Czech company data: using the ARES API

ARES is the Administrative Register of Economic Entities, run by the Ministry of Finance of the Czech Republic. It has a public REST API with no key.

Look up a company by ID

A Czech company ID (IČO) has 8 digits.

curl "https://ares.gov.cz/ekonomicke-subjekty-v-be/rest/ekonomicke-subjekty/00177041"

The answer includes fields such as ico, obchodniJmeno, sidlo, pravniForma, datumVzniku, dic and czNace.

Search by name

Search is a POST request with a JSON body. start and pocet control paging.

curl -X POST "https://ares.gov.cz/ekonomicke-subjekty-v-be/rest/ekonomicke-subjekty/vyhledat" \
  -H "content-type: application/json" \
  -d '{"obchodniJmeno":"Skoda Auto","start":0,"pocet":5}'

The answer has pocetCelkem, the total number of matches, and ekonomickeSubjekty, the list of companies.

Legal form is a code

pravniForma is a code, not a name. You need a code list to show it in words.

Operating conditions

The conditions are at https://ares.gov.cz/stranky/podminky-provozu. They state that the data is informational and is not an official document, and that access can be limited above 500 queries a minute, for repeated identical queries and for bulk scanning. Cache your results and leave a gap between requests.

From an AI assistant

EntityFeed wraps this register as an MCP server, so an assistant can call get_company with country set to CZ and receive one record format with the source and the retrieval time.