French company data: search SIRENE by NAF code or look up SIREN numbers in bulk

Where French company data comes from

• INSEE Sirene is the official register of companies (unités légales, SIREN) and their establishments (SIRET). It has the NAF/APE activity code, legal form, headcount bracket, creation date and addresses.
• INPI's RNE (national business register) adds directors and filed accounts.
• The API Recherche d'entreprises, run by DINUM, combines both with public label lists (RGE, Qualiopi, organic, ESS) and powers annuaire-entreprises.data.gouv.fr. It needs no key, allows 7 requests per second per IP, and the data is published under the Licence Ouverte 2.0, which allows commercial reuse with attribution.

Paid alternatives (Pappers, Societe.com, data brokers) add scores and contacts on top of the same register. For lists of companies by sector and place, the free API covers most needs.

Query the free API yourself

A search for active software companies (NAF 62.01Z) in Paris, tested on 2026-10-12 with curl and jq:

curl -s "https://recherche-entreprises.api.gouv.fr/search?activite_principale=62.01Z&departement=75&etat_administratif=A&per_page=3&page=1" \
  | jq -c '.total_results, (.results[] | [.siren, .nom_complet, .tranche_effectif_salarie, .siege.code_postal])'

10000
["380474494","EURO INFORMATION DEVELOPPEMENTS (EID)","51","67000"]
["394026934","EXPERIS FRANCE (EXPERIS)","51","44300"]
["849239587","SNAPDESK (SNAPDESK)","11","75010"]

Two things in that answer catch most people out:

• The location filter matches any establishment. The first two "Paris" companies have their head offices in Strasbourg (67000) and Saint-Herblain (44300); they just have a site in Paris. For a list of Paris-based companies you have to check siege.code_postal or the department yourself.
• 10,000 is a ceiling, not a count. total_results stops at 10,000 and the API serves at most 400 pages of 25. Bigger searches must be split (by NAF code, department or headcount) and de-duplicated.

A single lookup by SIREN works through the same endpoint:

curl -s "https://recherche-entreprises.api.gouv.fr/search?q=529991119" \
  | jq -c '.results[0] | {siren, nom_complet, nature_juridique, activite_principale, adresse: .siege.adresse, finances}'

{"siren":"529991119","nom_complet":"LEDGER","nature_juridique":"5710","activite_principale":"62.01Z",
 "adresse":"106 RUE DU TEMPLE 75003 PARIS","finances":{"2016":{"ca":868690,"resultat_net":-397198}}}

Watch out for personal data: the same answers include dirigeants (directors with names and birth month), and a sole trader's SIREN (legal form 1000) returns the owner's name and address. If you store results, filter those out. Codes such as 5710 (SAS) and headcount bracket 51 (2,000–4,999 employees) need INSEE's nomenclatures to be readable.

Search or look up companies without code

1. Open France Company Search: SIREN/SIRET Data (SIRENE) on Apify.
2. Pick a Mode: search with filters, look up a list of SIREN/SIRET numbers, or search near a GPS point.
3. Set filters in plain terms: NAF code or prefix (43.22 covers plumbing and heating), department or region by name or code, headcount brackets, PME/ETI/GE, legal form (SAS), labels such as RGE or Qualiopi, revenue range.
4. Click Start and export the Companies, Head office and location or Finances and labels view as CSV or Excel.

The actor applies the head-office rule for you (companies whose head office is in your area; "Any establishment" is an option), splits searches above 10,000 results automatically, checks SIREN and SIRET numbers (length and Luhn) before sending them, and translates codes into labels. A row from a real run on 2026-10-12, shortened:

{
  "status": "ok",
  "siren": "529991119",
  "name": "LEDGER",
  "legalForm": "SAS, société par actions simplifiée",
  "nafCode": "62.01Z",
  "nafLabel": "Programmation informatique",
  "companyCategory": "ETI",
  "headcountLabel": "250-499 employees",
  "vatNumber": "FR03529991119",
  "headOfficeSiret": "52999111900098",
  "address": "106 RUE DU TEMPLE 75003 PARIS",
  "latitude": 48.862592,
  "longitude": 2.358607,
  "financeYear": 2016,
  "revenueEur": 868690,
  "netIncomeEur": -397198,
  "corporateOfficers": [{"siren": "344366315", "name": "ERNST & YOUNG AUDIT", "role": "Commissaire aux comptes titulaire"}],
  "annuaireUrl": "https://annuaire-entreprises.data.gouv.fr/entreprise/529991119"
}

Worked examples from our test runs

The national export is where splitting matters: a single query stops at 10,000 companies, so the actor split it by NAF code, then department, then headcount bracket, and removed the duplicates for free.

What each row contains

Honest limits

• Company data only. Sole traders are never output, and directors who are natural persons are dropped. If you need named decision makers, this is the wrong tool.
• Revenue is often missing or old. Only companies that publish accounts have figures, financeYear can be years back, and a revenue of 0 with a non-zero net income usually means the income statement was not published (our reading of the data).
• Headcounts are brackets and estimates, updated yearly by INSEE.
• Non-diffusible companies (which opted out of public listing) are not in the API and come back as not_found.
• Shared rate limit. The API allows 30 requests per second per network; on busy cloud networks the actor slows down and waits.

All input fields

Generated from the actor's live input schema (build 1.0.1).

Call it from code

Start a run and get the results in one HTTP request with the Apify API (your token is under Console, Settings, API & Integrations):

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/adamhaleworks~france-company-search-sirene-api/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=$APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"nafCodes":["62.01Z"],"departments":["75"],"status":"active","maxItems":100}'

The run's Output tab offers 3 ready-made views; every view exports to CSV, Excel, JSON or XML:

• Companies: status, siren, name, legalForm, nafCode, nafLabel, headcountLabel, companyCategory, creationDate, city, postalCode, revenueEur, financeYear, isActive, annuaireUrl
• Head office and location: siren, name, headOfficeSiret, address, postalCode, city, departmentName, regionName, latitude, longitude, establishmentsOpen, vatNumber
• Finances and labels: siren, name, financeYear, revenueEur, netIncomeEur, headcountLabel, companyCategory, labels, collectiveAgreements, isEss, isSocieteMission

What it costs

At the planned price, the 50 Paris software companies would cost $0.10 and the 13-number lookup $0.014 (only the 7 companies found). Invalid numbers, unknown numbers, withheld sole traders and companies already delivered in "Only new" runs would be free.

FAQ