Why company counts differ so widely
The German commercial register forgets nothing. When a company is deleted, its register sheet stays on file — it is simply no longer active. Over decades, inactive entries have come to outnumber active ones. Anyone counting “all companies in the register” therefore arrives at a multiple of the companies that actually exist today.
On top of that comes the register of associations (VR): registered associations sit in a register of their own, but they are not companies in any sales or market-analysis sense.
A company count is therefore only as meaningful as its definition. Two providers with the same raw data can honestly quote 2.3M or 6.1M — depending on what they include.
The Implisense dataset in numbers
This is how our raw register data breaks down (as of 19 October 2026):
| Register | active | inactive | total |
|---|---|---|---|
| HRB (e.g. GmbH, AG) | 1,748,614 | 1,934,138 | 3,682,752 |
| HRA (e.g. e. K., OHG, KG) | 515,753 | 973,901 | 1,489,654 |
| VR (registered associations) | 642,342 | 267,727 | 910,069 |
| PR (partnerships) | 20,082 | 8,371 | 28,453 |
| GnR (cooperatives) | 11,289 | 23,432 | 34,721 |
| Total | 2,938,080 | 3,207,569 | 6,145,649 |
More than half of all entries — 3,207,569 — are inactive. An entry counts as inactive when it is no longer held as an active company.
Which number Implisense quotes — and why
We quote around 2.3M active companies. Derived from the raw data:
- 6,145,649 entries across all five registers
- excluding associations (VR): 5,235,580 entries in HRA, HRB, PR and GnR
- of which active: 2,295,738
- after removing blocked entries: 2,294,915 — the number behind “around 2.3M”
The reason is practical: a deleted company cannot buy anything, cannot sign a contract and belongs in no market size. Counting deleted companies easily overstates a market by more than double. And for most B2B questions, an association is not a target customer.
Inactive entries are still useful: when matching your CRM, their status shows which customers no longer exist. CRM data cleansing flags such records instead of silently removing them.
What to check when comparing providers
Ask about every company count:
- Are deleted companies included? This is the biggest lever — for us the difference between 2.3M and 5.2M.
- Are associations included? For us another 0.9M entries.
- Which registers are covered? HRA and HRB are standard; PR and GnR are sometimes missing.
- What date is the count from? A count without a reference date cannot be checked.
The right number for your question is almost always the count of active companies. Which data is available on these companies is set out on the company data page.
Related: The Handelsregister, simply explained and Company size & the EU SME definition.