Frequently asked questions

From the official registers and publications: the Handelsregister (commercial register), the Unternehmensregister (company register) with the annual financial statements, and the insolvency notices. News and website content come from the web. More in Data availability.

We read many details automatically from the published documents and notices. We use the latest technology for this and invest a lot in quality; individual errors are still possible.

A company profile comes from our database. With Realtime, the API also queries the Handelsregister live and returns the people currently registered. The API fetches documents from the register when you request them.

If the same document was fetched shortly before, it can be up to 24 hours old.

Companies must publish annual financial statements no later than twelve months after the balance sheet date, and many use the full period. The latest statement therefore often covers the year before last.

Usually because the company does not have to publish it. What is public depends on legal form and size: a small GmbH, for example, does not publish a P&L, so there is usually no revenue for it. Empty values appear as null or [] in the response.

For a name that several companies share, the API can return one of them, not necessarily the one you mean, or respond with 404. If you need to be exact, query with register court and register number, for example “Ansbach HRB 6089”, or with the entity_id. The register number alone is not enough, because the same number exists at many courts.

No. A feature is only charged when it returns data. AI Mode, on the other hand, is charged even if it finds no company. Only if the API cancels the request with 408 is it not charged. Realtime costs credits for every successful live fetch, even if it shows nothing new.

Nothing. A request that ends with an error is not charged; the only exception is the surcharge for AI Mode. With status 402, meta.request_credit_cost states the most the request would have cost. More in Errors.

No. You can use company profiles, Search & Export, documents and Signals with any account; you only pay the credits. A credit subscription unlocks additional data:

• Plus: the person profile.
• Pro: the extended Financial KPIs, the feature Company network, search filters for ownership, management and insolvency, and the Signals topic Insolvencies.
• Max: everything in Pro, plus the feature Deep Shareholders, the activity statements of energy utilities and the Signals topic Transformations & M&A.

Everything about prices and plans is in Billing.

A new account gets 150 start credits. Without a credit subscription, start credits and top-up credits are valid for 30 days. As long as a credit subscription is active, they do not expire.

For Realtime, person profiles and documents at least 120 seconds, because these requests take longer. If only the live fetch fails with Realtime, you get the stored data without the Realtime surcharge. If the request takes too long, it ends with 408, for documents with 504. Nothing is charged then. Try again later.

For company profiles 60 requests per minute and account, for documents 5. Above that, the API responds with status 429 and gives the wait time in Retry-After. All limits are in Limits.

Yes, for company profiles, person profiles, search and documents. Send your own value in the header Idempotency-Key. If you repeat the request with the same key and the same parameters within 24 hours, it costs nothing.

Yes. Under Account › API keys you create more keys, for example one per application. If you delete a key, it is invalid immediately. All keys share your account’s balance.