Norwegian Limited Companies by Industry and Size (October 2026)

Key findings

• 423 917 active limited companies. Of 1 167 018 active registered entities, 423 712 are private limited companies (AS) and 205 are public limited companies (ASA). There are also 465 538 sole proprietorships (ENK) and 25 851 Norwegian branches of foreign companies (NUF).
• Employee counts are rare in the open data. Only 61 067 active limited companies (14.4 percent) have an employee count, and no unit in the data has a count below five. A missing count does not mean zero employees.
• Most counted companies are small. Of the limited companies with a count, 25 310 have 5 to 9 employees, 30 031 have 10 to 49, 4 816 have 50 to 249 and 910 have 250 or more.
• Annual accounts are the better size measure. 391 579 active limited companies (92.4 percent) have filed annual accounts for 2024 or later.
• Property and holding companies dominate the count. Renting and operating own or leased real estate is the single largest industry code, with 63 886 limited companies, and investment and property trading codes follow close behind.
• One in eight has no industry code. 54 140 active limited companies (12.8 percent) are registered with the code 00.000, "not stated".
• Few register a website. 35 939 active limited companies (8.5 percent) have a website address in the register.

Method

• Source. Propler's copy of Enhetsregisteret, the Central Coordinating Register for Legal Entities published as open data by Brønnøysundregistrene. The copy is refreshed nightly; these figures were computed from the copy fetched on 27 October 2026.
• Population. All registered entities in the copy, 1 180 043 in total. "Active" means not marked as bankrupt, under winding-up or under compulsory dissolution: 1 167 018 entities.
• Limited companies. Legal forms AS and ASA. Other forms (sole proprietorships, partnerships, foundations, public bodies) are counted only in the first finding.
• Industry. The primary industry code (næringskode 1) under the SN2025 standard Norway uses since 1 September 2025. Names are the register's own Norwegian names, translated by us.
• Size. The employee count published in the register. The size bands follow the EU SME definition, except that the lowest band starts at five because no smaller counts appear in the data.
• Accounts. The register's field for the latest year of filed annual accounts.
• Website. The website field in the register only. Websites found by other means are not counted.

The figures can be reproduced from Brønnøysundregistrene's open data with the same definitions.

The largest industries among limited companies

By primary industry code, the twelve largest groups of active limited companies are:

1. Renting and operating of own or leased real estate (68.200): 63 886
2. Not stated (00.000): 54 140
3. Business and other management consultancy (70.200): 17 179
4. Other own-investment companies (64.323): 13 606
5. Development and sale of building projects (68.120): 13 566
6. Buying and selling of own real estate (68.110): 13 410
7. Construction of buildings (41.000): 12 085
8. Computer programming (62.100): 10 054
9. Other technical consultancy (71.129): 9 315
10. Restaurants (56.110): 8 283
11. IT consultancy and IT systems management and operation (62.200): 7 792
12. Ground works (43.120): 5 854

At the two-digit level, real estate (division 68) has 95 410 active limited companies, followed by retail trade (47) with 25 775, specialised construction (43) with 22 895, IT services (62) with 17 951 and wholesale (46) with 17 249.

How much size data each industry has

The share of companies with an employee count varies enormously by industry, which matters whenever you filter by size:

• Restaurants (56.110): 4 641 of 8 283 limited companies have a count (56 percent).
• Supermarkets and general food retail (47.110): 2 187 of 3 655 (60 percent).
• Construction of buildings (41.000): 3 157 of 12 085 (26 percent).
• Computer programming (62.100): 1 010 of 10 054 (10 percent).
• Management consultancy (70.200): 656 of 17 179 (4 percent).
• Renting of real estate (68.200): 877 of 63 886 (1.4 percent).

Industries with many staff-heavy units show counts; industries dominated by one-person or holding companies mostly do not.

What this means for prospecting

• Remove non-operating companies first. If you sell to operating businesses, exclude property companies (68.xxx), own-investment companies (64.323) and, carefully, companies without an industry code. Many are holding or single-asset companies with no staff and no purchasing.
• Do not use "employees" as the only size filter. A filter such as "at least 10 employees" silently drops every company without a count, including many active, growing businesses. Use filed accounts (revenue) for size where you can.
• Do not equate missing data with small or inactive. A missing employee count or website says something about the data, not necessarily about the company.
• Count before you decide. The number of companies in your target industry and region tells you whether a market is worth a dedicated effort. Our guide to analysing a Norwegian market shows how to combine register counts with official statistics.

Limitations

• These are counts of registered legal entities, not of businesses in an economic sense: one business can have several companies, and many companies have no business activity.
• Employee counts come from the register as published and may lag real changes. Counts below five are not shown.
• The industry code is the company's own primary registration and may not describe all of its activity.
• Statistics Norway (SSB) publishes official business statistics with other definitions (for example enterprises with activity); use SSB for official figures and this analysis for prospecting-oriented counts.

Explore the data yourself

Propler's free company search filters the same register by industry, region, legal form, status and employees, and shows each company's latest filed accounts. Signed-in users can run a market analysis of an industry in a county or all of Norway. We plan to update these figures regularly and will state the date of each update.