Chile Company Register: How to Search the RES and Verify Chilean Companies (2026)

1. What is the Chilean company register?

For more than a century Chile had one way to form a company, and it still exists. Under what is now called the Régimen General, in place since the second half of the 19th century, founders sign a public deed before a notary, inscribe an extract of it in the Registro de Comercio of the local Conservador de Bienes Raíces, and publish the same extract in the Diario Oficial, the official gazette. Each Conservador keeps its own register for its own territory. The Santiago office alone covers 26 comunas.

In 2013 Ley 20.659 added a second route, the Régimen Simplificado, and with it the Registro de Empresas y Sociedades (Register of Enterprises and Companies), run online by the Ministry of Economy, Development and Tourism under the name Tu Empresa en un Día ("your company in a day"). The law makes it a single register for the whole country, public, and free. Companies formed there need no Registro de Comercio inscription and no Diario Oficial publication. Joining is voluntary: a company can be formed in the RES or migrate into it from the general regime, and migrate back out again.

An amendment, Ley 21.366, in full force since 1 February 2023, gave the RES two more registers. The Registro de Poderes holds the powers granted to managers and attorneys, and it is public. The Registro de Accionistas is the mandatory electronic shareholder register for SpAs, closed sociedades anónimas, and S.A.G.R.s in the RES, and it is not public: only shareholders, managers, and specially authorised attorneys can see it.

2. How to search the RES step by step

The RES portal runs only in Spanish. Searching it costs nothing and needs no account, but the public search sits behind a reCAPTCHA, and anything that produces a document needs a ClaveÚnica login. If the company you want was formed the traditional way and never migrated, the RES will not have it, and you move on to the Conservador.

1. Open Tu Empresa en un Día

   Go to registrodeempresasysociedades.cl. The homepage is built for founders: it opens with forming a company, getting certificates, and applying for a municipal licence. The tools for looking up someone else's company sit further down, under Servicios.

   

2. Use Buscar Actuaciones, which needs no login

   Open Buscar Actuaciones, choose Registro Sociedades or Registro Poderes, and search by the company's RUT, its razón social (registered name), the date of an actuación, or the date of registration. Tick the reCAPTCHA before you press Buscar. The form checks the RUT's check digit before it sends anything, so a mistyped RUT is rejected straight away.

3. Know what a missing result means

   The search only covers companies formed in the RES or migrated into it. No hit is not evidence that a company does not exist: it may simply be a general-regime company, whose record is at the Conservador of its registered comuna. A state company created by its own law, such as Codelco, was formed by neither route.

4. Log in with ClaveÚnica for certificates

   Obtener certificados sends you to the login page, which since 12 December 2024 accepts only ClaveÚnica. Once logged in, the regulation of Ley 20.659 lets any user request these certificates for any company in the register, free: Estatuto Actualizado (current statutes), Vigencia (whether the company is in force, dissolved, terminated, or migrated back to the general regime), Anotaciones, and the certificado de vigencia de poderes.

5. For a general-regime company, go to its Conservador

   Copies come from the Conservador that covers the company's comuna. At the Conservador de Bienes Raíces de Santiago, a copy of the formation entry with validity costs CLP 4,600, and the order form asks for the foja, number, and year of the entry. If you do not have them, the Índice del Registro de Comercio finds them by company or partner name, but only after you log in to an account.

3. What data is public and what it costs

The two registers price access in opposite ways. Ley 20.659 makes the RES free and its regulation extends that to certificates, so the obstacle is the login rather than the price. The Conservadores charge for every copy and certificate according to their tariff, and Santiago's makes you find the entry first.

Two things stand out. First, the RES publishes open data: the Ministry's Registro de Empresas y Sociedades dataset on datos.gob.cl lists the companies formed in the RES, with RUT, name, legal form, capital, dates, and comuna, one file per year from 2013. It records formations only, with no status field, so it cannot tell you whether a company is still in force. Second, a RES certificate set equals a Conservador copy. The register itself says the Estatuto Actualizado, Vigencia, and Anotaciones certificates together correspond to the Conservador's copy of the formation entry with margin notes and validity, and by law they carry the value of a public instrument.

What you will not find in either register: financial statements, revenue, or employee counts. Under Ley 18.046, open sociedades anónimas must publish their financial statements on their website and file them with the Comisión para el Mercado Financiero (CMF) so it can publish them, and special sociedades anónimas follow the same rules. A closed sociedad anónima sends its balance sheet only to shareholders who ask for it.

4. Chilean legal forms, briefly

The legal form decides which register a company can be in. Ley 20.659 opens the RES to eight forms, and each of them can also be formed the traditional way, so the same form can sit in either register. The open sociedad anónima is the exception: it is not on the RES list.

If you are matching a supplier list, expect suffixes to carry the form: SpA, Ltda. or Limitada, E.I.R.L., and S.A. The suffix does not tell you which register the company is in. A Limitada formed in 2010 started at a Conservador, one formed in 2020 may be in either, and both may have migrated since.

5. How to verify a Chilean company: a practical checklist

1. Validate the RUT and check its tax status

   Run the check digit first, then look the RUT up in the SII's free tax situation of third parties service, which anyone may use and which returns a summary of the taxpayer's current tax situation. For a quick first pass, our free company lookup finds the registration and revenue data in one search.

2. Find out which register holds the company

   Search the RUT in Buscar Actuaciones. A hit means the company is in the RES and everything else happens there. No hit means you need the comuna of its registered domicile and the Conservador that covers it.

3. Get proof of existence and status

   For a RES company, the Estatuto Actualizado, Vigencia, and Anotaciones certificates together prove that it exists and is in force. For a general-regime company, order the Conservador's copy of the formation entry with margin notes and validity. Banks usually want that copy renewed after 30 days, so check the date on any copy you are handed.

4. Check who may sign

   In the RES, the Estatuto Actualizado shows who runs the company when the statutes name the administration, and the public Registro de Poderes shows the powers recorded in it, with a free certificado de vigencia de poderes. For a general-regime company, the Conservador issues a Certificado de Vigencia de Poder, which states that no margin note records a revocation of the power (CLP 2,300 in Santiago).

5. Verify any certificate you were sent

   Every RES certificate carries a CVE code in its footer. Enter it in Verificar Certificados to confirm the document is genuine. Diario Oficial publications carry their own CVE and can be checked on the gazette's site.

6. Read the Diario Oficial extracts for general-regime companies

   The Diario Oficial publishes extracts of formations, amendments, and dissolutions, Monday to Saturday, listed by company name under Empresas y Cooperativas. A recent amendment or a dissolution shows up here. RES companies do not need to publish there, because Ley 20.659 replaces the publication.

6. Limitations of the official register

To be clear: for a company formed in the RES, Chile gives you a lot for free, statutes and certificates included. The limits appear the moment you leave the RES, or need data at scale:

• Two registers, no single search. The RES covers only companies formed or migrated under Ley 20.659. Everything else sits with the Conservador of its jurisdiction, and there is no free national search across the Conservadores.
• ClaveÚnica gates every certificate. ClaveÚnica is for natural persons only, tied to a Chilean RUN, and available to Chilean citizens and residents over 14 with a valid Chilean identity document. A foreign buyer without one cannot download a RES certificate.
• reCAPTCHA on every lookup. The public search and the CVE checker both sit behind a reCAPTCHA, so neither is built for automated checks.
• The Conservador wants the entry reference. Ordering a copy in Santiago needs foja, number, and year, and the name index that finds them needs an account.
• No financials for most companies. Under Ley 18.046 only open and special sociedades anónimas publish financial statements, and neither register holds accounts for anyone.
• The open data records formations only. The RES files list companies at formation, with their starting capital. Amendments, dissolutions, and status are not in them.
• Shareholders are private. The RES Registro de Accionistas is closed to anyone who is not a shareholder, manager, or authorised attorney, and the Registro de Poderes is not mandatory, so powers granted by deed outside the RES may not appear in it.
• Spanish only. The RES portal has no English version.

If you check one Chilean supplier a quarter, none of this matters. If you onboard hundreds, it is the whole problem.

7. Access Chilean register data programmatically

CompanyData maintains a normalized database of all 2,337,074 Chilean entities, refreshed as new records appear. Records are enriched with revenue, employees, industry codes, and contact data where we hold them.

Our Company Data API lets you look up any Chilean entity by RUT, name, or address and get structured JSON back in real time, with 150 free lookups to start, no ClaveÚnica, and no reCAPTCHA. It is used by developers, banks, and insurers across 190+ countries, so Chilean checks work exactly like checks anywhere else.

GET /v1/companies?country=CL&name=Codelco

We show the request line only. Codelco is not in the RES, and the certificate request sent us to the ClaveÚnica login, so this guide holds no register record to copy values from, and we do not print values we have not seen on the register. Run the request with your free lookups to see the full record.

8. Chile vs other company registers

Chile is free where it is new and paid where it is old, and without a ClaveÚnica a foreign buyer can search the free one but not download its certificates. For context: