier.
- company.search
- company.verify
- company.context
- company.snapshot
- company.profile
- company.summary
Related MCP tools
Registered tools on the Apier MCP server.
- search_companies
- get_company_verification
- get_company_context
- get_company_profile
- get_company_summary