Norwegian Company Data: A Complete Guide

Who publishes Norwegian company data

Most official company data in Norway comes from one agency: Brønnøysundregistrene, the Brønnøysund Register Centre. It runs several registers. Three of them matter most for business research:

• Enhetsregisteret (the Central Coordinating Register for Legal Entities) – basic data on all registered entities.
• Foretaksregisteret (the Register of Business Enterprises) – entities that carry on business activity.
• Regnskapsregisteret (the Register of Company Accounts) – annual accounts.

Two other bodies publish data you will often want alongside it. Statistics Norway (SSB) manages the industry codes. The Norwegian Tax Administration (Skatteetaten) runs the shareholder register.

The legal basis was renewed recently. New acts on Enhetsregisteret and Foretaksregisteret (enhetsregisterloven and foretaksregisterloven of 20 June 2025) came into force on 1 January 2026, replacing the acts from 1994 and 1985.

The organisation number

Enhetsregisteret gives every registered entity a unique nine-digit organisation number (organisasjonsnummer). It is the key that links data across registers and public bodies. Use it rather than the company name when you match data, because names change and many companies have similar names.

You will often see the number written with "MVA" after it, for example on invoices. MVA means the entity is registered in the VAT register (Merverdiavgiftsregisteret). The letters are not part of the number itself. Norwegian bookkeeping rules require a VAT-registered seller to add "MVA" after the organisation number on sales documents. According to Skatteetaten, "VAT" cannot replace "MVA", though "MVA (VAT)" is allowed. An invoice without MVA is a reason to check whether the seller is in fact VAT registered.

Enhetsregisteret vs Foretaksregisteret

The two registers are often confused.

Enhetsregisteret is the base register. It covers companies, sole proprietorships, associations, foundations, municipalities, state bodies and more. An entity has to be registered here before it can be registered in other registers. Everyone with employees, everyone who pays VAT and everyone registered in Foretaksregisteret must be in Enhetsregisteret.

Foretaksregisteret covers businesses. Companies with limited liability, such as AS and ASA, must be registered there. Most sole proprietorships can choose whether to register. It is compulsory, for example, for those with more than five full-time employees. Associations must register only if they carry on business activity.

In practice, when you look up a company in the open data, you see Enhetsregisteret data with flags showing whether the entity is also in Foretaksregisteret, the VAT register and other registers.

Legal forms you will meet

The legal form (organisasjonsform) tells you who is liable and which rules apply. The most common ones:

• AS (aksjeselskap) – private limited company. The standard form for businesses with staff.
• ASA (allmennaksjeselskap) – public limited company.
• ENK (enkeltpersonforetak) – sole proprietorship. Owned by one person, who is personally liable. Often carries the owner's name.
• ANS (ansvarlig selskap) – general partnership where the partners have joint and unlimited liability.
• DA (selskap med delt ansvar) – general partnership where each partner is liable for a share of the debts.
• NUF (norskregistrert utenlandsk foretak) – the Norwegian branch of a foreign company. The foreign company is responsible for the branch, and the name must include "NUF" at the end.
• SA (samvirkeforetak) – cooperative.
• STI (stiftelse) – foundation.

Municipalities, state bodies and other public sector entities have their own legal forms. Filter by legal form if you want only businesses.

Roles: board, CEO and signatories

The register shows who holds roles in an entity: chair and members of the board, the CEO (daglig leder), the auditor and accountant, and who has signing authority. Role data is part of Brønnøysund's open data. A version with national identity numbers is restricted.

Role holders are people, so their names and birth dates are personal data under the GDPR. You may read them in the register. Using them for profiling or marketing is another matter, and needs a legal basis of its own.

Annual accounts in Regnskapsregisteret

Who must file

Whether an entity must submit annual accounts depends on its legal form and size. Under the Accounting Act (regnskapsloven § 1-2), all AS and ASA companies are obliged to prepare annual accounts (regnskapsplikt), with no size threshold. So are foreign companies that do business in Norway and are liable to tax here, which covers many NUFs. Entities with this duty must send their accounts to Regnskapsregisteret. Small sole proprietorships normally are not, and most of them only have a duty to keep books. General partnerships (ANS/DA) must file only when they meet certain conditions. The duty to file continues even when the business is inactive, until the entity is deleted.

When accounts arrive

Annual accounts must be submitted within one month after they are approved, and no later than 31 July to avoid a late filing fee. Brønnøysund states that this deadline cannot be extended. So if you look for last year's figures early in the year, many companies will not have filed yet. The field for the last submitted accounts year tells you which year you are actually looking at.

What is public

Annual accounts in Regnskapsregisteret are public. Copies can be downloaded free of charge through Brønnøysund's search service. Key figures from each entity's most recently submitted annual accounts are also available through an open API. Banks and insurance companies are not included in that API. Fuller machine access to several years of accounts is restricted or paid.

What is free in data.brreg.no

Brønnøysund's open data is free, and you do not need to register to use it. The datasets follow the Norwegian Licence for Open Government Data (NLOD). NLOD 2.0 lets you use the data commercially, as long as you name the source and refer to the licence. It does not give you a right to use personal data you have no legal basis to use.

The open Enhetsregisteret data includes:

• Name, organisation number, legal form and registration date.
• Business and postal address, municipality and county.
• Industry codes (up to three per entity) and registered purpose.
• Registered number of employees, where one exists.
• Flags for the VAT register, Foretaksregisteret and others.
• The year of the last submitted annual accounts.
• Status flags for bankruptcy and liquidation (see below).
• Sub-units and roles.

You can use it in three ways: single lookups, filtered searches of up to 10,000 entities per query, and complete files in CSV, JSON or Excel that are produced every night.

What is not in the open register

Shareholders

Shareholder data is not in Brønnøysund's open data. Every Norwegian AS and ASA must submit an annual shareholder register statement (aksjonærregisteroppgave) to Skatteetaten. Skatteetaten runs the shareholder register (Aksjonærregisteret) for tax purposes.

Anyone can get access to who owned shares in a company per 31 December of an income year. The data is released once a year, in May after the income year. So it is a snapshot, not a live list of owners. Many private services republish this data. Skatteetaten has said that the register is an internal system for tax purposes, not a public register in the ordinary sense.

Beneficial owners

Brønnøysund runs a separate Register of Beneficial Owners (Register over reelle rettighetshavere). Access is narrower than for the other registers. Lookups are by organisation number through a machine interface. Full access and search by national identity number are reserved for public authorities, and some other groups can apply for wider access.

Personal contact details

The register may hold a phone number or e-mail address that the entity has reported. For sole proprietorships and small companies, this is often the owner's personal contact information. Treat it as personal data. Norway's Marketing Control Act also restricts e-mail marketing to addresses that belong to individuals, as our guide to finding B2B leads in Norway explains.

Sub-units (underenheter)

A main entity is the legal person, such as the AS. A sub-unit is a place where the activity happens. If a main entity has employees at several separate addresses, it must register a sub-unit, with its own organisation number, for each address.

This has two consequences for research:

• Employees are registered on the sub-units. The employee numbers come from NAV's employer and employee register (Aa-registeret), which updates Enhetsregisteret every month. A chain's head office may show few employees even though its stores have many.
• Locations show up as sub-units. A new sub-unit in another municipality can mean a new site or office, which is a useful signal.

Bankruptcy, liquidation and deletion

The open data has status flags for whether an entity is bankrupt (konkurs), being wound up voluntarily (under avvikling), or being forcibly wound up or dissolved (under tvangsavvikling eller tvangsoppløsning). Deleted entities also have a deletion date. Always filter on these flags before you contact or rely on a company, and check them again before you sign a contract with a supplier.

Data quality: what to watch for

• Missing is not zero. Many entities have no registered employee count. That means "not registered", not "no employees". Small units may show only a band on Brønnøysund's own pages, to protect privacy.
• Industry codes can be outdated or broad. Since 1 September 2025 the register uses SN2025. A code reflects what the business reported, and it is not updated automatically when the business changes. See how to find Norwegian companies by industry.
• Accounts lag behind. The latest accounts can be more than a year old, and some entities never file because they do not have to.
• Addresses are registered addresses. A company may be registered at its accountant's office or the owner's home.
• Shareholder data is a year-end snapshot. Owners can have changed since 31 December.
• Always note source and date. When you store or share a figure, record where it came from and when you checked it.

How Propler uses this data

Propler reads a copy of Enhetsregisteret that is refreshed nightly from Brønnøysund's open data, about 1.18 million registered entities. The free company search lets you filter it by industry group, county, municipality, legal form, status, employees and registration date, with no login.

Each company page shows the register facts and roles. Where Brønnøysund has them, it also shows key figures from the latest annual accounts through Regnskapsregisteret's open API. When a field is missing, Propler shows it as missing rather than guessing.

Logged-in users can follow companies in Monitor. It notifies you when registered facts change, such as employees, industry code, municipality, legal form, status or the latest accounts year. Monitoring is part of the Pro and Business plans. See current plans for details.

If you are building lists from this data, our guide on how to build a qualified B2B prospect list shows how to turn register fields into a ranked shortlist.