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VIES status

Can VAT numbers be checked in VIES right now? The availability of VIES and of each member state's register, as VIES reports it.

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What this page shows

VIES does not hold VAT numbers itself. It forwards every check to the register of the member state that issued the number, and it publishes which of those registers are working. vatcheckapi reads that report every minute; this page shows the latest reading:

  • Available: VIES reports the register as working. Checks for that country go through.
  • Unavailable: VIES reports the register as down. Checks for that country fail until it is back. The VAT numbers themselves are not affected.
  • Unknown: VIES reported no state for the register (for example while it does not monitor it), or we have no reading from the last 5 minutes.

If VIES as a whole is unavailable, no EU or Northern Ireland number can be checked. UK (GB) numbers are checked through a commercial VAT data service and are not affected by VIES.

When a register is down

Most outages are maintenance windows of a national register and last minutes to hours. Retry later, and keep a record of the attempt if you need to show that you tried to verify a customer's number. The VAT number checker tells you when a country cannot be reached, and still checks the format and check digit.

With the API, a check of a number from a country VIES reports as unavailable answers 503 at once instead of waiting, and a 503 is never billed. Read GET /v2/vies-status (free) to hold back checks for that country, or retry them later.

Frequently asked questions

Is VIES down?

This page shows what VIES reports right now: VIES as a whole and the register of each member state and Northern Ireland. VIES itself is rarely down for long; more often one member state's register is unavailable, for example during its maintenance window, and only numbers from that country cannot be checked.

What does "unavailable" mean?

VIES reports that the member state's register cannot answer. A check of a number from that country fails until the register is back. It says nothing about the number itself: the number is not invalid, it just cannot be confirmed right now.

What should I do when a country is unavailable?

Try again later and keep a record of your attempts. With the vatcheckapi API, a check for such a country answers 503 at once, without waiting for a timeout, and a 503 is never billed.

How current is this page?

vatcheckapi reads VIES's own status report every minute. This page caches it for up to a minute, and the time of the last read is shown above the list. If we have no reading from the last 5 minutes, the states show as unknown.

Why is the United Kingdom not listed?

Since Brexit, UK (GB) VAT numbers are not checked through VIES but through a commercial VAT data service, so VIES reports no status for them. Northern Ireland (XI) numbers are checked through VIES and are listed.

Can I get this status by API?

Yes. GET https://api.vatcheckapi.com/v2/vies-status returns the same data as JSON and costs nothing (X-Cost: 0); it needs an API key like every request. See the documentation.

VIES status API

Read the VIES status in your own code

GET /v2/vies-status returns the availability of VIES and of every member state's register as JSON. It costs nothing (X-Cost: 0) and needs an API key like every request.

/v2/vies-status documentation VAT number API All documentation

Status requests are free. VAT checks: 150 free every month, and checks that end in 503 are never billed.

GET https://api.vatcheckapi.com/v2/vies-status

{
  "checked_at": "2026-10-17T09:30:00Z",
  "vies": "available",
  "countries": {
    "AT": "available",
    "BE": "available",
    "DE": "unavailable",
    "…": "…",
    "XI": "available"
  }
}

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