Finding companies in Sweden: Bolagsverket, SCB and prospecting

Propler and Sweden

Propler's company search covers Norway only today. Sweden is not available in the product, and nothing on this page should be read as a promise that it will be. What follows is a guide to finding and checking Swedish companies with official sources.

Two authorities, two registers

The first thing that surprises people coming from Norway is that there is no single register that does everything.

• Bolagsverket (the Swedish Companies Registration Office) registers limited companies (aktiebolag) and other companies and associations, and receives annual reports. It is the legal source for who a company is and who represents it.
• SCB (Statistiska centralbyrån, Statistics Sweden) keeps Företagsregistret, the business register used for official statistics. It describes companies and their workplaces (arbetsställen), industry codes and size classes. It is the better source when you want to know where a company actually operates.

For prospecting you will often use both: Bolagsverket to confirm the legal entity and its filings, SCB to find companies by activity, location and size.

Identifiers: organisationsnummer and CFAR

A Swedish legal entity is identified by a ten-digit organisationsnummer. A sole trader (enskild näringsidkare) does not get a separate organisation number: the owner's personal identity number (personnummer) is used instead. That number is personal data, and Bolagsverket says so explicitly. Treat sole traders as individuals in your data handling.

SCB gives each workplace an eight-digit CFAR number, which stays the same even if the business changes owner, as long as the activity, address and staff are unchanged. If you sell to branches, shops or sites rather than head offices, the CFAR level is the one to work with. Industry is coded with SNI, the Swedish version of the EU's NACE classification.

What is free

Sweden has opened up a lot of company data recently, partly because of the EU rules on high-value datasets.

• Sök företagsinformation, Bolagsverket's e-service, lets anyone search Swedish companies by name or organisation number for free and see basic facts such as registered office, registration date and whether the company is in bankruptcy. Some details and documents, including copies of annual reports and articles of association, are ordered and usually cost a fee. It replaced the older Näringslivsregistret in 2025.
• The API for high-value datasets (värdefulla datamängder) is offered by Bolagsverket together with SCB free of charge and without an agreement. Given an organisation number it returns, among other things, name, legal form, address, business description, SNI codes, registration and deregistration status, and annual reports that were filed digitally. It uses OAuth 2 and is rate-limited.
• SCB's business register has been free of charge since 26 June 2025, with a free API for current data about companies and workplaces.
• Bulk files are available from both Bolagsverket and SCB if you need the whole dataset rather than lookups.

Fuller company profiles, such as board members, share capital and financial reports in structured form, are part of Bolagsverket's paid API.

Annual reports

A Swedish aktiebolag must submit its annual report (årsredovisning) to Bolagsverket within seven months of the end of its financial year, and Bolagsverket cannot extend the deadline. For companies with a calendar year that means 31 July. Late filing triggers a fee, and a company that has not filed within eleven months risks compulsory liquidation, which makes missing filings a useful warning sign when you check a potential supplier or customer.

As in Norway, the newest public figures are often well over a year old in the first half of the year.

Prospecting in Sweden

A workable approach for a Norwegian company:

1. Define the target by SNI code, region and size, using SCB data.
2. Confirm each company's legal status and recent filings at Bolagsverket.
3. Look at the company's own website and job ads for current signals.
4. Prioritise a short list rather than mailing everyone.

The general method is the same as in Norway, which is described in our guide to building a qualified B2B prospect list. For the wider regional picture, see business opportunities in Scandinavia.

Data quality to watch for

• Head office versus workplace. A company's registered address may be an accountant's office. Use workplace data to find where people actually work.
• Industry codes are approximate. SNI codes describe the main activity and can lag behind what the company does now.
• Digitally filed only. The free API includes annual reports that were filed digitally. Paper filings are not part of that data.
• Sole traders. Data linked to a personnummer is personal data, even when it describes a business.

E-mail marketing and GDPR in Sweden

The Swedish Marketing Act (marknadsföringslag 2008:486), section 19, says a trader may only use e-mail, SMS and similar automated channels for marketing to a natural person who has consented in advance. There is an exception for customers whose address you got in connection with a sale, for your own similar products, provided they can easily opt out. Marketing e-mails must also include a valid address where the recipient can ask for the marketing to stop.

Contact details of named people in a company are personal data under the GDPR in Sweden just as in Norway. Keep a clear purpose, minimise what you store and respect objections.

Where to go next

If you sell into the Nordics from Norway, start with your home market, where the data is in Propler today: see the Norway market page. For cross-border tools such as BRIS and VIES, see Europe.