In Colombia companies are registered with the chamber of commerce of their city, and the chambers’ national confederation, Confecámaras, brings the registers together in the RUES. Here: how the NIT and its check digit work, what the register says about status and renewal, which entities are covered, the licence, and what an API can serve.
The Registro Único Empresarial y Social (RUES) is the national view of the commercial registers that the chambers of commerce (cámaras de comercio) keep. Confecámaras, their confederation, publishes it as open data on the national open data portal, and that is the source of Prometiam's Colombian records. A company is identified by its NIT (Número de Identificación Tributaria), issued by the tax authority DIAN and written with a check digit: 900843898-9 for Rappi, 899999068-1 for Ecopetrol, 890903938-8 for Bancolombia.
Two traps are worth knowing before relying on the register: a company can read active without having renewed its registration for years, and the register has no liquidation field. Both are handled in the record, as described below.
900843898-9. Store it with the digit.A company NIT has 9 digits and starts with 8 or 9; a number starting 1 to 7 is a personal number (cédula), not a company. The check digit (dígito de verificación, DV) follows a hyphen. It is computed from the nine digits: starting from the right, each digit is multiplied by the primes 3, 7, 13, 17, 19, 23, 29, 37, 41, the products are added, and with r the remainder of the sum divided by 11 the DV is r if r is 0 or 1 and 11 minus r otherwise.
A NIT typed without its digit gets the computed one; a NIT typed with a digit that does not match is refused. The identifier validator and the NIT lookup run the same check in the browser before any call.
company_name is the name without the status markers the chambers append (such as EN LIQUIDACIÓN); name_as_registered in registry_details is the name as published.active, in_liquidation, in_liquidation_insolvent (judicial liquidation), in_restructuring, deregistered or merged. The register has no such field, so the first four are read from the name.last_renewal_year in registry_details is the last year the registration was renewed. A company that reads active but last renewed years ago is not current.region. There is no street address, city, postal code or capital.6201), scheme CO-CIIU-REV4-AC. It is not a NACE code and no NACE class is derived.Company records from Confecámaras (RUES, the Colombian chambers of commerce): legal name, legal form, status, founding date, the department of the chamber and the CIIU activity code, with the NIT written with its check digit. Companies of the commercial register only: S.A.S., Ltda., S.A., S. en C., S.C.A., collective companies, single-person companies (E.U.) and branches (sucursales) of foreign companies. Natural persons, non-profit entities, cooperatives, public bodies and establecimientos de comercio are never served. The register has no street address (only the department), share capital, contact data or VAT number (a vat search is refused), and no officers or legal representatives. It has no liquidation state either: liquidation, judicial liquidation and reorganisation are read from the company name and served as the status, and a cancelled registration is deregistered or merged. The activity code is CIIU Rev.4 A.C. (four digits), not a NACE code. No registry-compliance signal and no insolvency notices. Updated monthly. The Colombian records are offered under CC BY-SA 4.0 (share-alike). Register-change events (name, status and legal form changes, dated when first seen in the register data, none before the first load in October 2026) and company monitoring are available.
In short: from a NIT or a name you get the company, its form, whether it is active, in liquidation or cancelled, which department it is registered in, its activity, and how recently it renewed. You do not get an address, capital or legal representatives.
The same call as for every other country, with country=CO:
A NIT that cannot be a company NIT, or whose check digit does not match, is a 400 validation error. The free NIT lookup makes the same call without a key, and Colombia company data API describes the response.
What is the RUES?
The Registro Único Empresarial y Social, the national view of the commercial registers kept by the Colombian chambers of commerce, published by their confederation Confecámaras. Its open data is the source of the Colombian records Prometiam serves.
What is a NIT?
The Número de Identificación Tributaria issued by the tax authority DIAN. For a company it is 9 digits starting with 8 or 9 plus a check digit, written 900843898-9. A number starting 1 to 7 is a personal number, not a company.
Is the NIT check digit enforced?
Yes, when it is given. A NIT typed with a digit that does not match is refused; a NIT without a digit is looked up and the digit is computed.
Does Colombia have a VAT number?
Prometiam gives none for Colombia: nothing is derived from the NIT, and a vat search is refused.
Why can a company read active and still be out of date?
The registration has to be renewed every year, and the register keeps the company as active after a missed renewal. last_renewal_year in registry_details shows the last year it was renewed, so a company that reads active and was last renewed years ago should not be treated as current.
How does the record show liquidation?
The register has no liquidation field. The chambers add EN LIQUIDACIÓN, EN LIQUIDACIÓN JUDICIAL or EN REORGANIZACIÓN to the name, and the record reads those markers into the status. company_name is served without them and name_as_registered keeps the published name.
Which entities are included?
Companies of the commercial register: S.A.S., Ltda., S.A., S. en C., S.C.A., collective companies, single-person companies (E.U.) and branches of foreign companies. Natural persons, non-profit entities, cooperatives, public bodies and establecimientos de comercio are never served.
What licence applies?
The source data is published under CC BY-SA 4.0, and the Colombian records Prometiam serves are offered under CC BY-SA 4.0 too (share-alike). Keep the credit line with them.
Does it have register-change events and monitoring?
Yes. Register-change events (name, status and legal form changes, dated when first seen in the register data, none before the first load in October 2026) and company monitoring are available.
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Official sources: RUES · Confecámaras · Portal de Datos Abiertos.
Contains data from Confecámaras (Registro Único Empresarial y Social, RUES), via the Portal de Datos Abiertos www.datos.gov.co, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Modified by Prometiam; the Colombian records are offered under CC BY-SA 4.0.
| Name | What it is |
|---|---|
| Chambers of commerce (cámaras de comercio) | Keep the commercial register of their district. The source of the legal name, legal form, registration status and dates. |
| Confecámaras | The national confederation of the chambers. Publishes the RUES extract as open data. |
| Portal de Datos Abiertos (datos.gov.co) | The national open data portal where the extract is published, under CC BY-SA 4.0. |
| NIT | The tax identification number from DIAN, 9 digits plus a check digit: 900843898-9. Store it with the digit. |
| Credit line | Colombian records carry the CC BY-SA 4.0 credit shown at the foot of this page, including the statement that the records are offered under the same licence. |
| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| Name | company_name is the name without the status markers the chambers append (such as EN LIQUIDACIÓN); name_as_registered in registry_details is the name as published. |
| Legal form | S.A.S. (the most common), Ltda., S.A., S. en C., S.C.A., collective companies, single-person companies (E.U.) and sucursales of foreign companies. |
| Status | active, in_liquidation, in_liquidation_insolvent (judicial liquidation), in_restructuring, deregistered or merged. The register has no such field, so the first four are read from the name. |
| Renewal | last_renewal_year in registry_details is the last year the registration was renewed. A company that reads active but last renewed years ago is not current. |
| Region | The department of the chamber's seat, in region. There is no street address, city, postal code or capital. |
| Activity | CIIU Rev.4 A.C. code, four digits (6201), scheme CO-CIIU-REV4-AC. It is not a NACE code and no NACE class is derived. |
| Dates | The founding date and, for a cancelled registration, the cancellation date. |