Poland Company Register: How to Search the KRS and Verify Polish Companies (2026)

1. What is the Polish company register?

Poland's company register is the Krajowy Rejestr Sądowy (KRS), the National Court Register, set up by the Act of 20 August 1997 on the National Court Register. As the name says, courts keep it: the commercial divisions of the district courts make the entries, all in one IT system. ORLEN is based in Płock, yet its most recent entry was made by the XX Commercial Division of the KRS at the District Court for Łódź-Śródmieście. For a reader the court hardly matters, because every record sits in the same national database under one number.

The KRS is really three registers. The register of entrepreneurs (rejestr przedsiębiorców) holds the commercial companies, cooperatives, state enterprises, and branches of foreign businesses, among others. A second register holds associations, other social and professional organisations, foundations, and independent public healthcare institutions. The third is the register of insolvent debtors. The Act declares the register public, and since 1 July 2021 every application concerning the register of entrepreneurs is filed electronically.

Entries have legal effect. Since 29 November 2025, nobody can claim not to know an entry from the day it is made in the register; before that date, this ran from its announcement in the Monitor Sądowy i Gospodarczy. The Act also presumes that data entered in the register are true.

2. How to search the KRS step by step

Anyone may search the KRS, and searching needs no account. The search, Wyszukiwarka KRS, runs in Polish only: there is no English interface, and the record labels are Polish too. The glossary under the steps covers the labels you will meet.

1. Open Wyszukiwarka KRS and pick the register

   Open Wyszukiwarka KRS on the Portal Rejestrów Sądowych. Two checkboxes choose the register: Przedsiębiorcy for businesses, and the second one for associations, social and professional organisations, foundations, and healthcare institutions. Both are ticked by default. The second tab, Wyszukaj dłużnika, searches debtors instead of entities.

   

2. Search by number when you have one

   A KRS number, NIP, or REGON normally gives you a single entity. The KRS number has ten digits, but you do not need to type the leading zeros, so 28860 is enough for ORLEN's 0000028860. The NIP and REGON fields only accept the complete number.

3. Search by name when you do not

   The name field accepts a fragment and ignores special characters such as quotation marks, so expect a long list: "ORLEN" returned 138 entities when we searched, starting with BASELL ORLEN POLYOLEFINS, KORLEN, and ORLEN PETROGAZ WROCŁAW in liquidation. Tick Dokładne dopasowanie nazwy to make every character you type count, or open the advanced search to filter by province, district, municipality, or town, and by bankruptcy entries or public benefit status. There is no field for a person, so you cannot search the KRS by director.

4. Open the company record

   Click Wyświetl szczegóły to open Dane szczegółowe, the record. The first block gives the name, the register, the KRS number, NIP, REGON, and legal form. The navigation on the right leads to the registration and deletion dates, the representation body and its members, the seat and address, contact details, suspension of activity, public benefit status, and bankruptcy proceedings.

   

5. Download the extract

   Under Informacje aktualne you download information that matches the current extract (odpis aktualny): the entries in force today. Under Informacje pełne you get information that matches the full extract (odpis pełny): every entry since the first one, including deleted data. Both come as PDF or JSON, free. The Act gives a printout you download yourself the same force as a document issued by the KRS Central Information, so for most purposes there is nothing to order.

3. What data is public and what it costs

Poland charges for very little. The Act obliges the KRS Central Information to publish current and full information on every entity online free of charge, and the financial documents repository is free to browse by law. The fees that remain cover documents you order from the Central Information, set by a 2018 regulation of the Minister of Justice.

Two things in that table are unusual. First, a free extract with legal force: Austria, for example, sells its extract and gives away only a summary. Second, financial statements as data. Since 1 October 2018 statements have been prepared electronically, and KRS entities file them within 15 days of approval, as a rule free of charge in the repository. A company on Polish accounting rules files a single XML file in the official structure, so you can read figures out of its filing without opening a PDF. Companies that report under IFRS, such as banks and issuers with securities on a regulated market, use the format of EU Regulation 2019/815 or another searchable format instead.

What you will not find on the KRS record itself: revenue, employee counts, or phone numbers. Revenue exists, but inside the filed statements, one company at a time. Email and website are recorded only if the company has them; ORLEN's record lists both.

4. Polish legal forms, briefly

The Commercial Companies Code (Kodeks spółek handlowych) knows seven commercial companies: four partnerships and three capital companies. All seven go into the register of entrepreneurs, together with cooperatives, branches of foreign businesses, and a few other forms. Foundations and associations sit in the second register.

Two common forms are missing on purpose. A sole trader (jednoosobowa działalność gospodarcza) registers in CEIDG, the Central Register and Information on Economic Activity, not in the KRS. A civil partnership (spółka cywilna) is not entered in the KRS either: partners who are individuals each register in CEIDG. If a small Polish counterparty does not appear in the KRS, that is usually why, and the KRS only records a mention when a registered company itself trades through a civil partnership.

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

1. Confirm the KRS number, the register, and the status

   Search the KRS number and check that the name, legal form, and seat match what you were given. Check that the deletion date is empty, that no suspension of activity is recorded, and whether the bankruptcy column says NIE (no). For a quick first pass, our free company lookup finds the registration and revenue data in one search.

2. Match the NIP and REGON

   Compare the NIP and REGON on the record with the ones on the invoice or contract. If you need to confirm VAT status for a cross-border invoice, check the EU VAT number in the EU's VIES system; for ORLEN that is PL followed by its NIP. A mismatch between the numbers is the cheapest warning sign you will ever get.

3. Check who may sign

   Section 2 of the extract lists the representation body, its members, and the manner of representation. That last field matters. ORLEN's reads: two board members acting jointly, or a board member together with a commercial proxy, with a single board member enough for ordinary matters up to PLN 100,000. Make sure the person in front of you is listed and can bind the company in the way the deal needs.

4. Read sections 4 and 6

   Section 4 lists tax, customs, and social security arrears still unpaid 60 days after enforcement began, and creditors with an enforcement title who were not paid within 30 days of a demand, from PLN 2,000 per proceeding. Note that these entries are not covered by the presumption of truth. Section 6 records liquidation, bankruptcy, and restructuring, as well as mergers. For ORLEN section 4 is empty, and section 6 holds three mergers, among them its takeover of Grupa Lotos S.A.

5. Pull the financial statements

   Section 3 lists every filed statement with its filing date and financial year. ORLEN filed its statement for 2025 on 16.06.2026. Download the filing from the Financial Documents Repository, which you search by KRS number, and check the date as well as the figures. A company that has stopped filing is telling you something.

6. Read the full extract for the history

   As a rule, data entered in the KRS are not removed, so the full extract shows every entry since the first one, deleted data included. Recent changes of board, seat, name, or legal form show up here, and a cluster of them just before your deal is worth asking about. Old names survive too: the merger entry on ORLEN's extract still calls it Polski Koncern Naftowy ORLEN S.A., and the record keeps its pre-KRS registration, RHB 780 at the district court in Płock.

7. Keep watching the number

   Changes must generally be filed within seven days of the event, and the KRS Act lets you ask the system to notify you whenever a case is registered or an entry is made for a given KRS number. One user can follow up to fifty entities at a time through the KRS system, for up to a year, renewable.

6. Limitations of the official register

To be clear: for a handful of lookups, the KRS gives you the record, an extract with legal force, and the filed accounts, and costs nothing. The limits show up when you work in English, at scale, or with people rather than companies:

• Polish only. The search, the record, and the extract are in Polish, and so are the legal forms, the PKD descriptions, and the manner of representation.
• No person search. The search form has no field for a director or shareholder, so you cannot ask the KRS which companies a person sits on.
• The API masks people. The Ministry anonymises the names, surnames, and PESEL numbers of people in the official API: board members come back as an initial followed by asterisks. Through the API you learn how many directors a company has and their functions, but not who they are. The record on the portal does show their names.
• The API works one number at a time. It has no name search. The extract endpoints take one KRS number per request, and the hourly and daily bulletins return the numbers that received an entry, not the changes themselves.
• Not everyone is in it. Sole traders, and the partners of civil partnerships, are in CEIDG, a separate register without KRS numbers.
• Older paperwork stays on paper. Registry files kept on paper are not converted to electronic form, and documents filed before 2007 cannot be obtained electronically from the catalogue once ten years have passed since filing.
• No firmographics on the record. No revenue field, no employee count, no phone number, and at most ten activity codes per company.

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

7. Access KRS data programmatically

CompanyData maintains a normalized database of all 6,309,235 Polish businesses, sourced from the official registers and refreshed as new entries and filings appear. Records are enriched with revenue, employees, and contact data beyond what the KRS record holds.

The KRS API lets you look up any Polish entity by KRS number, name, or address and get structured JSON back in real time, with 150 free lookups to start. It is part of our global Company Data API, used by developers, banks, and insurers across 190+ countries, so Polish checks work exactly like checks anywhere else.

GET /v1/companies?country=PL&registration_id=0000028860

{
  "name": "ORLEN SPÓŁKA AKCYJNA",
  "legal_form": "SPÓŁKA AKCYJNA",
  "registration_id": "0000028860",
  "nip": "7740001454",
  "regon": "61018820100000",
  "register": "Rejestr Przedsiębiorców",
  "krs_entry_date": "2001-07-19"
}

Every value above is what the KRS record for ORLEN shows on the Portal Rejestrów Sądowych. Revenue and employees come back on the same record where we hold them, and are left out here because the KRS record itself does not carry them as fields.

8. Poland vs other company registers

Poland gives away the search, the extract, the API, and the financial statements, which few registers manage all at once. What it holds back is English and a search by person. For context: