Swiss commercial register extract: what you can see free, and when you need the paid one

Every company in Switzerland is recorded in the commercial register, and the essentials of that record are public by law. Yet many people still pay for a register extract in situations where the free view is all they need. This guide draws the line clearly: what you can see free of charge, what the official signed extract costs, and when only the paid document will do.

What you can see free of charge

The public part of a register entry covers the facts most checks actually need: the exact company name, the UID (the CHE number), the legal form, the registered seat and address, the share capital where the form has one, the registered purpose, the people entered in the register with their function and signature rights, and the history of published changes.

Zefix, the federal central business name index, is the official free lookup. Regista builds on the same official data and adds what Zefix does not show: a readable dossier per company, the officers as a relationship graph, the capital history as a chart, an AI summary, and a free PDF export. All 745,792 companies in the register are covered, across all 26 cantons.

The signed cantonal extract: the authoritative document

The legally authoritative document is and remains the certified extract issued by the cantonal commercial register office. It carries a signature and seal, and it is the version a court, a bank, a notary or a foreign authority will ask for. It costs a fee that varies by canton, typically in the range of a few tens of francs, and can be ordered from the competent cantonal register office online.

Honest rule of thumb: for vetting a counterparty, checking who signs for a company, preparing a meeting or researching a market, the free view is enough. For a filing, a tender, an account opening or any formal proceeding, order the certified extract. Every Regista dossier links directly to the official cantonal extract of that company, so the formal route is always one click away.

How to check a company in two minutes

1. 1Search the company by name or UID. The UID (CHE number) is unambiguous; names can be similar.
2. 2Check the status line first: active, in liquidation, or struck off. This single fact answers most due-diligence questions.
3. 3Read the registered purpose and the capital. A purpose that does not match the story you were told is a warning sign.
4. 4Look at who is registered: function and signature rights show who can actually bind the company.
5. 5Open the register history: frequent changes of name, seat or officers in a short period deserve a closer look.

Where the free data comes from

All of it is official open government data: Zefix and the cantonal registers publish the entries, and every change is announced in the Swiss Official Gazette of Commerce (SOGC). Regista refreshes from these sources every business day and states on each dossier when the data was last updated. Officer and relationship data is derived from the published register text; the certified cantonal extract remains the authoritative record.