Free Business Addresses in Germany: 7 Legal B2B Lead Sources 2026

Obtaining company addresses for free is possible in Germany through seven legal sources: Google Maps and its Places API, the Handelsregister (the German commercial register) together with the Unternehmensregister, the Bundesanzeiger (Germany's Federal Gazette), IHK directories, industry portals like Wer-liefert-was, LinkedIn, and automated tools with a free entry tier. Buying company addresses, by contrast, quickly costs several thousand euros — for data that is often outdated and incomplete. This article shows, for each source, what it delivers, where its limits lie, and which legal framework applies.

Why are company addresses freely available in Germany?

Company addresses are freely available in Germany because business data becomes public from three directions: first, commercial law obliges incorporated companies to register and disclose information — under the principle of public access, the Handelsregister can be inspected by anyone. Second, the Impressum requirement (Germany's mandatory site notice) obliges every business website to state its address and contact details. Third, companies voluntarily maintain their own listings on platforms like Google Maps or Wer-liefert-was because they want to be found.

Commercial address vendors essentially aggregate exactly these public sources. If you use them systematically yourself, you not only save the subscription fee but often work with fresher data — the key is querying the sources efficiently rather than manually. How to turn the addresses into a complete lead pipeline afterwards is shown in the article generating B2B leads for free.

What does Google Maps deliver as a source of company addresses?

Google Maps is the most complete business directory for the DACH region: according to Google's own figures, over 200 million places and businesses are listed worldwide, and practically every business with a physical presence is included — with company name, industry, address, phone number, website, opening hours, and reviews. Systematic access runs through the Google Places API, which returns this data in structured form per search query.

• What it delivers: Address and contact master data with high freshness, because companies maintain their profiles themselves and Google applies changes continuously
• Limitations: No email addresses and no contact persons — but the website URL is the starting point for email extraction via crawler. Since the pricing change on March 1, 2025, a free quota per query type applies instead of the former 200-dollar credit; for queries including website and phone number, that is 1,000 calls per month, meaning up to 20,000 company records (as of July 2026, according to the official Google price list)
• Legal framework: The official API is the access route intended by Google — unlike scraping the Maps interface, which violates Google's terms of service. The data involved is publicly viewable business information

The technical setup with a Cloud project, API key, and field masks is explained step by step in our Google Places API tutorial.

Which company data can you find in the Handelsregister and Unternehmensregister?

The Handelsregister is the official source of company master data in Germany: it contains all registered merchants and incorporated companies (GmbH, AG, UG, KG) with their exact legal name, business address, legal form, register number, and the persons authorized to represent the company — that is, the managing directors. Access via the joint register portal of the federal states (handelsregister.de) has been free of charge since August 2022; the Unternehmensregister (unternehmensregister.de), as the central platform, additionally bundles register announcements and published financial statements.

• What they deliver: Legally reliable master data with statutorily mandated freshness — ideal for verifying legal name, address, and management before reaching out
• Limitations: No phone numbers, websites, or email addresses; no full-text search by industry and no bulk export. The register is therefore unsuitable for list building, but the first choice for qualifying individual companies
• Legal framework: Under § 9 HGB (Section 9 of the German Commercial Code), anyone is permitted to inspect the register for information purposes — this is statutorily mandated publicity

What does the Bundesanzeiger reveal about companies?

The Bundesanzeiger (bundesanzeiger.de) is the publication platform for mandatory corporate law announcements and older annual financial statements; accounting documents for financial years from 2022 onwards are disclosed in the Unternehmensregister. For address research it is secondary — but all the more valuable for qualifying companies you have already found: from balance sheet totals, employee figures, and retained earnings, you can estimate company size and financial condition.

• What it delivers: Annual financial statements, capital measures, insolvency announcements — signals for the budget and timing of your outreach
• Limitations: Micro-entities file only abbreviated statements, and the data appears with a delay of up to twelve months. Research pays off only in a targeted way per company, not across the board
• Legal framework: Statutory disclosure obligation — inspection is expressly intended for the public

How do you use IHK directories for regional company addresses?

The IHKs (Germany's chambers of industry and commerce) operate regional company databases in which member companies can be filtered by industry, postal code, and in some cases employee count. Since almost every commercial enterprise in Germany is an IHK member, the theoretical coverage is high — in practice, each chamber decides how much of it is publicly searchable.

• What they deliver: Regionally filtered company lists with addresses and often websites — strong for prospecting in your own chamber district or neighboring regions
• Limitations: No nationally uniform dataset; each chamber maintains its own portal with its own search logic; an export is usually not provided, and companies can object to publication, which creates gaps
• Legal framework: Publicly accessible directories; use is governed by the terms of the respective IHK, and many portals rule out mass automated extraction

Which industry directories are worthwhile: Wer-liefert-was and Europages?

Wer-liefert-was (wlw.de) is the largest B2B procurement portal in the German-speaking region and primarily lists manufacturing companies, wholesalers, and technical service providers with detailed profiles; Europages extends the search to European suppliers. Both portals can be used free of charge for research.

• What they deliver: Company profiles structured by product category with address and range of products and services — especially valuable when you want to filter by what a company offers rather than just its industry
• Limitations: The focus is on industry and trade; service providers, skilled trades, and local businesses are underrepresented. A structured export is paid or not provided at all
• Legal framework: Publicly viewable profiles maintained by the companies themselves; automated extraction is governed by the portal's terms of use

What can LinkedIn do without a paid subscription?

LinkedIn complements company addresses with what all the other sources fail to deliver: contact persons with their job titles. Even without Sales Navigator, you can use the people and company search with Boolean operators to find managing directors, sales leaders, or purchasers at your target companies.

• What it delivers: Current people data of very high quality, because profiles are maintained by the individuals themselves
• Limitations: Limited search results and profile views in the free tier, no export, purely manual work; automated mass queries violate the terms of service
• Legal framework: Professionally published self-presentations; contacting people is subject to the platform rules, and promotional messages face the same unfair competition law limits as email

How does anilead.io combine the free sources automatically?

anilead.io is a B2B lead generation software for the DACH market that finds companies via Google Places, extracts email addresses, and scores every lead with Claude AI. Instead of searching seven sources individually, you describe your target industry and region — the platform finds company addresses via Google Places, crawls the company websites for email addresses, scores every lead from 0 to 100 with a rationale, and exports the results as CSV or directly to HubSpot.

• Costs: The Free plan includes 50 lead credits per month (1 credit = 1 saved lead), no credit card required; paid plans start at 29 euros per month and can be canceled monthly
• Data quality: Very high, because Google data and website emails are retrieved live instead of copied from a database
• Distinctive feature: AI scoring, AI-generated outreach drafts, and HubSpot export are included in every plan, including the Free plan; data processing runs on EU servers in Frankfurt and uses exclusively public data sources

Which free source fits which purpose?

The seven sources complement each other more than they compete — the table shows what each is suited for:

What applies legally when using free company addresses?

For processing publicly accessible company data, legitimate interest comes into consideration as the legal basis (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR, the EU General Data Protection Regulation) — provided you document the balancing of interests, restrict yourself to business contact data, and implement information, access, and objection rights. For outreach, unfair competition law applies in addition: under § 7 UWG (a provision of the German Act Against Unfair Competition), advertising by email generally requires consent, explicitly also towards businesses; sales calls to businesses require at least presumed consent, meaning a recognizable, substantive connection to the business of the person being called.

In concrete terms, this means:

• Use only business contact data, no private addresses
• Make first contact by phone (under the conditions mentioned), postal mail, or LinkedIn — marketing emails only after consent
• Inform recipients about the data source and their right to object at first contact (Art. 14 GDPR)
• Act on objections immediately and maintain an internal suppression list
• Do not store data longer than necessary for the purpose

All seven sources can be used in a privacy-conscious way with careful implementation — what matters is how you use the data afterwards. This overview is not legal advice; when in doubt, have your process reviewed by a lawyer. Detailed guidance is provided in the article on GDPR-oriented B2B lead generation.

Conclusion: Buying is optional, a system is mandatory

Company addresses in Germany do not cost money — they cost systematic work. Google Places delivers the volume, the registers and the Bundesanzeiger the verification, industry portals the niche, LinkedIn the contact persons. Combining these sources manually gets you good data at the price of many working hours; automating them gets you both: fresh data and free time for the actual prospecting. A free anilead.io account with 50 lead credits per month is the fastest way to compare the result with your previous research — no credit card required.

Frequently asked questions about free company addresses

Where can I find free company addresses with email addresses?

None of the classic sources delivers email addresses directly — neither Google Maps nor the Handelsregister nor IHK directories. The reliable route goes through the company website: thanks to the Impressum requirement, almost every business website in Germany lists a contact address. A web crawler extracts these automatically; tools like anilead.io combine address search and email extraction in one step.

Is the Handelsregister really free?

Yes, retrieving register content via the joint register portal of the federal states has been free of charge since August 2022 — previously, fees were charged per document retrieval. Under § 9 HGB, inspection is open to anyone for information purposes. Free does not mean convenient, though: there is no industry search and no export, so the register is suited to targeted individual queries.

May I use free company addresses for marketing emails?

Not without consent: § 7 Abs. 2 UWG classifies email advertising without prior express consent as an unreasonable nuisance — including towards businesses. Obtaining the addresses itself is uncritical when using public sources; the line is drawn at the outreach channel. Legally safer first contact runs via phone (with presumed consent in B2B), postal mail, or LinkedIn; when in doubt, have it reviewed by a lawyer.

How current are free company addresses compared to purchased ones?

Usually more current: companies maintain their Google Maps profiles themselves, register data is subject to statutory reporting obligations, and website data is retrieved live during crawling. Purchased databases, by contrast, age between two update cycles. The advantage of purchased lists lies not in freshness but in enriched attributes like direct dial numbers — which are dispensable for many DACH use cases.