Saudi Arabia Company Register: How to Search the Commercial Register and Verify Saudi Companies (2026)

1. What is the Saudi company register?

The Commercial Register (السجل التجاري) is the Ministry of Commerce's record of every trader in the Kingdom, from a one-person establishment to a listed joint-stock company. The law defines it as a register of traders' data held in one central electronic database, and every trader must be entered in it. It also gives the register two stated goals: transparency, meaning registered data is open to view and easy to search, and reliability, meaning the data is correct and updated periodically.

The current rules are new. The Commercial Register Law, approved by Royal Decree M/83 of 19/03/1446H and published in the official gazette Umm Al-Qura on 4 October 2024, replaced the 1995 law and took effect on 3 April 2025. The Ministry suspended the services tied to the new register and trade name laws for seven days before that date, from 27 March, to update its databases and procedures. Three changes matter if you look companies up:

• One registration per business. A business now holds a single commercial registration for the whole Kingdom, covering all its activities. Sub-registrations for branches are no longer issued, and existing ones have five years to be brought into line before they are struck off.
• Annual confirmation instead of renewal. Every year, on the anniversary of registration, the trader must confirm the registered data online. Miss it by 90 days and the registration is suspended, after a 14-day warning.
• A certificate without an expiry date. The commercial registration certificate is now one page with a QR code that opens the full data behind it, and the old expiry field is gone.

In short: the free inquiry tells you a business exists and whether it is active, Wathq tells you who owns and runs it, and the financial statements sit in a third system that the public search does not reach.

2. How to search the Saudi Commercial Register step by step

The Ministry of Commerce runs the free inquiry on its own website. It costs nothing, needs no documents, and the form loads without an account. Two things slow it down: the Ministry lists Arabic as the service language, and every single search needs a verification code.

1. Open the commercial register inquiry

   Go to Inquire about commercial register data on mc.gov.sa. The page has one search box, labelled "Search By Any Word / National Number", and a verification code field underneath. An English version of the form exists, but the Ministry lists the service language as Arabic.

2. Search by national number if you have it

   You can search on any word of the name, but the unified national number points to one registration. If you only have a name, try it in Arabic and in English. A trade name may be registered in Arabic, Arabized, or English words, but the Ministry does not allow two languages in one trade name, so the spelling you know may not be the one on file.

3. Type in the verification code

   Every search needs the image code typed in, so the inquiry is built for manual lookups, not automated ones. When we tried to capture Saudi Aramco's record for this guide, both addresses we used failed: wathq.sa returned an invalid-host error and cr.mc.gov.sa an error page. That is why this guide shows no register screenshot.

4. Read the result

   Each match appears as a panel headed by the CR name and national number. The page is built to show the CR name, CR status, company duration, CR number, website, capital, phone number, issue date, and the registered activities, and to leave the activities out for a suspended or cancelled registration.

5. Order an extract when you need a document

   The law gives anyone the right to a detailed extract of a registration, and to a certificate when no registration exists. The Ministry's extract service, listed as "Extractor of a commercial registry / commercial letter", runs on the Saudi Business Center and opens with a login: Absher through Nafath for Saudi citizens and residents, or an investor account with email and password for investors without a Saudi ID or residency. The Ministry lists the fee as SAR 100 for a commercial register extract, other statements free, delivered within 72 hours.

3. What data is public and what it costs

Saudi Arabia splits its register in two. The public layer is free and thin. The full record, including who owns and manages a company, is sold per call through Wathq, the API channel for the Ministry's commercial registration data, and only to connected systems: Wathq has no screen where you type a query.

Two things stand out. First, the full record is never free. Owners, managers, and the articles of association are not in the free inquiry. As data, they come through Wathq, which means an account, an API key, and a developer to connect it. The listed prices are for prepaid plans, and lookups that find nothing are not deducted from the balance. Second, financial statements are filed but not shown. Every company must file them on Qawaem within six months of its financial year end, yet the free inquiry does not show them and no financial statements service appears among the services and prices Wathq lists. Wathq's FAQ does mention a Qawaem product that its prepaid package excludes, without saying who can buy it.

The public result does include a phone and a website field, which many registers leave out, and it shows capital. What it does not include: managers, partners, beneficial owners, or any figure from the accounts. The Ministry describes the beneficial ownership register as confidential and open only to regulators and competent authorities. Wathq's API documentation does describe a beneficial owner endpoint, but we could not establish who is allowed to call it.

4. Saudi legal forms, briefly

The Companies Law, approved by Royal Decree M/132 in 2022, allows five company forms, and gave companies that already existed up to two years from its entry into force to bring themselves into line. Sole proprietorships are entered in the same register, as establishments with their own commercial registration but no company form. Every company's trade name must include its form, and the annual confirmation fee depends on it.

Two variants cut across the table. A public non-profit company must be a joint-stock company, and a private non-profit company a joint-stock, simplified joint-stock, or limited liability company. A professional company, set up by licensed professionals alone or together with others, can take any of the five forms. Wathq's data model records a company's form plus any characteristics: its documentation example is a limited liability company marked private non-profit.

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

1. Confirm the national number and status

   Search the unified national number on the Ministry's inquiry and check that the name, status, and capital match what you were given. Keep in mind that the law leaves the accuracy of submitted data with the trader: the registrar is not responsible for it. For a quick first pass, our free company lookup finds the registration and revenue data in one search.

2. Check the annual confirmation

   A registration that is not confirmed within 90 days of its due date is suspended, and so is every licence issued under it. If the suspension is not lifted within a year, a sole proprietorship or other non-company trader is struck off. A company or foreign company branch in that position can no longer lift the suspension, and the Ministry may ask its partners or shareholders to dissolve it or apply to court. Ask for the certificate and check the confirmation date behind its QR code.

3. Make sure you have the main registration

   New branch sub-registrations are no longer issued, and existing ones have five years to be brought into line before they are struck off. A Wathq record says whether a registration is the main one and, if it is not, links it to the main national number. Contract with the entity that holds the main registration.

4. Verify the managers and who may sign

   The free inquiry does not list managers. The QR data on the certificate includes the list of managers, and Wathq sells managers data at SAR 5 per call, or one manager's data with their authorities at SAR 12. Check that the person signing is on the list and is allowed to bind the company.

5. Read the articles of association

   The Companies Law requires a company's articles and every amendment to be registered and made available to others. Through Wathq, the articles of association data costs SAR 12 per call. Read them for the management structure and any limits on what the managers may do alone.

6. Ask for the latest financial statements

   Companies must file their statements on Qawaem within six months of the year end, and a company that fails to file can be fined under the Companies Law. Since the public search does not show them, ask the company for its most recent filed statements, with the auditor's report where there is one.

7. Check for court judgments

   Courts must notify the registrar of final judgments within 30 days, including the opening of bankruptcy proceedings, dissolution and liquidation, and the removal of managers, and the register records them on notification. Wathq's full record also flags a company that is in liquidation.

6. Limitations of the official register

To be clear: for a single check, the free inquiry costs nothing, and since 2025 every business has one national number and data it must confirm every year. The limits show up when you need scale, the full record, or financial data:

• A verification code on every search. The free inquiry is built for manual lookups and has no export. Our own attempt to capture Saudi Aramco's record for this guide failed at both addresses we tried, wathq.sa and cr.mc.gov.sa.
• The full record is paid and API-only. Owners, managers, and articles of association come through Wathq, which has no query screen at all: you need an account, an API key, and a system to connect. Prepaid balances start at SAR 5,000.
• Reuse is restricted. Wathq's terms, as its FAQ summarises them, bar using the data for political or commercial purposes, or for commercial benefit without the provider's express consent.
• No financial statements in the free search. Companies file them on Qawaem, but the free inquiry does not show them and Wathq lists no financial statements service.
• Beneficial owners are confidential. The Ministry says its beneficial ownership register is open only to regulators and competent authorities.
• The registrar does not vouch for the data. Traders must update changes within 15 days and face fines of up to SAR 50,000 for false entries, but the law states that the registrar is not responsible for the accuracy of what traders submit.
• Arabic first. The Ministry lists the inquiry's service language as Arabic, and a trade name is registered in Arabic or in English but never both, so a company may not appear under the name you know.
• A register in transition. The law took effect in April 2025, existing branch registrations have five years to be folded in, and records carry both a national number and a CR number.

If you check one Saudi supplier a year, a verification code and a QR scan will do. If you onboard hundreds, the codes, the per-call pricing, and the Arabic-first records are the whole problem.

7. Access Saudi Commercial Register data programmatically

CompanyData maintains a normalized database of all 843,266 Saudi companies, with names and identifiers in one consistent format and records enriched with revenue and employee data that the Commercial Register's free inquiry does not show.

Our Company Data API lets you look up any Saudi company by name or registration number and get structured JSON back in real time, with 150 free lookups to start and no verification code, Nafath login, or prepaid balance required. It is used by developers, banks, and insurers across 190+ countries, so Saudi checks work exactly like checks anywhere else.

GET /v1/companies?country=SA&name=Saudi%20Aramco

We show the request line only. We could not open Saudi Aramco's record on the official register for this guide, so there is no register record to copy values from, and an example filled with values we could not check against the register would defeat the point. Run the request with your free lookups to see the full record.

8. Saudi Arabia vs other company registers

Saudi Arabia pairs a modern single-number register with a thin free layer and a paid, API-only full record. For context: