Which company is at this address? Here is how to look it up for free

There is an invoice on your desk from a company you do not know, with an address in Eindhoven and little else. Or you are standing in front of a building with a nameplate that tells you nothing. Or a customer has moved and you want to know whether the company at the new address is really the same company. For all these questions there is one source: the Trade Register of the Chamber of Commerce, and it can be searched by address. In this article you will read how that works, what you get to see, where the limits are, and how to do it from your AI assistant without opening a search screen.

Searching by address in the Trade Register

Every registration in the Trade Register has a business address, and that address is public. Search for a postcode with house number and you get all the establishments registered there, each with the Chamber of Commerce number, the name, the establishment number and whether it is a main establishment or a branch. For an ordinary business premises that is one result. For a multi-tenant office building there can be eighty.

You can also search more broadly: just a street and town, or a town with part of a company name. "Which establishments of this installer are there in Utrecht?" is then a sensible question.

How to do it from your AI assistant

With KVK Handelsregister AI Connect, a free connector from iWebDevelopment, you ask it literally like this:

"Which company is registered at 5611 AZ number 33?"

The connector queries the Trade Register at that moment and your assistant returns the results. Not from the memory of the language model, which likes to mix up addresses and companies, but from the register itself. Then you ask further: "is the second result the main establishment?", "retrieve the profile of that Chamber of Commerce number". That profile contains the statutory name, the trade names, the legal form, the registration date, the activities and the address of the main establishment.

You sign up with your e-mail address, and you have 50 searches and 25 profiles per month, per organisation. There is no need for an accounting package and no API key.

What you will not get to see

Three limits, and we would rather mention them than have you find out for yourself.

Home addresses have been shielded since 2022. For a sole proprietorship or a general partnership working from home, you do see the business address (which is usually the same house), but no longer the home address of the owner as a person. So if you search for the address of a private home, you will only find the companies established there, not who lives there.

An address proves no activity. A company can be registered at an address and no longer be there at all, or use a PO box address. So also look at the registration date and, when in doubt, whether there is still an active registration.

And the Trade Register says nothing about bankruptcies; for that there is the insolvency register of the judiciary. A company that has gone bankrupt can still simply remain registered until the trustee deregisters it.

Three situations where this is useful

An invoice from an unknown sender. Look up the address. If no company is registered there, or a different company than the one on the invoice, then you have a reason to call first before you pay. Ghost invoices rely on exactly this: a real address, a made-up company.

A supplier you only know from a website. Compare the address on the site with the registration. If it does not match, that is not necessarily wrong, but it is a question you ask before making a down payment.

A customer who has moved. The new address in the register, with the same Chamber of Commerce number, tells you it is the same legal entity. A new Chamber of Commerce number at the new address is something else: perhaps a new private limited company was set up, and that is relevant for who you invoice.

Already have an accounting connector with AI?

If you use Exact Online AI Connect, Twinfield AI Connect or AFAS AI Connect, this search function is already included as the "Chamber of Commerce and VAT verification" module. It is on by default, with the same monthly credit. The advantage there: your assistant places the address from the register right next to the address of the relation in your records.

Want to try it yourself? Connect KVK Trade Register AI Connect for free →

Try these questions in your own AI assistant

• "Which companies are registered at [postcode] [house number]?"
• "Which branches of [company name] are there in [town]?"
• "Is the establishment at this address a main branch or a subsidiary branch?"
• "Compare the address on this invoice with the address in the Trade Register."