How to check a Polish company: five registers, five minutes
Before you write to a Polish company, it helps to know whether it is active, how big it is and whether it is in restructuring. Poland publishes all of this in public registers, open without an account. Here are five sources in the order worth opening them, what each one is, and what it means for a seller. The registers are in Polish; a browser translation is enough to read them.
Published 8 Oct 2026 · 5 min read
Paste your websiteFive registers, in this order
Start with the NIP, the Polish tax identification number. Most Polish companies print it in the website footer or on a company details page. Without it, search by name and expect several similar results.
- 01REGON, the statistical register. The GUS REGON search (wyszukiwarkaregon.stat.gov.pl) accepts a NIP, a REGON or a KRS number. It shows the full name, legal form, registered address, PKD activity codes and whether the entity has been struck off. It is the fastest test that the company exists.
- 02KRS, the National Court Register. For commercial companies, open the current extract in the Ministry of Justice KRS search. It shows share capital, how the company is represented, branches and the date of the latest entry. The full extract adds the history of changes, which tells you what happened in recent years.
- 03The VAT white list. The VAT taxpayer list on podatki.gov.pl tells you whether the company is an active VAT payer and which bank accounts it registered. For a seller it is a simple sign of normal business. Any status other than active is a reason to stop.
- 04The Financial Documents Repository. Companies in the KRS file annual financial statements, and the RDF viewer (rdf-przegladarka.ms.gov.pl) publishes them. Revenue and headcount over two years show whether the company is growing. Revenue growth is one of the eight signals described in our buying signals guide.
- 05The National Register of Debtors. Since December 2021 Polish insolvency and restructuring proceedings are in the Krajowy Rejestr Zadłużonych (krz.ms.gov.pl). A company in restructuring rarely buys anything new, and its decisions may need a supervisor's approval. Better to know before your first line.
What it means for a seller
Registers answer a question about risk. A seller also cares about fit and timing. This table translates one into the other.
| What you see in the register | What it means for the conversation |
|---|---|
| A legal form outside your customer profile | Probably the wrong entity. If you sell to limited companies and see a civil partnership, check you have the right one. |
| A fresh KRS entry: a new branch, a capital increase, a board change | A dated event. It can be a reason to talk if it connects to your offer. |
| Revenue up for a second year | The company has budget and likely new needs. Good context, a weak opening line. |
| Proceedings in the debtors register | Hold off. Even if the company fits, this is not the moment. |
| Struck off, or not an active VAT payer | Remove it from the list. There is nobody to have the conversation with. |
What the registers will not tell you
A register says what a company is on paper. It does not say what the company is doing this quarter. A PKD code is a declaration made at registration, and a financial statement describes a year that has already ended. For the present you need the company's website, job ads, announcements and other dated sources.
A KRS extract also lists the names of board members. Before a first conversation, knowing who decides, described by role, is enough: the board, or an operations director. Personal data in a register serves transparency of trade, not building a contact database.
Polish sole traders are registered in CEIDG, not in the KRS. Their entry is in practice the data of one person, often with a home address. Pursiva does not read or show those entries.
How Pursiva does it
For every scored company Pursiva looks for a NIP on the company's own website. When it finds one, it queries the REGON register through the GUS API and stores the legal form, PKD codes and KRS number with the source address. The legal form then feeds the automatic exclusion check that runs before the list goes out.
This step has a ceiling, and we say so. In the published run of 2 Sept 2026, a registry record was matched for 6 of the 40 scored companies. The limit is not the register. It is that many Polish companies do not print their NIP on their own site. A company without a matched record gets no invented data. A gap shows as a gap.
The run delivers itself within an hour of payment. The five registers in this article stay useful afterwards, for every company you decide to contact.
Frequently asked questions
- How do I look up a Polish company by its NIP?
- Enter the NIP in the GUS REGON search (wyszukiwarkaregon.stat.gov.pl). You get the name, legal form, address, PKD codes and the KRS number if the company has one. VAT status and registered bank accounts are on the VAT taxpayer list at podatki.gov.pl.
- Do I have to pay for a KRS extract?
- An extract downloaded yourself from the Ministry of Justice KRS search has the force of an official document and carries no fee. Fees apply to extracts issued on request by the KRS Central Information office.
- Can I use names from the KRS for sales outreach?
- A public register is not consent to marketing. Processing personal data and sending commercial messages have their own legal bases, and assessing them is your responsibility. Pursiva provides no names or contacts, only a description of the company, its signals and their sources.
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