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Everything we know about Dutch company data
Short, specific answers about the Handelsregister, the fields it exposes and how to get them into your own software. Written for the person who has to ship the integration.
KVK data explained
11 articles- totalBranches Branches and head office in Dutch company data A Dutch registration has one head office (hoofdvestiging) and zero or more secondary locations (nevenvestiging). They all share one eight digit KVK number and each has its own twelve digit vestigingsnummer. The enriched lookup gives you a totalBranches count, and GET /v1/lookup/{kvkNumber}/branches returns the list itself.
- vat Can you derive a Dutch VAT number from a KVK number? You cannot. The numeric block of a Dutch VAT number is the RSIN, which is nine digits, while a KVK number is eight. They are separate identifiers and neither follows from the other. For a BV or NV you can build a candidate from the RSIN as NL{RSIN}B01, but even that is a heuristic that fiscal unities and second subnumbers break, so validate against VIES before invoicing.
- isActive How to check if a Dutch company is still active Look at two fields on a lookup: isActive tells you whether the registration is still open in the Dutch trade register, and insolvency tells you whether a bankruptcy or suspension of payments is recorded. Both come back on a plain lookup, no enrich needed. Company data is cached for 24 hours, so on this specific question treat the answer as up to a day old.
- uittreksel KVK extract (uittreksel) vs API data A KVK uittreksel is an official extract from the Dutch trade register, issued as a signed PDF with a date and a reference. An API returns the same underlying facts as JSON, faster and at scale, but it is not a document and carries no signature. Use the extract when someone requires evidence, use the API when your software requires data.
- legalForm Legal forms in the Dutch business register The legalForm field carries the Dutch trade register's legal form code, for example 41 for a BV (private limited company) and 22 for a VOF (general partnership). The code decides more than you would expect: whether the entity has legal personality, whether it has a statutory name, and whether a VAT number can be derived at all. Branch on it early rather than treating every registration the same.
- statutoryName Trade name vs statutory name in Dutch company data The statutory name (statutaire naam) is the legal name in a company's deed of incorporation, and it is the name that belongs on contracts and invoices. A trade name (handelsnaam) is any name the business actually trades under, and a company can register several. Our API returns the statutory name as statutoryName and the trade names as tradingNames, both only when you pass enrich=true.
- lookup Using Dutch company data from outside the Netherlands Dutch trade register data is public and readable from anywhere. You do not need a Dutch entity, a Dutch bank account or eHerkenning to query it: an API key is enough. What you do need to get right is the data model, because Dutch addresses, names and identifiers do not map cleanly onto forms designed for other countries, and for cross border invoicing the field that matters is the VIES validated VAT number, not the KVK number.
- kvkNumber What is a KVK number? A KVK number (KVK-nummer) is the eight digit identifier the Kamer van Koophandel, the Dutch Chamber of Commerce, assigns to every entry in the Handelsregister, the Dutch business register. It is the Dutch equivalent of a Companies House number in the UK or an HRB number in Germany, except that it also covers sole traders and partnerships. It identifies a registration, not a legal entity and not a tax status.
- vestigingsnummer What is a vestigingsnummer? A vestigingsnummer (establishment number) is the twelve digit identifier the Dutch trade register gives to each physical location of a business. One company has one eight digit KVK number and one vestigingsnummer per location. It is the Dutch counterpart of a French SIRET suffix: the KVK number says who, the vestigingsnummer says where.
- rsin What is an RSIN number? The RSIN is the Rechtspersonen en Samenwerkingsverbanden Informatienummer, the number the Dutch tax authority and the Chamber of Commerce use to identify a legal entity. Every BV, NV, foundation and association gets one. Sole traders do not, they are administered on the owner's citizen service number.
- source What is the Dutch business register (Handelsregister)? The Handelsregister is the national business register of the Netherlands, maintained by the Kamer van Koophandel (KVK), the Dutch Chamber of Commerce. Every business active in the Netherlands has to register, including sole traders and partnerships, which makes it broader than Companies House or the German Handelsregister. Core company data is public and can be read by anyone, from any country.
Integrations
5 articles- woocommerce Dutch company and VAT fields in WooCommerce checkout WooCommerce has no KVK or VAT registry field. You add one yourself: on classic checkout through the woocommerce_billing_fields filter, validated in woocommerce_after_checkout_validation and written to order meta. We do not ship a WooCommerce plugin. We ship a REST API and a widget that you call from those hooks.
- zapier Dutch company lookup in Zapier without code We do not have a published Zapier integration. You connect with the built-in Webhooks by Zapier step: a GET to our lookup endpoint with an Authorization header. The response fields are then mappable in any following step. The same approach works in Make, n8n or Power Automate with a generic HTTP step.
- hubspot Enrich HubSpot companies with Dutch registry data HubSpot has no KVK field and does not enrich from the Dutch trade register. You create custom properties on the Company object and fill them from a workflow webhook action, a coded action, or a private app listening to CRM webhooks. We do not ship a HubSpot app: you call our REST API from that middleware.
- shopify Shopify B2B VAT validation for Dutch customers Shopify does not let you hang a live VAT check on the checkout page on most plans. Checkout UI extensions on the checkout page are Plus only, and Shopify Functions run without network access, so they cannot reach VIES. The workable route is validating before or after checkout through an app proxy and storing the result in a metafield.
- exact Syncing Dutch company data into Exact Online Exact Online stores the KVK number in the ChamberOfCommerce field on crm/Accounts, as free text with no validation. You fill it through the Exact REST API from your own middleware script that performs our lookup first. We do not ship an Exact connector: the integration is your script sitting between two APIs.
Comparisons
4 articles- company.info KVKBase compared to Company.info Company.info and comparable vendors sell credit information: financial statements, group structures, credit scores and monitoring, priced per seat or per contract and quoted rather than listed. KVKBase sells identity: does this company exist, what is it formally called, where is it registered, and does its VAT number check out against VIES. We hold no financial data at all. If you need a credit score or a group structure, we are the wrong product.
- overheid.io KVKBase compared to overheid.io OpenKvK overheid.io's OpenKvK v3 is a derived Dutch Business Register dataset with strong search on top, including geo queries and autocomplete, from EUR 15 per month for 2,500 calls. KVKBase is narrower: one call returns the company profile plus the derived VAT number with a live VIES check. If you search by location or run high volume, overheid.io is cheaper and more complete. If you need company and VAT in one response, we are.
- diy Rolling your own against using an API Dutch Business Register data is public and the KVK publishes a free open dataset with basic company data, so rolling your own is a real option, especially for one-off or low volume work. The work is not in the first version, it is in the upkeep: VIES is SOAP and goes offline per member state, addresses need normalising, legal forms need mapping, and a cache has to stay fresh. Scraping the KVK website instead of using the API is also a terms-of-service problem.
- api.kvk.nl The official KVK API or KVKBase The KVK API on developers.kvk.nl is the source of record, and we query it ourselves. Going direct costs EUR 6.40 per month plus EUR 0.02 per query on the paid profile endpoints, with a free search endpoint and a free open dataset for basic company data. The real difference is not those cents but the integration work: search, basic profile, branch profile and naming are separate calls, and the VAT number has to be derived yourself and checked separately against VIES over SOAP.
One call gives you the whole company
KVK data, the derived VAT number and a live VIES check, in a single request. The free plan covers 50 lookups a month and needs no card.
- 50
- free lookups a month
- 1
- request instead of three
- 0
- cards, contracts or sales calls