Comparison · Societe.com

Societe.com alternative

Societe.com is the best-known French company-data site, and for France alone it is deeper than we are. Here is exactly where each one wins.

TL;DR

Societe.com is France, in depth. Around 12 million French companies from SIRENE, INPI and BODACC, refreshed daily, with directors, beneficial owners, filed financial accounts, insolvency proceedings, trademarks, and — importantly — actual official documents like a KBIS extract. It is also a free public website with several million visits a month, so a one-off French lookup needs no integration at all.

Prometiam is Europe, in one schema. Official registries across Europe behind one API key and one response shape, plus sanctions and US export-control screening (beta), plus corporate insolvency across sixteen markets. For France specifically we are not deeper than Societe.com — we are wider, and we screen.

Where Societe.com is genuinely ahead

Three things, and they are real:

1. Filed financial accounts. Multi-year bilans with ratios, from documents deposited at the greffe. Prometiam serves registry facts and, from the Scale plan, filed financial statements for France (except for companies that declare their accounts confidential (about 45% of French filers)).
2. Official documents. A KBIS extract or statuts is a legally recognised document, not a JSON object. If your process needs the document itself, an API that returns structured data cannot substitute for it.
3. French UBO and officer granularity. Their bénéficiaires effectifs data carries stakes, voting rights and control mechanisms, and dirigeant records include historical mandates. Prometiam has no French beneficial-ownership data at all — UBO is UK PSC only.

They also have something we cannot buy: a free public site that millions of people already use, so a French accountant checking one company does not need an API key or an integration.

Where Prometiam is ahead

1. More countries. Societe.com is France only. Prometiam adds Spain (BORME), the UK (Companies House, with PSC beneficial owners), Ireland (CRO), Poland (KRS), Norway (Brønnøysundregistrene), Finland (PRH/YTJ), Sweden (Bolagsverket), Belgium (KBO/BCE), Denmark (CVR), Estonia (e-Business Register), Slovakia (RPO), Switzerland (Zefix), Latvia (Register of Enterprises), Cyprus (DRCOR), Romania (ONRC), Croatia (Sudski registar) and the United States under the same schema and key.
2. Sanctions and export-control screening (beta). Six sanctions lists (EU, UN, OFAC, UK, Australia (DFAT), French gels) plus 11 US export-control lists, refreshed daily, with fuzzy matching and confidence scores. Societe.com publishes no sanctions or PEP screening.
3. Cross-border insolvency. Corporate insolvency across France, Finland, Germany, the UK, Austria, Norway, Switzerland, the Netherlands and the US — useful precisely when a French client has exposure outside France.
4. One integration, not one per country. A company in Lyon and a company in Oslo come back with the same field names and the same identifier semantics.

At a glance

Pricing

Both publish real numbers, which is welcome and rarer than it should be.

Societe.com runs subscription tiers — a free account, then roughly €19.90 HT/month and €49.90 HT/month (less on an annual commitment) — which bundle monitoring, Kbis extracts, solvency studies and a monthly API credit allowance. Separately, API credits can be bought outright, from about 99 EUR for 5,000 credits up to around 8,890 EUR for two million, with each call costing between 0.1 and 5 credits depending on the data. There is also an older enterprise API path that is quote-only.

Prometiam bills per API call on flat monthly tiers after a 14-day trial with 500 credits (card required): Starter €9.99 at 1,000 credits, Professional €29.99 at 10,000 with sanctions screening (beta) included, Scale €99.99 at 50,000, and custom Enterprise.

The models differ enough that a per-unit comparison misleads. The practical difference: a credit model charges more for richer data, which is fair; a flat call quota makes a monitoring workload predictable regardless of what each call returns.

Which to choose

Choose Societe.com if your work is French and you need filed accounts, French beneficial ownership, or an official KBIS document — or if you just need to look one company up by hand.

Choose Prometiam if your counterparties span Europe, you need sanctions and export-control screening (beta) in the same call, you want one schema across every live registry, or you monitor a portfolio for insolvency beyond France.

Use both if France is your core market but not your only one. They do not overlap as much as the category suggests: French financial depth on one side, multi-country coverage and screening on the other. The France company data API guide covers the SIREN lookup, officers and BODACC events on the Prometiam side.

Beyond the registry record

Two derived signals, neither of them a rating. Both are dated facts carrying the source they came from, so whoever reviews your file can check them.

• Companies that stopped filing. A company that quietly stops trading rarely dissolves; the register notices first. The registry_compliance flag returns that state in one shape for Spain (provisional closure of the registry sheet), the United Kingdom (a strike-off proposal, or annual accounts overdue), Ireland (the strike-off list) and Norway (compulsory liquidation). Read it on GET /companies/{id}?include=risk_flags, or list those companies with risk_flag_type=registry_compliance. It is a compliance signal, not an insolvency: read it together with status.
• Public contracts, and the buyer behind them. GET /procurement/awards returns public-contract awards from Spain, France, the UK, Ireland, Poland and Norway by supplier, buyer, identifier, CPV code and date, linked to the supplier’s registry record where the identifier resolves. GET /procurement/buyer/{id} scores the contracting body itself: the probability that its next award draws a single bid, and the probability that a supplier it awards to enters insolvency within two years.

Both are ordinary REST calls on the published price and included in the 14-day trial. Procurement awards cover Spain, France, the UK, Ireland, Poland and Norway (Ireland, Poland and Norway above the EU thresholds only), the buyer scores are Spain and France and in beta, and a score is a prompt to look, never a finding of wrongdoing.

FAQ

Does Societe.com have an API?
Yes, and in fact two paths — a self-serve credit-based API, and an older enterprise API that is quote-only and requires contacting them.

Does Societe.com cover countries outside France?
No. Its sources are all French: SIRENE, INPI and BODACC.

Does either do sanctions screening?
Prometiam does (beta) — six sanctions lists plus 11 US export-control lists, refreshed daily. Societe.com does not publish a sanctions or PEP product.

Can Prometiam give me a KBIS?
No. We serve structured registry data, not legally recognised official documents. If you need the document, use Societe.com or Infogreffe.

Which has better French financial data?
Societe.com, clearly. We return filed accounts for France only from the Scale plan, except for companies that declare their accounts confidential (about 45% of French filers).

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