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How to check many EU VAT numbers at once

Updated 2026-10-11

The official VIES website checks one number at a time. That's fine for a single new customer, but not for re-checking 300 customers before your quarterly EC Sales List.

Option 1: The manual way

Copy each number into the VIES form, wait, record the result, repeat. Expect 30–60 seconds per number including copy-paste and outages, so 300 customers takes a full afternoon.

Option 2: Write a script

VIES has a public REST and SOAP API. A script can loop over your list, but you'll need to handle format normalisation, retries for MS_MAX_CONCURRENT_REQ and MS_UNAVAILABLE, rate limits (fast scripts get IP_BLOCKED), and storing consultation numbers.

Option 3: Upload the CSV to VATcheckly

  1. Export your customer list from Excel, your accounting software or CRM as CSV. Any layout works; we find anything that looks like an EU VAT number in any column.
  2. Paste it into the bulk checker and set your own VAT number to get consultation numbers.
  3. Download the results as CSV: number, valid/invalid, registered name and address, consultation number and timestamp. Open it in Excel and you're done.

Countries that are temporarily down get retried automatically. Pro starts at €12/month, or buy a one-time pack if you only check a few times a year.

Check a VAT number now

Free, live against VIES, all 27 EU countries + Northern Ireland.

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