Check a SIREN: Is This Company Ready for E-Invoicing?

The SIREN is the nine-digit number INSEE assigns to every legal entity registered in France: companies, associations, public bodies and self-employed workers. It identifies the entity for its whole life and never changes, even when the company moves or takes a new name. It is printed on invoices, quotes and the Kbis extract, and it is the key of the Sirene register this page reads.

All three describe the same company. The SIREN identifies the legal entity, the SIRET (the SIREN plus a five-digit NIC) identifies one of its establishments, and the intra-community VAT number (FR, a two-character key, then the SIREN) identifies it for VAT. On the exchange network the routing address is built on the SIREN under scheme 0225; the SIRET and the VAT number still belong on the invoice, in the legal registration and VAT fields.

It is public. Look at any invoice or quote the company issued, the legal notice of its website, or search its name in the official company directory of the French administration. Once you have the nine digits, this page gives you the e-invoicing reading of them.

Receiving e-invoices: 1 September 2026 for every company subject to VAT in France, whatever its size. Issuing e-invoices and filing e-reporting: 1 September 2026 for large and mid-sized companies, 1 September 2027 for SMEs and micro-enterprises. The size category is assessed by INSEE and the tax administration; the lookup shows the one the register publishes and applies the matching dates.

0225 is the code, in the EN 16931 list of electronic address schemes, of the French e-invoicing address. The address itself is the company's SIREN, optionally followed by an underscore and a suffix when the company registers several reception addresses, for instance one per establishment or per software. It is the value that goes in the buyer's electronic address field of an invoice sent over the network.

No. The annuaire, the official directory of reception addresses, is maintained by the platforms and is not part of the Sirene register. This page tells you whether the company can be in it (established in France, active) and what its address is by construction. Whether that address is already live is checked when you send: an invoice to an unregistered company is refused before any credit is consumed.

No. A company established outside France can be registered for French VAT through a fiscal representative and receive a SIREN for that purpose only. The register records it with legal nature 3220 and a foreign head office. Such a company is outside the e-invoicing obligation and cannot hold a reception address, but it is subject to e-reporting for its sales located in France, on the same calendar as French companies of its size. The lookup flags this case explicitly.

From the Sirene register maintained by INSEE, read live through the public company search API of the French administration at the moment you search. The page keeps no history of who looked up what, needs no account and sets no tracking cookie for the lookup.

That is the intended use. Look up a customer before sending: if it is established and active, its address is its SIREN under 0225 and the invoice will route; if it is registered for VAT only, send the invoice by your usual channel and report the sale through e-reporting instead. Two seconds per customer, and no invoice bounces back for a reason you could have seen.