You need a list of French companies to contact: architecture firms in Lyon, bakeries in Brittany, web agencies in Nantes. You have no purchased file and no tool budget, and the first results you find come from data vendors charging for access to "millions of companies". Before paying for anything, one question is worth asking: what in that file is not already free?
The short answer. A free France company database exists, and the French State publishes it: the Sirene directory run by INSEE, the national business register (RNE) run by INPI, the BODACC legal gazette, and the Annuaire des Entreprises, which lets you build a list filtered by activity and area at no cost. None of these registers contains an email address or a phone number. What a paid file sells you is the contact details, and that is where the real cost sits: duplicates, closed companies, emails that bounce, hours of cleanup.
France company database: the four free registers, checked on 28 September 2026
Every row below was opened at its official source on 28 September 2026. The last column comes from our own reading of the fields each register publishes, detailed further down.
| Register | Run by | Official address | What it gives you | Email or phone |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sirene directory (stock files) | INSEE, the national statistics office | data.gouv.fr, Sirene dataset | Every company and every one of its establishments, closed ones included: SIREN, SIRET, address, activity code, headcount band, creation date. Monthly files, latest edition 1 September 2026, under the French Open Licence 2.0. | No |
| Annuaire des Entreprises and its API | DINUM, the State's digital agency, on INSEE and INPI data | annuaire-entreprises.data.gouv.fr and the Recherche d'entreprises API | Look up one company, or build lists of establishments by criteria. The API is open, with no account, within a limit of 7 calls per second. | No |
| National business register (RNE) | INPI, the industrial property office | data.inpi.fr, described on INPI's RNE page | The economic and legal information companies declare when they are created, each time they change, and when they close. | No |
| BODACC | DILA, under the Prime Minister's office | bodacc.fr and the BODACC dataset | Legal notices: registrations, sales and transfers, amendments, deregistrations, insolvency proceedings, filing of accounts. | No |
Two addresses appear as plain text rather than links: the Annuaire des Entreprises and the DATA INPI portal filter automated access, so we could only check them through the official pages that describe them. In a normal browser, they open without trouble.
What the free tools do well
The most useful one when you start from nothing is the Annuaire des Entreprises, because it does more than find a company: it builds a list. According to INSEE, you can build a list of active or closed establishments by location, activity, legal category, headcount band or creation date, holding up to 200,000 units (INSEE, page updated 17/10/2024). In other words, "every plumber in the Gironde with at least one employee" is a free query that needs no subscription and no French company number of your own.
The Recherche d'entreprises API does the same for those who prefer code to a form. Its official page describes it as a service that "lets anyone search for and find a French company", with filters on activity code, postal code and headcount band. It also states what it does not do: it does not expose the full Sirene data, nor companies that opted out of publication or whose registration was refused.
The stock files, finally, suit anyone who wants everything at once. INSEE explains on the dataset page that files put online from the 1st of the month are a snapshot of the directory on the last day of the previous month, and that closed legal units and establishments are included back to 1973. It is the most complete source there is, and the heaviest to filter. On the legal side, INPI states that anyone can consult the public data of the RNE, distributed free of charge on DATA INPI.
Why no register gives an email or a phone number
We checked it field by field on 28 September 2026, because this is exactly where free ends and paid begins. The layout of the establishment stock file published by INSEE has 54 variables, and the legal unit file has 35: none holds an email address, a phone number or a website. Same finding on the response of the Recherche d'entreprises API, which combines Sirene and the RNE, and on the fields of the BODACC commercial notices dataset.
This is by design. These are legal identity registers, built to say who exists, in what form and at which address, not how to reach them. INSEE adds a point many people miss: data on legal representatives is not published in the open Sirene data, even without objection, under article R 123-232 of the French Commercial Code. Director names live in the registers that publish them, which is what legal company data for qualifying a list is for, row by row.
What a company database really costs
The market for company files runs on three billing models: buying a file per row, a subscription that opens an online database, and credits spent each time a contact is revealed or exported. None of the three tells you what the list will actually cost, because the real cost sits elsewhere, in four items the free register lets you see coming.
- Companies that no longer exist. According to INSEE's Sirene page (updated 17/10/2024), the Sirene API covers close to 25 million companies and 36 million establishments registered since 1973. That is an archive, not a live stock: a file that does not filter on administrative status bills you for rows closed years ago.
- Duplicates. INSEE separates the legal unit, the company itself, from the establishment, a geographically distinct unit that depends legally on it (definitions updated 10/11/2020). A company with three sites counts as three rows at establishment level. If you target companies, you pay three times for the same contact. Both numbers are explained in our page on SIREN and SIRET.
- Emails that bounce. An invalid address is a row paid for nothing, and a run of bounces weakens your domain's sending reputation. Hence the value of checking deliverability before sending, not after.
- Time, and dates. A file bought once ages. The activity code switches to a new version in the first days of January 2027 (the NAF 2025 classification), so a filter by trade written today will not point to quite the same companies next year.
From a free list to contact details, tool by tool
The method that works when you have nothing is the opposite of a bulk download: start from a trade and an area, then complete each row. Here is the concrete sequence, with the tool for each step.
- Define the list in the register. Activity and area on the Annuaire des Entreprises or through the API: it is free, and you learn right away how many companies really exist in your target. Outsend offers the same starting point, a list of companies by activity and area read from the Sirene directory, which chains straight into the next steps.
- Collect phone and website where they are public. For businesses that receive customers (shops, trades, practices), the Google Maps listing often shows a phone number and a website the register will never have. That is the job of Google Maps extraction by trade and city, exportable to CSV. Expect gaps: of 235,766 listings of French establishments scraped between 18 June and 18 September 2026, 29.5% showed no website at all (outsend measurement of 21/09/2026, detailed on our page about businesses without a website).
- Find the email from the website. A domain lets you look up the published business addresses: that is what an email finder does.
- Verify, then link. Check each address before sending, and attach the SIREN to each row so you deduplicate on the company rather than on the address.
For a few dozen companies, the Annuaire des Entreprises and a spreadsheet are enough, and it is a good way to start. Beyond a few hundred, completion time becomes the real cost, and that is where a tool that chains these steps in one account gives you hours back.
Frequently asked questions
Is there really a free France company database?
Yes. Sirene, the RNE and the BODACC are published free of charge by INSEE, INPI and DILA, and the Annuaire des Entreprises lets you extract a filtered list without paying. What is missing is contact details.
Where can I download the list of all French companies?
On data.gouv.fr, where INSEE publishes the Sirene stock files every month, in CSV and in parquet. Two things to know first: these files also contain companies closed since 1973, and INSEE plans to stop the CSV files during the second half of 2027, keeping parquet only. For a targeted list, the Annuaire des Entreprises is more direct.
Does a free company directory give emails and phone numbers?
No, no public register publishes them. The displayed phone and the website are often on the establishment's Google Maps listing, and the email is found from the website.
Do I need a French company number or an account?
Neither for the Annuaire des Entreprises and the Recherche d'entreprises API, which is open without sign-up. Only INSEE's Sirene API requires creating an account on the INSEE API portal and subscribing to it.
Is there a French equivalent of Companies House?
The closest is the RNE run by INPI. According to INPI's RNE page (published 23 August 2024), every business with a commercial, craft, farming or independent activity in France has had to be registered there since 1 January 2023, and it replaced the former national registers. Identity numbers still come from Sirene and public notices from the BODACC, while the Annuaire des Entreprises brings them together for lookups. Our country-by-country guide to Companies House equivalents sets France against other countries.
Will the NAF activity code change?
Yes. INSEE has published the future NAF 2025 code in advance since 16 December 2025 and plans the full switch in the first days of January 2027. A sector filter built today will need a review then.
Can I email a company found in these registers?
Between businesses, yes, under conditions. The CNIL, the French data protection authority, accepts that B2B prospecting can rest on legitimate interest (CNIL page dated 10 June 2026) when the message relates to the recipient's profession, the person has been told how their details are used, and they can object simply and free of charge. As soon as a row identifies an individual, a named director or a personal address, the GDPR applies, even when the data comes from a public register: keep a record of the source and date of each row.
To place these terms in the wider vocabulary, browse the full prospecting glossary.