How to verify a Polish company: NIP, REGON and KRS explained

Every Polish company carries at least two public identifiers, and most carry three. Once you know which number means what, you can check a Polish supplier, customer or partner in a few minutes, free of charge, without leaving your desk. This guide explains NIP, REGON and KRS, shows where each one is looked up, and lists what to read in the result before you sign or pay.

The three identifiers at a glance

Sole traders (around 3.6 million active businesses in Poland) do not have a KRS number. They are registered in CEIDG, the central register of business activity, which is a separate database with its own search engine. Companies and partnerships are in KRS. Both groups have a NIP and a REGON.

NIP: tax identity and VAT status

The NIP is the number you will see on every invoice. The Polish EU VAT number is the same ten digits with a PL prefix. Two free checks use it:

• VIES (the EU VAT Information Exchange System) confirms whether PL + NIP is a valid EU VAT number. Use it for intra-EU supplies where you apply the reverse charge.
• Wykaz podatników VAT (the Polish "white list" of VAT taxpayers) at podatki.gov.pl shows whether the company is an active VAT payer, when it was registered or removed, and which bank accounts it has reported to the tax office. Polish buyers are expected to pay invoices above 15,000 PLN only to an account on this list. If you are paying a Polish supplier, the same check protects you from invoice fraud: an account that is not on the list is a red flag.

A NIP has a check digit, so a mistyped number is usually rejected by the search engine rather than returning the wrong company.

REGON: the statistical record

The REGON register is run by Statistics Poland. Its search engine at wyszukiwarkaregon.stat.gov.pl accepts a NIP, a REGON or a KRS number and returns a card with the registered name, address, legal form, date of commencement, and the PKD activity codes. PKD is the Polish version of the European NACE classification, so the codes translate directly to what you use at home.

REGON is the quickest way to learn what a business formally does and when it started. It does not show owners, capital or financial data. For a sole trader it does show the owner's name, because the business and the person are the same entity.

KRS: who owns the company and who may sign

For a company (most often a spółka z o.o., the Polish limited liability company) the court register is the document that matters. The free search engine at ekrs.ms.gov.pl returns a full extract ("odpis") in PDF. Read these sections:

• Dział 1: name, address, share capital, shareholders holding at least 10% of shares. The minimum share capital of a spółka z o.o. is 5,000 PLN, so a low figure is normal and not by itself a warning sign.
• Dział 2: the management board and the rule of representation. This tells you whether one board member can sign a contract alone or whether two signatures are required. Contracts signed in breach of this rule can be challenged.
• Dział 3: activity codes and a note on whether annual financial statements have been filed.
• Dział 4 to 6: enforcement, liquidation, bankruptcy and restructuring entries. Any entry here deserves a question before you proceed.

Annual financial statements of KRS companies are public and free. The eKRS document browser (Przeglądarka dokumentów finansowych) lets you download the balance sheet and profit and loss account of any company that has filed them. Most companies file by the end of June for the previous year. A company that has not filed for two years is either dormant or neglecting its duties, and both are worth knowing.

Sole traders: CEIDG instead of KRS

A jednoosobowa działalność gospodarcza (JDG) is a business run by a natural person under their own name. The register is CEIDG at biznes.gov.pl. The entry shows the owner's name, business address, PKD codes, start date and, importantly, the status: active, suspended or deleted. Around 15% of all registered Polish businesses are suspended at any time, so the status line is the first thing to read.

Because a sole trader is a person, their name, e-mail and phone number are personal data under GDPR. This affects how you may contact them, which we cover in a separate article on B2B outreach rules in Poland.

Insolvency: the KRZ register

Since December 2021 bankruptcy and restructuring proceedings are published in Krajowy Rejestr Zadłużonych (KRZ), the National Register of Debtors at krz.ms.gov.pl. The portal is designed for Polish users and is not always reachable from abroad, so if it fails, the KRS extract (sections 5 and 6) and the Monitor Sądowy i Gospodarczy, the official court gazette, carry the same announcements.

A five minute checklist before a first order

1. Ask for the NIP and confirm it in VIES. Check the white list for VAT status and bank accounts.
2. Look the company up in REGON. Compare the registered address and PKD codes with what the company claims to do.
3. For a company, download the KRS extract. Confirm who may sign, check sections 4 to 6 for enforcement or insolvency entries, and see whether financial statements have been filed.
4. For a sole trader, open the CEIDG entry and check the status and the start date.
5. If the business was founded in the last twelve months (about 325,000 Polish businesses were), ask for references or start with a smaller order. Young companies are not riskier by definition, but they have no public track record yet.

Doing this for many companies at once

The checks above are free but manual. If you are building a list of Polish distributors, subcontractors or customers, you want the identifiers already attached to every record so that your team can verify any company without retyping names. Every record in the bazy.biz company lists carries the NIP, REGON and, where applicable, the KRS number, along with the source register and the date of the last update. That is what makes the list verifiable: you can open any record in the official registers and see the same company. If you need a list for a specific industry or region, describe your target and we will reply with the number of matching companies and a price.

This article describes public registers as of October 2026 and is not legal advice.