Data

Commercial register entries by legal form

The commercial register counts registered legal entities, not economically active businesses. Small sole proprietorships without a duty to register are missing.

Active commercial register entries · Zefix on LINDAS, retrieved on 25/10/2026 · by Martin Adamec

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Use the legal form to separate legal entities from sole proprietorships: data on sole proprietorships are personal data under the FADP.
Branches are separate entries; exclude them if you only want head offices.

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795,908active entries in the commercial register
68.4 %GmbH and AG (544,583)
180,619registered sole proprietorships
18,542branches

Entries by legal form

Active commercial register entries by legal form (codes according to eCH-0097), query of 25/10/2026. Source: Federal Commercial Registry Office, Zefix on LINDAS (open government data); shares calculated by kontaktdatenbank.ch.
Legal form	Entries	Share
Limited liability company (GmbH)	293,050	36.8 %
Company limited by shares (AG)	251,533	31.6 %
Sole proprietorship	180,619	22.7 %
Foundation	17,770	2.2 %
Branch of a Swiss company	15,381	1.9 %
Association	13,591	1.7 %
General partnership	11,257	1.4 %
Cooperative	7,944	1.0 %
Branch of a foreign company	3,161	0.4 %
Limited partnership	1,025	0.1 %
Public-law institution	469	0.1 %
Other (special legal forms, joint family estates, non-commercial powers of attorney, partnerships limited by shares)	108	0.0 %
Total	795,908	100.0 %

Counted are entries of the type organisation in the Zefix graph on LINDAS (schema:Organization, legal form schema:additionalType). Deleted entries are not included.

What the table shows

GmbH and AG dominate. Together they make up 68.4 % of entries; the GmbH is the most common legal form with 293,050 entries.
Sole proprietorships are under-represented. 180,619 sole proprietorships are registered. Only sole proprietorships with turnover of at least CHF 100,000 in the last financial year must register; many smaller ones are therefore missing.
Not every entry is an active business. Foundations (17,770), associations (13,591) and branches (18,542) are separate entries; holding companies are usually registered as AG.

Commercial register and statistics compared

The commercial register counts 795,908 active entries, the FSO’s statistics on the structure of businesses 649,353 businesses in 2024 (FSO, Statistics on the structure of businesses (STATENT) 2024). The figures measure different things: the register also contains companies without staff and branches, while STATENT also counts unregistered sole proprietorships, farms and public administration units. The difference between the two figures is therefore not a measure of inactive firms.

Methodological notes

Source. The Federal Commercial Registry Office publishes the basic data of all active entries as open government data; free use with attribution (“Open use. Must provide the source.”). The entry in the cantonal commercial register is authoritative.
Reference date. The register changes daily. The figures refer to our query of 25/10/2026.
Other legal forms combine special legal forms (55), joint family estates (31), non-commercial powers of attorney (14) and partnerships limited by shares (8).

Citation

Retrieved on 25/10/2026. Suggestion:

kontaktdatenbank.ch: Commercial register entries by legal form. Based on Federal Commercial Registry Office, Zefix on LINDAS (open government data), query of 25 October 2026. Retrieved on 25 October 2026. https://kontaktdatenbank.ch/en/daten/handelsregister-nach-rechtsform/

Only AG and GmbH, or sole proprietorships too?

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