Finland Company Register: How to Search the YTJ and Verify Finnish Companies (2026)

1. What is the Finnish company register?

Finland splits company data between two authorities and then joins it back together. The Finnish Patent and Registration Office, Patentti- ja rekisterihallitus or PRH, keeps the Trade Register (kaupparekisteri): who runs a company, who may sign for it, its share capital, and its filed accounts. The Tax Administration, Verohallinto, keeps the VAT register, the prepayment register, and the employer register. Both write into the Business Information System, in Finnish Yritys- ja yhteisötietojärjestelmä or YTJ, which holds the Business ID that either authority issues and shows the combined result in one public search.

Two acts set this up. The Business Information Act (244/2001) makes PRH responsible for the technical upkeep of YTJ and lets both PRH and the Tax Administration make entries in it. The Trade Register Act (564/2023), in force since 1 June 2023, replaced the 1979 act and governs what the Trade Register holds. In practice that gives you three doors into the same data, each with its own price.

In short: YTJ tells you a company exists and which registers it is in, Virre tells you who runs it and how it performs, and the open data gives you the basics in bulk at no cost.

2. How to search YTJ step by step

Searching is free and needs no account. The company and organisation search on ytj.fi runs in English, Finnish, and Swedish, and the English version translates the field labels and company forms, not only the menus. Company names stay exactly as they were registered.

1. Open the company and organisation search

   The form starts with one field for a Business ID or LEI code. Below it you can search on the company name and narrow the result by company form, home municipality, or main line of business. Links to the Finnish and Swedish versions sit in the top right.

   

2. Search by Business ID when you have one

   A Business ID returns exactly one entity. It is also the safest input you can use, because the ID does not change when a company renames itself or changes its company form in a way the law provides for, while the name does.

3. Search by name, and widen it when you need to

   Name searches are broad. In PRH's open data, a name search for Nokia returns hundreds of companies, including housing companies and other companies with Nokian in their name. Add the company form or the home municipality to cut that down. With only the box for valid companies and organisations ticked, closed-down ones stay out of the results, so tick the box for closed-down companies and organisations when you are tracing one that may have been dissolved.

4. Open the company record

   Each field shows its latest detail, a start date where there is one, and its information source: the Business Information System, PRH, or the Tax Administration. A "Previous detail" link opens the earlier value where there is one. Nokia's record shows its current name since 1997, two parallel names, and eleven auxiliary names, which are names a registered company may use for part of its business.

   

5. Check the registers and the tax debt register

   The record also lists the registers the company is in, at PRH and at the Tax Administration, and any bankruptcy, liquidation, or restructuring proceedings. At the bottom of the results page sits the tax debt register: click "Show details" to see whether the company owes at least EUR 10,000 in taxes or has neglected to file returns for self-assessed taxes in the past six months.

6. Open the Trade Register extract in Virre

   For the people behind the company, go to PRH's Virre Information Service, enter the Business ID, and open the Trade Register extract. It is free and contains all current register entries, including the board of directors, the managing director, the auditors, and how the company is represented. The same Business ID search in Virre also lists the financial statements and articles of association, at EUR 5.02 each.

3. What data is public and what it costs

Finland is free to read and cheap per document. The electronic Trade Register extract costs nothing in Virre. The price starts with the filed documents, and climbs steeply once you want them in bulk. Virre prices below include 25.5% VAT.

Two things stand out. The Trade Register extract is free, as a current extract or for a period you choose, and for a company registered after 1 September 1992 it goes back to the registration date. And the open data API is free, updated daily, with every valid company available as one compressed download. The catch is the accounts: only about 5 per cent of financial statements are filed as iXBRL and come through the API. The rest are documents at EUR 5.02 each.

What you will not find: revenue or employee counts as fields in YTJ, beneficial owners, or dependable contact details. Beneficial owner details are the one part of the Trade Register that is not public. Phone numbers and email addresses appear in YTJ only if the company submitted them, and the open data leaves both out entirely.

4. Finnish legal forms, briefly

The abbreviation of the legal form is often part of a Finnish company name itself: Nokia Oyj, formerly Oy Nokia Ab. Finland is bilingual, so each form has a Finnish and a Swedish name, and a company can register its name in other languages as parallel names, as Nokia does with Nokia Abp and Nokia Corporation. The Trade Register also holds housing companies, and the Trade Names Act requires a housing company's name to show its home municipality, which is why a search for Nokia, also the name of a Finnish municipality, turns up so many of them.

If you match supplier lists against the register, expect names in both languages and under auxiliary names. A Finnish company can run part of its business under an auxiliary name that looks nothing like its legal name, and the Business ID, which it must print on its invoices, is what ties them together.

5. How to verify a Finnish company: a practical checklist

1. Confirm the Business ID and the company situation

   Search the Business ID on ytj.fi and check that the name, company form, and home municipality match what you were given. The home municipality is the registered domicile, not necessarily the street address: Nokia's is Helsinki, while its street address in the same register is in Espoo. Then check for bankruptcy, liquidation, or restructuring proceedings. For a quick first pass, our free company lookup finds the registration and revenue data in one search.

2. Check the registers, not just the ID

   A Business ID alone does not show whether a business is in the Trade Register or the Tax Administration's registers. Look at the register entries on the record: the Trade Register at PRH and the prepayment register, the employer register, and the VAT register at the Tax Administration are listed separately.

3. Validate the VAT number

   Put FI in front of the Business ID, drop the dash, and check it in the EU's VIES service. Nokia's FI01120389 comes back valid under the name Nokia Oyj. A number that does not validate may simply belong to a company outside the VAT register, which the YTJ record will confirm.

4. Check the tax debt register

   At the bottom of the YTJ result, open the tax debt register. It shows whether the company owes at least EUR 10,000 in taxes or has neglected its tax returns in the past six months, never the amount. Entries are removed once the debt is settled, so check close to the date you sign.

5. Download the Trade Register extract and check who may sign

   In Virre, open the free Trade Register extract and check that the person signing is on it, as a board member, managing director, or holder of procuration, and how the company is represented. To see a person's roles in other companies, Virre searches by name and date of birth for EUR 3.14.

6. Buy the latest financial statements

   The free extract shows the latest financial period for which financial statements have been filed. Limited companies and co-operatives must file within eight months of the end of the financial period, so a gap is a signal in itself. Buy the statements in Virre at EUR 5.02, or pull them free from the open data API if the company filed in iXBRL.

6. Limitations of the official register

To be clear: for a handful of lookups, YTJ and Virre are fast, free, and available in English. The limits appear when you need financial data at scale, ownership, or documents in English:

• Accounts are documents, not data. Only about 5 per cent of financial statements are filed as iXBRL. The rest are documents at EUR 5.02 each, bought one company at a time.
• Bulk accounts are expensive. PRH's bulk transfer of financial statement images and details costs EUR 1,882.50 to join and EUR 27,610 a year.
• Beneficial owners are not public. Anyone can see whether a company's notification has been registered, but outside the company itself the details are only available for purposes laid down in the Anti-Money Laundering Act.
• Extracts come in Finnish or Swedish. The free extract is in the language the company registered in. A translated English extract costs EUR 10.67 and leaves out the line of business, which PRH does not translate.
• Industry codes were reclassified. The Tax Administration moved from TOL 2008 to TOL 2025 at the start of 2026 and updated companies' lines of business itself, without sending them a separate notice. In the open data, Nokia's main line of business now carries a registration date of 1 January 2026.
• Private traders are partly hidden. Their names and addresses do not appear in YTJ unless they are in the Trade Register or the VAT register, and the open data leaves them out altogether.
• The latest accounts can be old. Limited companies have eight months after the end of the financial period to file, so the most recent public figures can be well over a year old.

If you check one Finnish supplier a quarter, none of this matters. If you onboard hundreds, it is the whole problem.

7. Access YTJ data programmatically

CompanyData maintains a normalized database of all 1,346,897 Finnish entities, sourced directly from the Business Information System and the PRH Trade Register and refreshed as new entries and filings appear. Business IDs are already validated, filed financial statements are read into structured fields, and records are enriched with revenue, employees, and contact data that the official register does not publish.

Our Company Data API lets you look up any Finnish entity by Business ID, name, or address and get structured JSON back in real time, with 150 free lookups to start. It is used by developers, banks, and insurers across 190+ countries, so Finnish checks work exactly like checks anywhere else. PRH's own open data API is free and worth using for the basics, but it leaves out board members, phone numbers, email addresses, and about 95 per cent of the accounts.

GET /v1/companies?country=FI&registration_id=0112038-9

{
  "name": "Nokia Oyj",
  "legal_form": "Public limited company",
  "registration_id": "0112038-9",
  "euid": "FIFPRO.0112038-9",
  "city": "Helsinki"
}

Every field above is what the free YTJ record for Nokia shows, with the home municipality as the city. Revenue and employees come back on the same record where we hold them, and are absent here for the reason this guide keeps running into: the Finnish register does not publish them as fields.

8. Finland vs other company registers

Finland publishes its basic register data through a free official API, which not every register below does. Its accounts are another matter: most are paid documents at EUR 5.02 each. For context: