Beneficial owner of an SRL: how to see it, for free or for a fee

In brief: the beneficial owner of an SRL is not, in itself, a confidential or paid-for piece of data — it emerges from the Business Register (Registro Imprese), a public register. Reconstructing it yourself costs a few euros (the cost of a company register extract is not zero: €5 online and €7 at the counter, registry fees for capital companies under the 2023 schedule), plus the time needed to interpret the raw data correctly under the three-level criterion set by law. A paid service such as Veryfy does not sell access to the data — it sells the reconstruction and interpretation work already done.

What is genuinely free, and what is not

An ordinary company register extract from the official Business Register portal is not free in the strict sense: it costs a few euros (registry fees set by decree — €5 online and €7 at the counter for a capital company, and €3 online for a sole proprietorship, according to the 2023 schedule of fees), payable online with no subscription. It is a minimal cost, but not zero — no official service actually provides it for free.

What you get with a DIY company register extract

The extract shows the company's register data: company officers, shareholders and their respective stakes where declared, corporate purpose, registered office. From this raw data, reconstructing who the beneficial owner is under the three-level hierarchical criterion (ownership above 25%, control, and the residual criterion of administration — art. 20 of Legislative Decree 231/2007, D.Lgs. 231/2007) means applying the criterion to the data yourself: it is not a field already labelled as such in the extract. For a simple corporate structure, with one sole shareholder or a few direct shareholders, the work is quick. For a chain of shareholdings with several corporate levels, it means repeating the same extract (and the same cost) on every intermediate company in the chain, until you reach the natural person.

What you pay for when you use a service like Veryfy

You do not pay for access to the data itself, which remains public — you pay for the criterion already applied, the chain of shareholdings (where present) already traced, and the result presented as a direct answer ("this person controls this company") instead of a series of raw extracts to interpret yourself. For an occasional check on a simple structure, doing it yourself may be enough. For a complex corporate chain, or when the time needed to do it yourself costs more than the service, the value of the work already done becomes clear.

Which to choose for your case

If you need it only once, on a company with a simple structure, and you have the time to check it yourself, going directly to the Business Register is a valid option at minimal cost. If you need it quickly, on a structure that may be more complex than it appears, or together with other data (protests, balance sheet) in the same check, a service that already does this for you is the most efficient choice.