Before you sign with a new partner, ship on account or extend payment terms, a quarter of an hour on what the public registers say about them is time well spent. In Luxembourg some of that is public and free — and some of it, contrary to what is often written, is not. Knowing where the line falls is half the job.

1. Start from the RCS number

The RCS number is a Luxembourg entity's primary identifier: a section letter followed by up to six digits. The Trade and Companies Register issues it on registration, it never changes, and it is not reissued after a striking-off.

The letter is part of the number. B18902 and F18902 are different entities — B is commercial companies, which is nearly the whole register, F is branches. A search that drops the letter cannot tell them apart.

2. Read the annual accounts

This is the richest part, and the part this site works from. Every Luxembourg capital company files annual accounts with the Trade and Companies Register, prepared on the eCDF platform. STATEC publishes the structured version through its Centrale des Bilans, under an open licence.

Look at three things. Total assets, which gives the size of the company and appears in every filed period. Capital and reserves: if negative, liabilities exceed assets, and where net assets fall below half of subscribed capital the law requires the owners to be convened to decide whether the company should be wound up. And the result for the year, which stays public even when the profit and loss account does not — it sits in the balance sheet, under capital and reserves.

Do not count on turnover. It appears only on the full profit and loss account, which is 7.6% of filed periods; the abridged model most companies are entitled to file starts at gross profit and has no turnover line at all. A company that publishes none is not hiding it — its form does not ask.

3. Check the VAT number

If a partner invoices you with VAT, they must be registered for it. The number takes the form LU plus eight digits and can be checked free in the European Commission's VIES system, which answers for the whole EU and says whether the number is valid at the moment you ask.

The VAT number is not the RCS number. They are two different numbers issued by two different authorities, and neither can be worked out from the other.

4. An absence of filings is itself a signal

Accounts are approved within six months of the year end and filed within one month of that — at most seven months after the year end, so 31 July for a calendar year. A company's most recent published year therefore normally lags the current one by a year, and that is not lateness.

Not every entity has to publish: general partnerships, common limited partnerships, sole traders and economic interest groupings are exempt on the conditions the law lays down. An absence of accounts is not in itself a failure. But a trading capital company that has filed nothing for years is worth one more question.

What you will be told to check that does not exist here

A lot of company-checking guidance is written for one country and adapted by changing the names. Three things come up repeatedly and have no Luxembourg equivalent.

There is no public register of unreliable VAT payers in Luxembourg, and no mechanism transferring a supplier's unremitted VAT to their customer. That regime is Slovak.

The beneficial owners register has not been open to the public since the Court of Justice of the European Union's judgment of 22 November 2022. No site can legitimately show you its contents.

Finally, the registered address, the activity code, the date of incorporation and the list of managers are held by the Trade and Companies Register, but it is consulted free one entity at a time and publishes no reusable bulk extract. That is why you will not find them on this site: they have to be read at the source.

What it adds up to

No single one of these is a decision. Together they give a picture clear enough to choose between asking for payment up front, shortening the terms, or simply going ahead. And all of it is public — you need nobody's permission to look.