Norway Company Register: How to Search the Brønnøysund Registers and Verify Norwegian Companies (2026)

1. What is the Norwegian company register?

Norway does not have one company register so much as one register office. The Brønnøysund Register Centre, in Norwegian Brønnøysundregistrene, has 480 staff, most of them in the town of Brønnøysund. It runs a family of registers that all key on the same number. For company checks, three of them matter: the Central Coordinating Register for Legal Entities (Enhetsregisteret, often shortened to CCR), set up in 1995 to give every entity one organisation number; the Register of Business Enterprises (Foretaksregisteret), created in 1988 out of more than 100 local trade registers; and the Register of Company Accounts (Regnskapsregisteret), running since 1 January 1981.

The legal basis changed recently. On 1 January 2026 a new Enhetsregisterloven and a new Foretaksregisterloven, both dated 20 June 2025 and administered by the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Fisheries, replaced the 1994 and 1985 acts. Both new acts say the same thing about access: anyone may see the information and documents registered, except national identity numbers and d-numbers (and, in the CCR, the electronic notification address). That one rule explains most of what follows. Board members, managing directors, and auditors are public by name. Their personal ID numbers are not.

2. How to search the Brønnøysund registers step by step

Searching is free and needs no login. The public front end is Virksomhetsopplysninger, in English "Information on organisations", and it serves all three registers from one record. It runs in Norwegian and English.

1. Open Virksomhetsopplysninger and pick the dataset

   There is one search box for an organisation number or a name. Above it you choose the dataset: Hovedenhet (main entity), which covers companies, associations, sole proprietorships, and everything else registered in the CCR, or Underenhet (sub-entity), which is not independent, can be a branch office, and is always linked to a main entity. Leave it on Hovedenhet unless you are looking for a specific location.

   

2. Search by organisation number when you have one

   Nine digits identify exactly one entity. Because of the check digit, a single mistyped digit produces an invalid number rather than another company's.

3. Narrow a name search with the filters

   On a name search, filter by county (fylke), municipality (kommune), organisation form, industry code, number of employees, bankruptcy proceedings, or registration date. You can sort the result and download it as JSON or Excel, but the page only ever shows and exports the first 10,000 hits. For more, the page itself sends you to the full dataset download.

4. Switch to English if you need to

   The Language menu in the top bar switches the interface to English. Field labels and the industry code descriptions translate, so 06.100 reads as Extraction of crude petroleum. The organisation form, the company name, and the statutory purpose stay in Norwegian: Equinor's record still says Allmennaksjeselskap.

5. Open the company record

   The top of the record gives you the organisation number, business address, postal address, municipality, organisation form, group membership, industry codes, and web address. The phone number sits behind a button. None of it is behind a paywall.

   

6. Expand the sections and download what you need

   "Vis alle opplysninger" (Show all information) opens the rest: roles, roles in other organisations, liens and legal rights, annual accounts, the registers the entity is in, and affiliated organisations. "Last ned opplysninger" (Download information) gives you all registered information as a PDF with a digital signature, or the firmaattest, the certificate of registration, free in both cases.

3. What data is public and what it costs

Almost everything a person or a machine needs from the Brønnøysund registers is free. The prices on the Register Centre's own product page are for phone and paper orders, notarised products, English products other than the free certificates, historical reports, and accounts older than 14 years.

Two things stand out. First, the certificate you would normally pay for is free. The firmaattest on Virksomhetsopplysninger is issued under the regulation to the Foretaksregisteret act, meets the statutory minimum, and is available in Norwegian or English, while the full set of registered information downloads as a PDF with a digital signature. Only entities in the Register of Business Enterprises get a firmaattest; everything else gets a registerutskrift from the CCR instead. Second, the data is free in bulk, not just one record at a time.

What the registers will not give you: exact employee counts for businesses with one to four employees, which are withheld for privacy; national identity numbers for anyone holding a role; and accounts you can read by machine from the PDF on Virksomhetsopplysninger, because all the text in that file is converted to graphics. Phone numbers and other electronic addresses are optional under the law, so whether a record has one depends on the company.

4. Norwegian legal forms, briefly

Every entity in the CCR carries an organisation form code, and the Foretaksregisterloven lists which forms must also be entered in the Register of Business Enterprises. The open data gives the code (ASA) next to the name, and the record shows the full Norwegian name (Allmennaksjeselskap). These are the forms you will meet most often:

The NUF is the one to watch. A foreign company doing business in Norway shows up with its own Norwegian organisation number and the form NUF, while the company behind it is a foreign legal entity. The record has fields for the organisation form and registration number in the home country, so check that register too before you treat a NUF as a Norwegian company.

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

1. Confirm the organisation number and the name

   Run the check digit, then search the number on Virksomhetsopplysninger and check that the name, organisation form, and business address match what you were given. For a quick first pass, our free company lookup finds the registration and revenue data in one search.

2. Make sure it is the main entity

   If the number turns out to be an underenhet, you are looking at a branch or a location, not the legal person that signs contracts and files accounts. The sub-entity record links to its main entity, and that is the number to put in the contract.

3. Check for bankruptcy, liquidation, and compulsory dissolution

   The record and the open data flag bankruptcy, dissolution (under avvikling), and compulsory liquidation or compulsory dissolution. A company can also be compulsorily dissolved for not filing its annual accounts, for an incomplete board, or for lacking a managing director or an auditor, and the record names the reason, so this is the fastest red flag to rule out.

4. Check who may sign

   Open the roles: managing director (daglig leder), board chair and members, auditor, and the registered signature rights and prokura, including whether they must be used jointly or separately. Then download the free firmaattest, which shows that the business is registered and who is responsible for it.

5. Read the announcements

   The Register Centre publishes new registrations and the main changes in its electronic announcements, the kunngjøringer, and lists them per company, as it does for Equinor: board changes, capital changes, approved accounts. This matters legally. Under section 7-1 of the Foretaksregisterloven, what is registered is treated as known to third parties. The only exception covers dealings before the sixteenth day after the announcement, and only if you can show it was impossible for you to know.

6. Pull the annual accounts

   Download the latest filing and check the year as well as the figures. Accounts are due within a month of approval by the general meeting, and the standard deadline is 31 July, with late filing penalties from 1 August. A company that is a year behind is telling you something.

7. Check the liens

   The liens and legal rights section shows security registered over movable property, the entries in the Register of Mortgaged Movable Property. A business whose movable assets are already pledged is worth a second look before you extend credit. Liens on real property are not in this section.

6. Limitations of the official register

To be clear: for single lookups, and even for bulk data, Norway is about as good as it gets. The limits are about scale in the browser, machine-readable financials, and the Norwegian-language content:

• A 10,000-hit cap everywhere. The search page shows and exports only the first 10,000 hits, and the API refuses to page past 10,000 results. Anything bigger means downloading and processing the full nightly files yourself.
• Accounts are pictures of text. The accounts PDF on Virksomhetsopplysninger has all text converted to graphics. A key-figures API exists, but the Register Centre's own dataset description calls it temporary, says it will not be developed further, and excludes banks and insurers.
• Small employers are blurred. Exact employee counts are withheld for businesses with one to four employees, and the API returns no number below five.
• Contact data is optional. Phone numbers and other electronic addresses may be registered, not must be, and the record hides the phone behind a button.
• Not everyone is in the Register of Business Enterprises. For most sole proprietorships, registering there is voluntary (only state-authorised accountants and auditors must), so a sole proprietorship may have no firmaattest, only a CCR registerutskrift.
• No personal ID numbers. Roles come with names, not national ID numbers. Credit information agencies and financial institutions can apply for API access to them through Maskinporten, and public sector bodies get it automatically.
• Norwegian content. Names, organisation forms, and the statutory purpose stay in Norwegian in the English interface, and the free English firmaattest leaves the purpose out unless you order a translated one by phone for NOK 424.

If you check one Norwegian supplier a quarter, none of this matters. If you onboard hundreds, or need Norway in the same shape as twenty other countries, it is the whole problem.

7. Access Brønnøysund register data programmatically

CompanyData maintains a normalized database of all 1,990,667 Norwegian entities, sourced directly from the Brønnøysund registers and refreshed as new entries and filings appear. Organisation numbers are already validated, and records are enriched with revenue, employees, industry codes, and contact data.

The Register Centre's own open data API is free and worth using if Norway is all you need. Our Company Data API lets you look up any Norwegian entity by organisation number, name, or address and get structured JSON back in real time, with 150 free lookups to start. It is used by developers, banks, and insurers across 190+ countries, so Norwegian checks work exactly like checks anywhere else.

GET /v1/companies?country=NO&registration_id=923609016

{
  "name": "EQUINOR ASA",
  "legal_form": "ASA",
  "registration_id": "923 609 016",
  "city": "STAVANGER",
  "nace_code": "06.100"
}

Every value above is visible on the free Virksomhetsopplysninger record in the screenshot: the name, the organisation form (Allmennaksjeselskap, the ASA at the end of the name), the organisation number, the business address in Stavanger, and the first industry code. Revenue, employees, and contact details come back on the same record where we hold them, and are left out here because that screenshot does not show them.

8. Norway vs other company registers

Norway gives away the search, the accounts, and the API, and asks you to do the bulk processing yourself. For context: