RIK: Estonia VAT register

Estonia publishes the e-Business Register as open data, and the basic company extract in it carries a VAT number column alongside the name, status and address of every registered business. That single file is enough to answer an Estonian fallback, which is why Estonia is mirrored rather than queried live.

RIK is run by the Estonian Centre of Registers and Information Systems, and its data is published at avaandmed.ariregister.rik.ee. It is one of the 10 national registers Avatcado consults on the Pro and Business plans when VIES cannot answer for Estonia, and it never replaces a VIES answer that does arrive. The national registry fallback guide covers the full precedence order.

What RIK publishes

• One row per registered business, with its name, registry code, legal form and current status
• The VAT number of the businesses that have one, written with the EE prefix, and an empty column for the ones that do not
• The registered address, both as entered and in a normalised form, which is the one a fallback answer prefers
• The date the business was first entered in the register, which is a company milestone rather than a VAT registration date

How Avatcado uses it

A scheduled job downloads the basic company extract, keeps the rows that carry a VAT number, and stores them as a snapshot, around 130,000 numbers on a recent load. An Estonian fallback reads that snapshot and, on a hit, answers with source rik, the company name and the normalised address. Businesses without a VAT number are not stored at all, so they are simply absent rather than recorded as unregistered.

RIK publishes a bulk file rather than a per-number service, so Avatcado mirrors it instead of calling it on your request. Snapshot refreshed 12:00 and 22:00 UTC, and each run replaces the stored snapshot. A snapshot is only trusted while it is demonstrably fresh: it has to be less than 3 days old, and the source file itself has to have changed within the last 14 days. A snapshot that fails either gate is not served at all, because a stale file is worse than no fallback.

The rule that matters most is that a register can only ever confirm a registration. A miss, whether RIK says not registered or simply has no record, is never turned into valid: false: the request falls through to the stored result instead. An answer that does come from here carries source: "rik" and source_status: "fallback", and no consultation_number field at all, because only VIES issues those.

What a RIK answer contains

Data quirks worth knowing

• Estonian VAT groups share one VAT number; the snapshot names one member of the group
• The extract is a company register rather than a VAT register, so a VAT registration date is not part of it and no fallback answer can state one
• The file also lists businesses in liquidation or bankruptcy, whose status is carried through rather than being read as a VAT signal
• The address is published twice, in the form it was entered and in a normalised form, and the normalised one is used when it is present

Try it

Validating a Estonia VAT number takes the same call whichever source answers it. This one uses EE102090374, a real registered number:

curl "https://api.avatcado.com/v1/validate?vat_number=EE102090374" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer avat_live_your_api_key"

import Avatcado from "@avatcado/node";

const avatcado = new Avatcado("avat_live_your_api_key");
const { data, error } = await avatcado.vat.validate({
  vatNumber: "EE102090374",
});

if (data?.meta.source === "rik") {
  // VIES was unavailable; RIK confirmed the registration.
  console.log(data.meta.source_status); // "fallback"
}

On an ordinary day that answer comes from VIES, with source_status: "live". Only when VIES cannot answer for Estonia does RIK step in, and then meta.source_status reads "fallback" and meta.source reads "rik". The register fallback is included in the Pro and Business plans; the free tier covers 500 validations per month from VIES and the cache. Get an API key or read the API documentation.

Frequently asked questions

Keep reading

• Estonia VAT number format and validation
• Country coverage: what answers every country Avatcado validates
• All 10 national VAT registers
• VIES Down? How the National Registry Fallback Works
• VIES Downtime: Why It Happens and How to Handle It
• VIES API Guide: REST Endpoint, SOAP & Integration