Free VAT Validation API — Try it Live
Try the TaxID free VAT API live — no account required. Select a country, enter a VAT number, and see the real response from the official authority: registration status, company name, registered address, and whether the result was served from cache.
The playground uses a shared demo key with a limited quota. To run validations in your own application, get a free API key — 100 validations/month, no credit card required.
/api/v1/validate/DE/DE123456789Equivalent curl
curl https://taxid.dev/api/v1/validate/DE/DE123456789 \
-H "Authorization: Bearer vat_o8VkRDYekbdRRCj9GpZ21azfznaF6vtH"How the validation works
Select a country
Choose any of the 27 EU member states, the UK (HMRC), Switzerland (BFS UID), Norway (Brønnøysundregistrene), or Australia (ABR). Each country has a distinct format — the playground validates the format locally before sending the request.
Enter a VAT number
Type the number with or without the country prefix. Spaces and hyphens are stripped automatically. The playground uses a shared demo key so you can test without signing up.
See the live response
The API queries the official authority in real time — VIES for EU, HMRC for UK — and returns the registration status, company name, and registered address. Cached results (previously seen in the last 24 h) return in under 10 ms.
Response fields
Every validation returns a JSON object. Here are the key fields you will see in the playground and in your own API calls.
| Field | What it means |
|---|---|
| valid | true if the number is active and registered |
| status | active | invalid | service_unavailable |
| company_name | Registered business name (or null if withheld) |
| company_address | Registered address (or null if withheld) |
| cached | true if served from the 24-hour Redis cache |
| source | Authority: VIES, HMRC, BFS, Brønnøysundregistrene, or ABR |
Supported countries
The playground (and the API) covers 27 EU member states via VIES, plus the UK via HMRC, Switzerland via the BFS UID register, Norway via Brønnøysundregistrene, and Australia via the ABR. Each country uses a distinct identifier format — see the country-by-country guide for format specifications and regex patterns.
Note on service_unavailable: VIES has scheduled and unscheduled maintenance windows. When the upstream authority is down, the API returns status: "service_unavailable" instead of failing silently. In production, always handle this status separately — do not reject a customer because VIES is temporarily unreachable.
Ready to integrate?
Free API key. 100 validations/month. No credit card. Working integration in under two minutes.