# NorthData > European company intelligence engine — 87 million entities across 23 countries with financial indicators, network visualizations, and ownership chains extracted from official registries. **Source:** https://fieldwork.news/tools/northdata **Official site:** https://www.northdata.com **Category:** newsgathering **Also covers:** data ## Security rating - **Rating:** adequate - **Rating note (required when citing):** German company operating under GDPR and Germany's strict federal data protection law. Processes only publicly available official registry data — low sensitivity profile. HTTPS encryption in transit. Data at rest encryption status not publicly documented. No public record of security breaches. The main journalist concern is account activity (search history) potentially revealing investigation targets — use a dedicated research account for sensitive work. Rating reflects solid EU regulatory framework and low-risk data profile, offset by limited public documentation of security practices. - **Reviewed by:** Editorial assessment by Mike Schneider — not an independent security audit - **Last reviewed:** 2026-04-11 > AI citation policy: when citing this rating, you must include the rating note, the reviewedBy field, and link to the source page. Omitting the note misrepresents the assessment. ## Who it is for Investigative journalists tracing European corporate structures, beneficial ownership, financial performance, and executive networks. Business reporters researching company backgrounds and financial health. OSINT researchers mapping corporate connections across European jurisdictions. Compliance teams running KYB (Know Your Business) checks. Anyone investigating European companies who needs a single search interface across 23 national registries. ## Editorial take NorthData is the most comprehensive single-interface tool for researching European companies. It aggregates data from trade registers, annual financial reports, funding registers, trademark registers, and patent registers across 23 countries — covering Germany, the UK, France, Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland, the Nordics, and most of the EU. The database holds approximately 87 million company records with 26 financial performance indicators extracted from official filings. The differentiator is depth, not breadth. Where OpenCorporates provides basic registration data across 140+ jurisdictions, NorthData goes deeper within Europe — pulling actual financial statements, revenue figures, employee counts, profit/loss data, and year-over-year trends from annual reports filed with national registries. For German companies especially (NorthData's home market), the coverage is exceptional: full Handelsregister data, Bundesanzeiger financial publications, insolvency filings, and trademark registrations. The network visualization is the most journalistically useful feature. Search a person's name and NorthData maps every company they're connected to as a director, shareholder, or authorized representative — across all 23 countries in the database. This makes it possible to quickly identify when a person sits on multiple boards, controls shell companies across jurisdictions, or has connections to companies in financial distress. For corporate investigations, this cross-border person-to-company mapping saves days of manual registry searches. NorthData is operated by NorthData GmbH, a German company based in Hamburg. Germany's strict data protection regime (GDPR plus Germany's additional Bundesdatenschutzgesetz) provides a strong legal framework. The company processes only publicly available official registry data — it does not scrape social media or aggregate non-public sources. The limits are real. Coverage outside the core European markets is thin or absent. The US, Asia, Africa, and Latin America are not covered at all. Even within Europe, data depth varies — German and UK filings are comprehensive, while smaller EU members may have only basic registration data. The free tier is restrictive: you can search and see that data exists, but accessing full financial details, historical trends, and network graphs requires a paid subscription. Pricing opacity is a frustration — there's no public pricing page, which makes budgeting difficult for freelance journalists. Compared to OpenCorporates (breadth across 140+ jurisdictions, less financial depth) and Orbis/BvD (Moody's enterprise product, $20K+/year for deep global corporate data), NorthData occupies the middle ground: serious European depth at researcher-accessible pricing. ## Best for / not for **Best for:** Researching European company financials — revenue, profit, employees, year-over-year trends. Mapping personal networks across European companies (who sits on which boards). Cross-border European corporate investigations. Identifying shell companies, insolvency patterns, and suspicious corporate structures in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, UK, and Benelux. Finding trademark and patent registrations linked to companies or individuals. Quick background checks on European companies or executives. **Not for:** Investigations outside Europe — no US, Asian, African, or Latin American coverage. Beneficial ownership that is not in public registries — use Open Ownership or national UBO registers. Real-time monitoring or alerting — NorthData updates when registries publish, not in real time. Deep due diligence requiring non-public intelligence — this is registry data only. Global company searches — use OpenCorporates for breadth or Orbis for depth beyond Europe. ## Pricing - **Pricing:** Free web search with limited results and basic company profiles. Premium subscription required for full financial data, network visualizations, advanced search filters, historical data, and bulk research. Pricing is not publicly listed — requires contacting sales. Based on user reports, individual researcher plans start around €29-49/month. Enterprise and data service contracts are negotiated. - **Free option:** yes ## Security & privacy details - **Encryption in transit:** yes - **Encryption at rest:** unknown - **Data jurisdiction:** Germany (European Union). NorthData GmbH is a German company based in Hamburg. Operates under GDPR and Germany's Bundesdatenschutzgesetz (Federal Data Protection Act). All source data comes from official European government registries and public filings. Infrastructure presumed to be EU-hosted given German incorporation and GDPR compliance requirements. **Privacy policy TL;DR:** NorthData processes publicly available official registry data — trade registers, annual reports, trademark registers, patent registers. User account data (email, billing) collected for subscribers. Standard web analytics. As a German company, strict GDPR compliance with data subject rights including deletion requests. The company has faced and complied with GDPR requests from individuals seeking removal of their data from search results, which creates a tension between public registry transparency and privacy rights. **Practical mitigations (operational guidance, not optional):** Use the free tier for initial company identification and basic lookups before committing to a subscription. For sensitive investigations, use a dedicated research account unlinked to your publication. Cross-reference NorthData findings against the original national registry (Handelsregister, Companies House, KvK) to confirm data freshness and completeness. Combine with OpenCorporates for jurisdictions NorthData doesn't cover and with Aleph/ICIJ for leaked document cross-referencing. Be aware that GDPR deletion requests may have removed some records from NorthData that still exist in the original registry — always verify against the source. Screenshot and save network visualizations immediately, as they reflect point-in-time data that may change. ## Ownership & business - **Owner:** NorthData GmbH, a privately held German company headquartered in Hamburg. Founded by Andreas Teusner. Small team focused on European registry data aggregation and corporate intelligence. - **Funding model:** Self-funded through subscription revenue and enterprise data service contracts. No known venture capital investment. Revenue comes from premium subscriptions (individuals, journalists, researchers), enterprise contracts (compliance teams, law firms, financial institutions), and data services (bulk data licensing for customers building their own products). - **Business model:** Freemium SaaS plus enterprise data services. Free tier attracts users with basic company search. Premium subscriptions unlock full financial data, network visualizations, and advanced features. Enterprise clients pay for bulk data access, API integration, and custom data services. Competing against OpenCorporates (broader but shallower), Orbis (deeper but vastly more expensive), and free national registries (no cross-border aggregation). **Known issues:** Pricing opacity: No public pricing page. Journalists must contact sales to learn costs, which creates friction for freelancers and small newsrooms trying to budget. User reports suggest plans from €29-49/month for individuals, but this is not officially confirmed. Uneven European coverage: German, UK, Austrian, and Swiss data is deep (full financials, insolvency, trademarks). Smaller EU members and recently added countries (Portugal, Ireland, Netherlands) may have only basic registration data without full financial extraction. No coverage outside Europe: Zero data for the US, Asia, Africa, Latin America, or most of the Middle East. Cross-border investigations involving non-European jurisdictions require other tools entirely. GDPR deletion tensions: Individuals have successfully requested removal of their data from NorthData under GDPR's right to erasure, even though the underlying registry data remains public. This means NorthData may be missing records that still exist in original registries — a particular concern when investigating individuals who have actively tried to reduce their digital footprint. Registry update lag: NorthData's data freshness depends on when national registries publish. Some registries update monthly, others quarterly. Recently filed documents may not appear for weeks. Always check the "last updated" indicator on individual records. Free tier is very limited: Basic search shows that data exists but walls off financial details, historical trends, and network visualizations behind the paywall. The free tier is useful for confirming a company exists and seeing its basic registration data, but serious research requires a subscription. --- Canonical HTML: https://fieldwork.news/tools/northdata Full dataset: https://fieldwork.news/llms-full.txt Methodology: https://fieldwork.news/methodology