EU VAT Insights
Patterns and curiosities found in real EU VAT number validations — company ages, founding habits, legal structures, and more.
Last updated: 3 Jun 2026, 17:07 UTC
10,010
Total validations
unique live requests
87%
Valid VAT numbers
of non-cached checks
228
Unique companies
distinct valid VAT IDs
28
Countries covered
EU member states
Record holders
The oldest and most recently registered companies among those validated through vatnode — not the absolute oldest in the EU. Registration dates come from countries whose registries share them — see coverage.
Among companies validated through vatnode — not the absolute oldest/newest in the EU.
When do founders file?
Do companies prefer January fresh starts, or is it all random? Registration dates from national registries.
By month
unique companies
By day of week
Mon–Fri vs weekends
Company age distribution
How many companies from each decade are still active and being validated today?
Registrations by decade
companies still active
By country
Which EU countries see the most validation requests, and how reliable are their VAT registries?
Most validated
share of total checks
VIES reliability
% of live checks that got a response
The great legal form debate
GmbH vs SRL vs OY vs Ltd — which corporate structure wins Europe?
Top legal forms
share of top 10
What do these companies actually do?
Industry data from countries whose registries share it — see coverage. Non-English labels are mapped to canonical NACE Rev. 2 English equivalents.
Top industries
VIES response time by country
Average round-trip to each country's VAT registry.
Average response time
ms · fastest → slowest · 10+ calls only
About this data — Statistics computed nightly from anonymised VAT validation logs. Cached results excluded. Registration dates and legal forms: Romania (ANAF), Czech Republic (ARES), France (SIREN), Finland (PRH), Denmark (CVR), Sweden (Bolagsverket). Industry data sourced from countries whose local registries provide it — see /docs/coverage.