Hungary Company Register: How to Search the e-cégjegyzék and Verify Hungarian Companies (2026)

1. What is the Hungarian company register?

Hungary keeps its company register at the courts. The cégjegyzék (company register) is maintained by 20 company courts, the Fővárosi Törvényszék for Budapest and one regional court for each county, and each court issues the registration numbers for the companies on its books. The courts have stored the register on computer since the national network went fully live in June 1993, and since then any court can reach any company in the country by its number.

What the public sees comes through the Ministry of Justice. Its Céginformációs és az Elektronikus Cégeljárásban Közreműködő Szolgálat (Company Information and Electronic Company Registration Service, the Céginformációs Szolgálat for short) is connected to every company court, so the data it serves are the data the courts hold. It runs the free search at e-cegjegyzek.hu, online since 1 January 2008, and the paid Országos Cégnyilvántartó és Céginformációs Rendszer (National Company Registration and Company Information System), whose extracts count as public documents. Annual reports and filed company documents each sit in a system of their own.

In short: e-cégjegyzék tells you a company exists and what state it is in, the authentic system gives you the same facts as a public document, and the reporting portal tells you how the company performs.

One date to note: many of the rules in this guide rest on Act V of 2006 on company publicity, court company registration procedure, and voluntary liquidation (the Companies Act). Act LIX of 2025 on the register of legal persons repeals it with effect from 1 January 2027, so check the rules again if you read this after that date.

2. How to search the e-cégjegyzék step by step

Searching is free, needs no registration, and runs in Hungarian only: the language menu offers Magyar and nothing else. Each search asks you to tick Google's reCAPTCHA box (Nem vagyok robot, I am not a robot) first, and so does each view you open on a company record. The first time in a browser session you also have to accept the terms of use.

1. Open Cégkeresés on e-cégjegyzék

   Go to e-cegjegyzek.hu and use the Cégkeresés (company search) menu on the left, or the quick search box at the top right, which takes a company name, a cégjegyzékszám, or a tax number. The full form adds the seat: postcode, city, street, and house number. Személykeresés (person search) and Eltiltott személy (banned persons) sit in the same menu.

2. Search by number when you have one

   A full cégjegyzékszám, or the first eight digits of the tax number, returns that company alone. Both have to be typed in full and exactly, or the search may come back empty.

3. Otherwise enter the start of the name

   The name field is Cégnév kezdete, the start of the company name, and it needs at least four characters. It ignores upper and lower case, the difference between long and short vowels, spaces, and punctuation, so ALMA, Alma, and a.l.m.a all give the same result. Common words such as Auto, Buda, or Inter return a long list, so type as much of the name as you know.

   

4. Read the result list

   Each hit gives the short name, the full registered name, the seat, the cégjegyzékszám, and the tax number. On the right, a green tick marks a live company and a red cross one that is no longer live. In the Gedeon search the three hits in view all carry the red cross, including the first one, whose name still ends in v. a. Not every hit visibly starts with your term either: the same search also lists ÜGY-S-KER Bt., so open the record before you trust a match.

5. Open the record and pick a view

   The record shows the number, the tax number, and the registered seat with a map link, and two buttons underneath, each of which asks for the reCAPTCHA again. Cégadatok queries the sections you tick in real time: name, seat, sites, branches, activities, registered capital, tax number, the start and end of any voluntary liquidation, bankruptcy, or liquidation, and members or officers under a ban, current or deleted. Tárolt cégkivonat is the stored extract with every current entry, plus changes filed but not yet registered, refreshed on the first day of each week.

   

6. Save or print what you need

   Both views can be saved or printed. Keep the date of the stored extract with your copy, because if nothing changed at the court it can be more than a week old.

3. What data is public and what it costs

Hungary splits its register cleanly in two. Reading it is free. Proving what it says costs money, at fees set in Decree 1/2006 (VI. 26.) IRM.

Two things stand out. Hungary publishes filed annual reports free: under the Companies Act they become viewable on the reporting portal immediately and at no cost. And the authentic route is cheap per document but awkward to reach. Direct online access needs two contracts, an agreement with the Ministry of Justice and a data-transmission contract with its technical provider, Magyar Cégadat Szolgáltató Kft., and a bill arrives from each every month. Magyar Cégadat charges its own monthly base fee and a traffic fee per kilobyte on top of the Ministry's fees. One-off buyers can pay by card on the Céginformációs Portál or go through one of the 21 resellers the Ministry lists, and the Ministry itself warns that resellers' data may come from sources other than the authentic register. Foreign customers follow the same procedure as Hungarian ones and can pay by international bank transfer.

Two smaller rules are worth knowing. The fees are waived when a member or representative of the company itself asks, with proof. And the documents a company filed with the court, the cégiratok, are free through the courts' E-cég betekintés service, but only behind a login with Ügyfélkapu+ or the DÁP mobile app.

What you will not find in the free register: revenue or employee numbers. The free Cégadatok fields stop at registered capital and the tax number. The figures exist, but inside the annual reports, one company at a time, in a separate portal.

4. Hungarian legal forms, briefly

Hungarian company names carry their form, because the Civil Code requires a business association's name to include the form or its abbreviation. The registration number carries it too: the middle pair of digits is the form code. The Civil Code allows four kinds of business association, the Kkt., Bt., Kft., and Rt., and the register adds cooperatives, individual companies, branches of foreign companies, and other entities such as bailiff and notary offices, each with a code of its own.

The register still holds forms that can no longer be chosen, such as the gazdasági munkaközösség (code 04), because companies that used them stay queryable. If an old supplier record shows a form you do not recognise, that may be why.

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

1. Confirm the number, the name, and the suffix

   Search the cégjegyzékszám on e-cégjegyzék and check that the name, form, and seat match what you were given. Read the end of the name too: a suffix such as v. a. or f. a. means a winding-up or a liquidation was opened. Then check the status mark in the result list, because a company can keep that suffix after it is no longer live, as our example does. For a quick first pass, our free company lookup finds the registration and revenue data in one search.

2. Check the live status, not the stored one

   Use Cégadatok for the real-time picture. It shows the start and end of any voluntary liquidation, bankruptcy, or liquidation, and the current tax number. The stored extract is refreshed weekly, so a change made this week may not be in it yet.

3. Check who may sign

   The register records the officers and the manner of representation: alone, jointly, or without the right to represent. Open the stored extract, check that the person signing for the company is listed with a representation right that covers the deal, then run the Eltiltott személy search, which shows whether someone is barred from acting as an officer of a company.

4. Read the filed annual reports

   Search the registration number, the first eight digits of the tax number, or at least four letters of the name on the Elektronikus Beszámoló Portál and open the latest report. Check the filing date as well as the figures, because a late or missing filing is itself a signal.

5. Validate the EU VAT number

   If the company invoices you from Hungary for trade within the EU, its EU VAT number is HU followed by the first eight digits of its tax number, or of its VAT group's number if it belongs to a VAT group. The Hungarian tax authority points to the European Commission's VIES service for checking that it is valid.

6. Buy an authentic extract before you sign

   If a bank, notary, or contract needs proof, buy a cégkivonat on the Céginformációs Portál, through one of the listed resellers, or under an agreement with the Ministry. At HUF 3,400 it shows every current entry plus any change filed but not yet decided, marked as pending, and the authentic version is a public document.

7. Keep watching after you sign

   Company monitoring emails you within minutes of a final court order that changes a watched company's register data, with the changed entries in HTML and in XML. It can also alert you when the Cégközlöny company gazette publishes a notice about the company. It is free for up to ten companies.

6. Limitations of the official register

To be clear: for a handful of lookups, e-cégjegyzék does the job and costs nothing. The limits show up when you need English, scale, or proof:

• Hungarian only. The free search offers Magyar and no other language. The paid online system has an English version of its front page, but the rest of it is in Hungarian, and so are its contract details. Register data come in English, German, or French only when you order them that way from the Céginformációs Szolgálat, which issues company documents in Hungarian only.
• A CAPTCHA on every search. Each search and each free view on e-cégjegyzék asks for a reCAPTCHA first, and the annual-report search has a CAPTCHA check of its own. Both services can refuse users who come through anonymous proxy networks.
• Free is informational. Nothing from e-cégjegyzék can be used as an authentic document. Proof always means a paid extract.
• The stored extract lags. It is refreshed on the first day of each week, and only when something changed, so it can be more than a week old.
• No free bulk access. The free service explicitly excludes obtaining the whole register or a large part of it. Bulk data is sold as grouped company information, priced per register field and quoted in writing, and grouped data about individual people needs a legal basis or the consent of the people concerned.
• Person search needs personal identifiers. To list the companies a person is an officer of, you must enter their full name plus their tax ID, or failing that their mother's name and place of residence.
• Free documents need a Hungarian login. E-cég betekintés is free, but only after signing in with Ügyfélkapu+ or the DÁP app, and each user gets at most 100 searches in 24 hours.
• The API is a contract, not a key. Machine-readable XML exists, but only after two contracts, and you pay per document plus a fee per kilobyte.
• Financials are documents. Revenue and employee numbers live inside filed reports. Bulk report data cannot be filtered for periods before 2016, and the figures of IFRS reports and of the foreign parent companies of Hungarian branches are attached as PDF, so they cannot be pulled out as data.

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

7. Access cégjegyzék data programmatically

CompanyData maintains a normalized database of all 1,305,177 Hungarian companies, sourced from the Hungarian company register and the filed annual reports and refreshed as new filings appear. Registration numbers are already parsed, filed annual reports are read into structured fields, and records are enriched with revenue, employees, and contact data that the free register does not show.

Our Company Data API lets you look up any Hungarian company by cégjegyzékszám, name, or address and get structured JSON back in real time, with 150 free lookups to start and no CAPTCHA. It is used by developers, banks, and insurers across 190+ countries, so Hungarian checks work exactly like checks anywhere else.

GET /v1/companies?country=HU&registration_id=01-06-112341

{
  "name": "\"GEDEON\" B.T. \"v. a.\"",
  "legal_form": "Bt.",
  "registration_id": "01-06-112341",
  "city": "Budapest",
  "status": "deleted"
}

Every field above is visible on the free e-cégjegyzék screens shown earlier: the name with its "v. a." suffix, the Bt. form, the registration number, the Budapest seat, and the status: the red cross next to it in the result list, which the register uses for a company that is no longer live and whose hover text reads Törölve (deleted). Revenue, employees, and contact details come back on the same record where we hold them, and are left out here because this example only uses what the register screens themselves show.

8. Hungary vs other company registers

Hungary is generous with free reading, annual reports included, and strict about machine access. For context: