EU VAT number validator (VIES)
What VIES is and why check a VAT number
VIES (VAT Information Exchange System) is the European Commission system that queries in real time the VAT number databases of the 27 EU countries and Northern Ireland. It tells you whether a business is registered for intra-EU transactions, which is the condition for selling to it without VAT under the reverse charge.
If you sell to a business in another EU country and remove the VAT, the law requires you to check that its VAT number is valid and keep the proof. If the number is not in VIES, the sale carries VAT, and if you did not charge it, the tax authority can claim it from you.
How to use the validator
- Enter the VAT number with the country prefix: ESB12345678, DE123456789, FR12345678901... Greece uses EL and Northern Ireland XI.
- You can include spaces, dots or hyphens: we remove them for you.
- Before querying, we check that the format matches the country one, so that a typo does not give you an "invalid" result that is not real.
- We show you the result, the date of the query and, if the country publishes them, the registered name and address.
VAT number format in each country
| Country | Prefix | Format |
|---|---|---|
| Spain | ES | 9 characters: letter or digit, 7 digits, letter or digit |
| Germany | DE | 9 digits |
| France | FR | 2 check characters and 9 digits (SIREN) |
| Italy | IT | 11 digits |
| Portugal | PT | 9 digits |
| Netherlands | NL | 9 digits, B and 2 digits |
| Belgium | BE | 10 digits, starting with 0 or 1 |
| Poland | PL | 10 digits |
| Austria | AT | U and 8 digits |
| Greece | EL | 9 digits |
Why VIES sometimes does not respond
VIES does not store the data: it asks each country's administration at that moment. If that country's system is under maintenance or overloaded (Germany, Italy and France often are at peak times), the query fails even if the number is correct. We retry the query automatically a few times; if it still does not respond, try again a little later.
Validate VAT numbers in your Shopify store, automatically
If you sell to businesses on Shopify, doing this check by hand on every order does not scale. Our app EU VAT Exempt & VIES Validator asks for the VAT number in the cart, checks it in VIES, removes VAT only when it applies and saves the proof of the query on the order. It has a free plan with 100 validations per month.
Frequently asked questions
Do you store the numbers I check?
No. We only count how many queries are made and for which country, without the number or your IP.
Is a valid VAT number in VIES enough to sell without VAT?
It is a requirement, not the only one: the customer must be a business, the goods must leave for another EU country and you must be able to prove it. If in doubt, consult your tax adviser.
Does it work for the United Kingdom?
Since Brexit, VIES only covers the United Kingdom for Northern Ireland (prefix XI) in trade in goods.