B2B Prospecting Barometer 2026: 14.4 Million Establishments Under the Microscope

Of the 14,387,175 active establishments recorded in France as of July 1, 2026, 87% declare no salaried employees, nearly a quarter fall under real estate activities — the SCI effect — and barely 8.7% have a registered trade name. In the country's largest business database, the vast majority of entries have neither employees nor a storefront — and sometimes no purpose other than to hold an asset. The map is exhaustive; the actual market is elsewhere.

Léa just went independent as a freelance recruiter. To map the employers in her region, she downloads the official list of French businesses — the SIRENE directory — and is quickly disillusioned: page after page of real estate holding companies with no employees and no phone number, holding structures registered at mailbox addresses, sole traders whose actual activity is anyone's guess. The list doesn't answer the one question that matters when prospecting: who, in all of this, is actually worth contacting?

This gap between the administrative map and the reality on the ground is something everyone who builds a contact list — freelancers, recruiters, associations, small businesses doing local outreach — eventually discovers the hard way. To measure it precisely, we ran the full SIRENE stock of active and publicly accessible establishments through our analysis, as of July 1, 2026. Here is what the numbers reveal, finding by finding.

14.4 million active establishments: what the figure actually covers

As of July 1, 2026, France counts 14,387,175 active and publicly accessible establishments in the SIRENE directory. On the legal units side — the companies and legal structures themselves — the directory lists 26,756,173, of which 14,470,762 are active; the remaining 12,285,411 are dissolved structures, retained for historical purposes.

A legal unit is the legal entity, identified by its SIREN number; an establishment is the physical place of business, identified by its SIRET number. It is the establishment that matters for on-the-ground prospecting: it alone has an address, a neighbourhood, a catchment area. Unless otherwise stated, this study refers to active establishments.

A stock, however impressive, says nothing about its composition — and that is precisely where the map becomes misleading.

First finding: 87% of establishments declare no salaried employees

Of the 14,387,175 active establishments, 12,557,762 — or 87.28% — declare no salaried employees. In detail, 12,486,437 fall under INSEE code "NN" (workforce size not reported, typical of structures without employees: sole traders, patrimonial companies, solo self-employed professionals) and 71,325 under code "00" (zero declared employees).

The practical implication: filtering a database by "at least one employee" removes nearly nine out of ten establishments. For a recruiter, this cutoff is a blessing — it immediately isolates structures that actually employ people. For everyone else, it would be a mistake: the "no employees" block is precisely where you find sole traders, independent craftspeople, and very small structures that form the core of many markets. The employee count field is not a quality indicator; it is a world-separator.

Second finding: the SCI effect puts real estate at the top of every sector ranking

When active establishments are ranked by activity division (the first two digits of the NAF code), the podium surprises: it is neither retail nor construction that dominates, but real estate activities, with 3,326,963 establishments — 23.1% of the total stock. The explanation fits in three letters: SCI (Société Civile Immobilière, a French real estate holding company). Created to hold or transfer assets, these structures each count as an establishment — but are rarely useful contacts for a prospector.

Rank	NAF Division	Active establishments
1	68 — Real estate activities	3,326,963
2	47 — Retail trade	1,087,194
3	43 — Specialised construction activities	785,545
4	01 — Crop and animal production	706,038
5	94 — Membership organisations	681,347
6	70 — Head offices and management consultancy	673,653
7	86 — Human health activities	588,886
8	81 — Building and landscape service activities	421,243
9	85 — Education	405,084
10	96 — Other personal service activities	402,347

The rest of the ranking tells the story of the real French economy: retail trade (1,087,194 establishments), specialised construction (785,545), agriculture (706,038). Two lines deserve a closer read: membership organisations (681,347 establishments), a substantial pool for anyone seeking local partners or sponsors, and human health activities (588,886), where each practice counts as one establishment — a useful level of granularity for targeting individual practitioners.

The overall lesson: in raw form, sector rankings massively overstate the weight of patrimonial real estate. Mentally discounting the SCI effect is the first reflex to develop before making any market size estimate.

Third finding: a highly concentrated geography, but no true prospecting deserts

The departmental ranking, reconstructed from postal codes, confirms one intuition and corrects another. The confirmed intuition: Paris dominates by a wide margin, with 1,159,693 establishments, ahead of Bouches-du-Rhône (484,591) and Rhône (430,194).

Rank	Department	Establishments
1	75 — Paris	1,159,693
2	13 — Bouches-du-Rhône	484,591
3	69 — Rhône	430,194
4	59 — Nord	401,238
5	33 — Gironde	390,075
6	92 — Hauts-de-Seine	360,873
7	06 — Alpes-Maritimes	358,273
8	34 — Hérault	318,587
9	93 — Seine-Saint-Denis	307,625
10	31 — Haute-Garonne	295,186

The corrected intuition appears at the bottom of the ranking. The five least-dense departments are Lozère (20,982 establishments), Territoire de Belfort (21,434), Creuse (28,739), Meuse (30,883), and Haute-Marne (31,325). Even France's least-populated department still has over twenty thousand active establishments. For a small business doing local outreach or an association surveying the businesses in its area, there is no such thing as a prospecting desert — only different densities, which call for different approaches.

An honest statistical note: this ranking excludes 157,187 establishments with no postal code, as well as foreign addresses and certain overseas territories (see Methodology for details). This does not affect the order of magnitude of the differences shown.

Fourth finding: more than a third of the active business fabric is a natural person

Among the 14,470,762 active legal units, 5,543,956 are natural persons — sole traders and individual entrepreneurs — representing 38.31% of the active productive fabric. More than one in three French "businesses" is, legally speaking, a person.

For prospecting, this number changes everything. First, in how you approach contact: behind these entries there is no switchboard, no purchasing department — just one person who is simultaneously the owner, the worker, and the decision-maker. Second, in the precautions required: the contact details of a sole trader remain linked to a natural person and must be handled with the care appropriate to personal data, even in a professional context. Third, in the messaging: a pitch calibrated for a structured SME will fall flat with an independent professional who makes decisions alone, quickly, based on concrete criteria.

Fifth finding: 2026 new registrations replay the same cast, with two new entries

The flow confirms the stock. The directory as of July 1, 2026 contains 424,712 legal units with a creation date in 2026 — essentially the first half of the year. At the top, the same players as in the overall stock: real estate, retail, consultancy, and construction.

Rank	NAF Division	2026 registrations
1	68 — Real estate activities	62,266
2	47 — Retail trade	47,738
3	70 — Head offices and management consultancy	32,645
4	43 — Specialised construction activities	25,585
5	81 — Building and landscape service activities	20,293

Two entries outside the top five tell a more contemporary story: "postal and courier activities" records 17,637 new registrations — the preferred legal status for independent delivery workers — and computer programming 16,495, a sign that tech freelancing continues to feed the registry. For anyone targeting newly registered businesses, these recent creations are a natural entry point for outreach: the need is real, the toolstack is not yet in place. It is also the most fragile segment of the database — a share of these structures will never reach steady state.

Sixth finding: the trade name — the most underrated filter in the directory

One final figure, and perhaps the most practically useful: only 1,257,393 active establishments — 8.74% of the stock — have a trade name (enseigne) on record in the directory. Yet the trade name is an excellent proxy for a "visible, street-facing business": a structure that has declared one has a real presence, can be found on the ground, and shows up on online maps.

In other words, fewer than one establishment in ten matches what we spontaneously picture when we say "business": a shop, a workshop, a restaurant, an agency with a storefront. For a local prospector, this unassuming field is worth more than many sophisticated filters: combined with postal code and activity type, it surfaces the visible, reachable players in any given area. It also serves as a reminder that the administrative register and the field are two complementary sources, never interchangeable.

What this map means for your targeting

To summarise, by audience. You recruit or sell to employers: the employee filter is your best ally, as long as you accept that it reduces the map to a small fraction of the stock. You sell to sole traders and micro-businesses: the "no declared employees" block is your market, and it is worked one person at a time. You are an association: your sector accounts for 681,347 establishments — your peers and potential partners are already in there. You prospect locally: combine postal code, activity, and trade name, and be wary of volumes inflated by SCIs.

The conclusion fits in one sentence: in B2B prospecting, volume does not make the opportunity — filtering does. The France of 14.4 million establishments is an invitation to qualify, not to blast.

Frequently asked questions

How many active businesses are there in France in 2026?

As of July 1, 2026, the SIRENE directory lists 14,470,762 active legal units (legal entities) and 14,387,175 active, publicly accessible establishments (places of business). The full directory reaches 26,756,173 legal units when including the 12,285,411 dissolved structures.

Why do 87% of establishments declare no salaried employees?

Because the French business fabric is dominated by structures without employees: sole traders, individual entrepreneurs, solo self-employed professionals, and asset-holding companies. These establishments carry the employee code "NN" (not reported, 12,486,437 cases) or "00" (zero employees, 71,325 cases), accounting for 87.28% of the active stock.

What is the "SCI effect" in business statistics?

SCIs (Sociétés Civiles Immobilières) are French real estate holding companies created to hold or transfer assets; each one counts as a separate establishment in the directory. As a result, real estate activities rank first across all activity divisions with 3,326,963 establishments (23.1% of the stock), even though a large share of these structures have no commercial activity and no relevant contact to reach. Any raw sector ranking must be read with this bias in mind.

Is the SIRENE database sufficient for prospecting?

No. The directory provides legal existence, address, activity type, and a few attributes (employee count, trade name, creation date), but no prospecting email or phone number. It is useful for defining and qualifying a target scope; contact data must then be built by cross-referencing other sources — in compliance with the rules applicable to commercial outreach.

How many new businesses were registered in 2026?

The stock as of July 1, 2026 contains 424,712 legal units dated to 2026 — essentially the first half of the year. The most active divisions are real estate (62,266 new registrations), retail trade (47,738), and head offices and management consultancy (32,645).

Methodology

Scope: active and publicly accessible establishments from the INSEE SIRENE directory (open data), stock as of July 1, 2026 — 14,387,175 establishments and 26,756,173 legal units, of which 14,470,762 are active. The source data is published by INSEE and distributed on the official platform: SIRENE database of businesses and their establishments (data.gouv.fr); directory documentation: INSEE website. Aggregates were calculated using read-only queries on a local copy of the database; each total was then reconciled against the reference totals from the source file (zero discrepancy). This study relies exclusively on these publicly available open data sources. Calculations by Outsend on the SIRENE database.

Documented limitations: the department is inferred from the postal code (Corsica is aggregated under "20", overseas departments are identified by three-character codes); excluded from the departmental ranking are 157,187 establishments with no postal code, 27,525 entries coded "99" (foreign addresses), 5,107 entries in the "98x" range (Monaco, French Polynesia), 1,290 in Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon, and 4,574 residual foreign or malformed postal codes found in the raw data (formats such as "SW", "L-", etc.). "No declared employees" refers to INSEE codes "NN" (not reported) and "00" (zero employees). The 2026 creation figures are bounded to December 31, 2026: 102 records pre-dated to 2027 and beyond were excluded after date range checks.